Open Access Week 2021: It Matters How We Open Knowledge

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This week is Open Access Week! This year’s theme is “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity”, focusing on how to make sure all knowledge producers and consumers are able to participate equally. To find out more about this year’s theme and keep up with conversations and events, visit www.openaccessweek.org, and keep an eye on the official hashtag, #OAWeek.

We’ll be tweeting and retweeting from the library Twitter account, @sgullibrary, throughout the week, and if you’d like to see posts we’ve made in previous years, take a look at the Open Access Week tag.

Graphic advertising this year's Open Access Week; text reads 'Open Access Week 2021, It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity, October 25-31'

Open access and open research are about making sure that knowledge is shared as freely and equitably as possible.

The theme of this year’s open access week intentionally aligns with the recently released UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. The recommendations put forward a framework to support scientific collaboration, and foster open practices, raising the profile of being “open” at an international level.

Students, researchers, academics may all be consumers or producers of research. Open science can mean making publications and data available, but it’s also about enabling a more collaborative, transparent research environment – where results are reproducible and researchers can easily access and build upon each other’s work – and where research is opened up to others such as charities, patient groups, and citizen science.

Photo of two people's hands leaning on some documents on a table. One person has a pencil to edit the documents, the angle of the other person's body suggests they are observing.
Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash

Here at SGUL, we support open access via our institutional repository, SORA, which holds over 6000 full text articles by SGUL researchers past and present, with more articles being made available every day. And open research isn’t just about articles – we also support open research via our Research Data Repository, which can host not only research data, but also source code, poster presentations and more. Take a look at these recent posts from our Research Data Support Manager to learn more about managing your research data and using the Research Data Repository:

We’ve also signed up for a number of read and publish deals, which allow SGUL staff and students to both read content in these publishers’ journals and publish open access in them with no additional costs (subject to eligibility criteria). See our webpages for a full list of our deals, along with further information on eligibility and how to access them.

Several well known research funders have launched open publishing platforms, where researchers they fund can publish their results quickly and without direct cost for publication. These include:

These platforms also allow for open peer review – to bring greater transparency and diversity to the peer review process. Registering for the ORCID open identifier enables you to showcase peer reviewing work you have undertaken.

Want to get involved?

Here’s some things to think about to help make research more open:

  • For SGUL researchers with access to CRIS, upload your accepted manuscripts via the CRIS so they can be made open access in SORA (and encourage your colleagues to do the same).
  • Consider whether you could publish via an open research platform, and consider who is invited to peer review (for instance, Wellcome Open Research encourages discussion with the editorial team to help with diversity of reviewers).
  • Think about other research outputs you could make available on the SGUL data repository: e.g. datasets, protocols, code, posters and presentations.
  • If you’re on the editorial board for any journals, can you advocate for reduced embargo periods, lower APCS or APC waiver policies for researchers with no source of funding?
  • Join the conversation via the twitter hashtag #OAWeek – or start a conversation with your colleagues in person!

Any questions? Get in touch with us:

We look forward to hearing from you.

Jenni Hughes, Research Publications Assistant

Jennifer Smith, Research Publications Librarian

Liz Stovold, Research Data Support Manager