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Open Access Week: A reminder what research is all about

Andreas Vilhelmsson Academia Open Access Open Science

This year’s International Open Access Week is now officially over. With the theme Community over Commercialization, there is a continued focus on prioritizing approaches to open scholarship that serve the best interests of the public and the academic community. Since its foundation in 2008, International Open Access Week has grown into a celebrated global event and a reminder highlighting the value of making research, data, and educational resources freely accessible to everyone. This is especially important to ECRs, finding their way into the research ecosystem. Without Open Access, many countries would be excluded from the scientific community and hindered from conducting their own and advancing research. Open Access Week is an important reminder that access to research results, and the right to use and re-use those results, has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. This year’s theme further recognized the need to prioritize approaches to open scholarship that serve the best interests of the public and the academic community. With artificial intelligence in commercial academic systems, this question is more pertinent than ever and the future of the public interest.

Open Access Week in itself is also an opportunity to connect with other ECRs, senior researchers, and research communities to share knowledge and ideas to push for further movements towards Open Science. As a reminder of this development, PLOS recently released the latest version of its Open Science Indicators (OSI) dataset, which is a sign of an increasingly open scientific community moving in the right direction. In my own field of research, climate and health data is becoming more openly available through the Climate and Health Outcomes Research Data Systems (CHORDS) programs and other initiatives that did not exist a couple of years ago. Thanks to the Open Access and Open Science movement we are moving in the right direction, and it is important that we continue this development and not take anything for granted.

About the Author
  • Andreas Vilhelmsson 0000-0002-6635-8182

    Andreas Vilhelmsson is the ECR Community Editor and an associate professor with a Ph.D. in public health from Lund University in Sweden. He has a broad interest in different aspects of human health, with a specialized focus on issues concerning global and environmental health. He teaches climate and health at the Medical Program at Lund University and is working to implement this in the medical curriculum. He also holds a Master of Public Health and certificates in Climate Change and Health and Climate Change planetary Health and Medicine. He has also written and edited a textbook on Climate Medicine to be used in programs on medicine and public health.

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