Library recommendations for Open Access Week

This week, we invite you to dive into the history, ideas, and practices of open access. Below are resources that will help you quickly understand this year’s Open Access Week theme, “Who owns our knowledge?”

• Watch:
• Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. (2024). kn/own/able project: A new approach to understanding knowledge and ownership. (13 min.) – A new look at knowledge ownership, open access, and intellectual property.
• Schmitt, J. (2018). Paywall: The business of scholarship. The movie. (1 hr. 5 min.) – A documentary film about the behind-the-scenes world of academic publishing and the open access movement.

Read:

• Moore, S. A. (2025). Publishing beyond the market: Open access, care, and the commons. University of Michigan Press. – Community knowledge management as an alternative to commercial open access.

• Schäfer, D., Mamidipudi, A., & Buning, M. (Eds.). (2023). Ownership of knowledge: beyond intellectual property. MIT Press. – The book proposes a new system of thinking about knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of inequality in contemporary society.