In the last blog post, we discussed climate justice. In the following post, we will discuss how climate justice relates to Open Access (OA) and the theme for this year鈥檚 OA Week: .
What does climate justice have to do with OA?
OA and climate justice share many of the same values, including a commitment to equity, transparency, and knowledge sharing (Dosemagen et al., 2021). Importantly, the OA and climate justice movements recognize the unequal ways in which knowledge is produced and shared. As with many disciplines, climate scholarship is primarily produced by authors in the global north and is mostly available to researchers from well-resourced institutions and countries that can pay for access (Newell et al., 2021). This system prevents many of the most impacted communities and countries from accessing needed information and contributing their voices to the conversation. As the OA Week website notes, 鈥淸s]haring knowledge is a human right, and tackling the climate crisis requires the rapid exchange of knowledge across geographic, economic, and disciplinary boundaries.鈥 OA practices and infrastructure, such as OA repositories and reuse permissions, can facilitate knowledge sharing by providing not only immediate online access to information, but also permissions to use that content in future climate projects.
In the next post, we鈥檒l provide some OA climate resources. Remember to check out the many and follow #OAWeek on social media. If you have questions about OA, please feel free to contact the Scholarly Communication & Copyright Librarian, Karen Caputo (karen.caputo@case.edu) or your Research Librarian.
References:
Dosemagen, S, Heidel, E., Murillo, L.F.R., Velis, E., Stinson, A., & Thorne, M. (2021). Open climate now! Branch, 2.