Locked up science - Tearing down paywalls in scholarly communication

Restricting access to knowledge and science is not beneficial for society. So why are scientific results still locked up behind paywalls? Even though the answer to this question is enlightening, the story is quickly told. Much more important is the knowledge on how to change this.

Politics, research funders, libraries and scientists have to join forces and to push forward to flip scholarly communication from closed to open access. What has happened so far? What are the current developments? What can each of these parties contribute to the transformation of scholarly communication? Open access guidelines, repositories and the hashtag #ICanHazPDF are just a few examples of approaches that jointly undermine the paywalls. One that has been recognized even beyond the scientific community is Project DEAL which aims to achieve open access for scientific publications from German scientists with major academic publishers.

Things are currently progressing very fast and a lot can happen in the weeks between now and the congress. The talk will start with a brief introduction to the most common way of scholarly communication, where science is still mainly locked up behind paywalls. In line with the most recent developments, the talk will then focus on different approaches to open up science and their political and practical consequences. Whatever happens, the transformation of scholarly communication is well underway and it will affect not only the scientific community but society as a whole. So let’s join forces!