In honor of International Open Access (OA) Week, The Scholarly Kitchen Chefs ponder the theme for this year’s event, which states that “communities can reassert control over the knowledge they produce”? In the context of open access publishing, who owns the knowledge generated by scholarly research? Do you agree with the premise of this theme? Why / why not?

Rick Anderson

These are both incredibly difficult questions, in part because when it comes to knowledge, a meaningful definition of “ownership” is tough to nail down, and also because it’s often unclear what it means for a “community” to produce (let alone “own”) knowledge. It seems to me that when we’re talking about knowledge, the only meaningful definition of “ownership” would have to be “control” — and it is, of course, a key function of open access publishing to eliminate any kind of individual or corporate control over scholarly information.

Since the whole point is to make the information available to and reusable by everyone in the world, not just by a particular individual or community, it’s not at all clear to me what it would mean for “communities (to) reassert control over the knowledge they produce” in the context of open access publishing. If the knowledge is open, then by definition it’s not subject to control by any individual or community. And what are the “communities” contemplated by this theme? Does it mean the scholars in particular disciplines? Does it mean ethnic or geographic communities? Does it mean the faculty of a particular university? There is an almost infinite number of groups that could conceivably be called communities that produce what could be called knowledge, and for whom assertions of control over that knowledge would mean very different things – but it seems clear to me that nothing you could reasonably call “control” over knowledge is congruent with the principles of open access publishing.

Lettie Conrad

As Rick demonstrates, the theme of International OA Week is thought-provoking and, as I reflect, it seems designed to focus our attention on the nature of controlled access content, rather than open. Are we sending a message about ownership and privilege when we control access to content? Are we conflating knowledge with publishing?

If we’re talking about ownership of knowledge, I think of information writ large, and find it hard to argue that information is not inherently a shared public asset. However, if we’re talking about ownership of content, I think of information products and services, which I find hard to argue should be free — because they’re not! And I think the evolution of OA business models proves that free and open are not synonymous.

Time and again, we hear of case studies that quantify the costs of publishing, such as the most recent from the departing editor of a failing journal (which, ironically, is dedicated to the sociology of work; also, my apologies for the double irony of linking to a paywalled article). While we might agree that knowledge should be publicly owned and shared equally, the OA movement has had an uphill climb, in part, because we must fund the editorial and publishing activities required to disseminate that knowledge.

Similar dynamics are at play in the publication of other types of knowledge important to our greater global society, such as news. When advertising became a key engine of funding news production, the ownership moved away from the ‘fourth estate’ model, beholden to the public trust, and became a product owned by corporations, beholden to capitalistic forces.

Then, there’s the issue of how much we believe in or trust the stewards of knowledge of high value to our society. What happens to our collective faith in the “owners” of knowledge when they are contained within information commodities? Is the solution anything short of a total rewriting of the basic economic system that controls knowledge?

Haseeb Irfanullah

I can feel the confusion (maybe a bit of frustration) hidden in the theme of OA Week 2025, since we are not quite sure about who owns the knowledge which is supposed to be “ours.” But, before answering the question in connection with open access to research, please bear with me as I tell you a story from my home Bangladesh.

In northeast Bangladesh, there is a globally important wetland called Tanguar Haor. If you are fond of nature, it is an amazing hub of migratory birds, aquatic plants, and, of course, fish. One striking feature of this ecosystem is that, in the rainy season, it is a 100-square-kilometer single body of water, but, in winter, it becomes a cluster of 120 permanent water-pockets (called beels). Until the 1930s (in the colonial era), the local communities living around the wetland freely fished all year around for livelihood and food. The wetland and everything in it were common property resources.

Restrictions came when the British Raj started leasing out the beels to the elites in winter. As the wetland became a money-making machine, the leaseholders not only over-exploited the fisheries, but also cut the local people out from accessing them — ignoring traditional and ecological rights over ‘their’ wetland. Therefore, what was once a common property now faced decommonization. This exclusionary system went on for almost 70 years. And once this biodiversity-rich swamp became resource poor; the local people remained poor, as ‘their’ fish were making someone else richer.

In 2001, the Bangladesh government had a change of heart, thanks to the strong pro-people, pro-environmental global movements in the 1990s. Leasing was stopped as Tanguar Haor was handed over to the environment ministry to revive its damaged natural resources. Around 2008, the government introduced a new, sustainable fisheries management system with two basic parts. First, the beels were divided into a core zone (never to be fished, but to supply brood fish for the next rainy season) and a buffer zone (where fishing is allowed in winter with government permits). Second, a benefit-sharing rule was applied to ensure that 40% of the income from the fish harvest goes to the fishers, 36% to the local community organization managing the haor, and 24% to the government as revenue. We can call this arrangement a recommonization, where the rights over the wetland were given back to the local people after almost 80 years.

Now, is it only me, or can you also see commonization and decommonization of research outputs over the last 80 years? Until the 1940s, academic research culture was essentially centered around learned societies and periodicals. After the significant rise of universities in the post-World War II era, commonization of research was seen during the 1950s-1970s. This period overlapped with gradual decommonization of research through commercial journal publishing. After a brief decline in the 1980s, this decommonization continued with the surge of digital technology starting in the 1990s.

Over the last couple of decades, we have been trying to recommonize knowledge through open access, open research, and open science, but at a cost. We can’t go back to the earlier, more open state of knowledge since the research and publishing ecosystem has grown tremendously, related legal regimes have evolved, and ethical and integrity aspects have transformed. The publishing industry is now heavily market-driven, rather than purpose-driven. And the concept of ‘community’ in the knowledge ecosystem is broader than ever, including researchers, publishers, funders, and other stakeholders.

Under such a situation, nobody can 100% own a piece of research. Whether authors, funders, and publishers can claim a 40:36:24 ownership ratio, like Tanguar Haor, is a matter of debate. But, no doubt, from our ongoing efforts of recommonization of knowledge, by shifting journal publishing costs from readers to authors, the profit margin is winning.

Phill Jones

This is a tricky question because the word “knowledge”, despite seeming like it refers to a straightforward concept, is interpreted to mean different things to different people. It’s tempting to think in terms of intellectual property when thinking about ownership of information, research, or knowledge, and many people do, but that’s a mistake.

I remember when I was a researcher and the open access movement was in its relatively early stages. Around that time, the NIH had just decided that all publications resulting from work they funded should be made available in a repository, and, in the UK, the Wellcome Trust were experimenting with directly funding gold OA. This was happening against the backdrop of universities building more infrastructure to support spin-out companies and institutionalizing tech transfer. Many researchers were thinking about intellectual property for the first time and about who had the right to make use of their findings and discoveries, particularly for commercial purposes.

I had several conversations with researchers who imagined that transferring copyright of their manuscript would mean that they no longer had the right to commercialize their findings. Of course, that isn’t the case because it’s only the content of the article itself that’s copyrighted, not the knowledge.

You can’t own knowledge, ideas, facts, or even raw data, but you can protect the processes of creating and interpreting them, and the outputs of those processes. Things get messy when we try to make use of, or money from, those outputs, while trying to be fair to the people who created them in the first place. Is it fair, for example, for a record label to make the lion’s share of the money from an artist’s song, or for a tech company to ingest and monetize masses of information from the open web to build AI products that they then sell?

What makes these questions particularly difficult to answer is that use cases for information change over time. When the open access movement first gained traction, one goal was to make information as free as possible. Many of those early OA advocates didn’t foresee how companies would monetize authorship, never mind using it to fuel the development of AI products. So now we find ourselves in the odd place of almost being back at the beginning of the debate again. Who should have the right to decide what is done with intellectual outputs? Should it be purely the decision of the person that created it or are there other legitimate interests? Who has the ability to defend those rights and on what basis do they do so? These are complex questions that will require honest and patient discussion if we’re going to arrive at fair and sustainable answers.

Maryam Sayab

“Open” doesn’t always mean “ours.” When we talk about who “owns” knowledge, we also have to talk about who controls its visibility. For communities in underrepresented regions, particularly in Asia, Africa, and the Arab world, ownership is not just about legal rights or licenses. It’s about having the infrastructure, agency, and power to shape how knowledge is shared, recognized, and valued.

Open access was meant to shift control back to communities. Yet in practice, the infrastructure remains centralized in the Global North: indexing systems, discovery tools, metadata standards, and funding streams still determine whose knowledge is seen. Many APAC journals are technically open, but practically invisible, unindexed, under-resourced, and structurally excluded.

I agree with this year’s OA Week theme in principle. But, communities can only “reassert control” if they also have equitable access to the means of dissemination. That means investment in community-led platforms, multilingual metadata, and inclusive indexing, not just content liberation.

This aligns strongly with global principles outlined in the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, which emphasizes equitable participation, and the UNESCO Science Report 2021, which highlights persistent structural gaps in research visibility.

Until those gaps are addressed, for many in the Global South, ownership remains aspirational rather than actual. Because, at the end of the day, access without agency is not ownership. Openness means little when the power to decide who sees it isn’t ours.

Randy Townsend

I’ve given this topic a lot of thought, as there are certain words, highlighted by my fellow Chefs, that caught my attention. There’s a quote by Adolf Hitler that reads “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.” That context gives me uncomfortable chills for a number of reasons, especially now that we have the benefit of hindsight and analysis to see how one of history’s most notorious dictators viewed ownership as a weapon. Replace “youth” with “knowledge,” and you have “He alone, who owns knowledge, gains the future,” and ownership could be equally problematic when empowering ill-intentioned groups.

I had a mixed reaction to the word “control” as well. That’s another term right out of the dictator’s guide to oppression. However, I’m an optimist. When I take a few steps back and reflect on my own experience as an advocate for open science and open data, I’m able to relax. I’ve engaged with communities as we negotiated policies and struggled with implementation. I’ve worked alongside industry leaders as we faced hard questions about “openness” head on, leading with words like “respect,” “fair,” “objective,” “responsible,” “integrity,” and “equity.”  We’ve debated who should be allowed to access what and when. I believe that most researchers are well-intentioned and sincerely believe in advancing our understanding. I put my trust in research communities that attempt to get it right, that may not be perfect, but are genuine and authentic.

Somewhere along the way, those research communities seemed to have lost control, not of the knowledge itself, but of their own narrative. We have nervously watched sound science being aggressively dismantled and dedicated career professionals discredited and dragged through the mud. I view the questions raised by the theme of this year’s Open Access Week as a wake up call for the well-intentioned. I believe we are all stakeholders of the knowledge generated by scholarly research, and beneficiaries of the future reported in its findings. I also believe that research communities should consider adopting a mantra that reaffirms their commitment to responsible research produced for the expansion of our understanding and the betterment of humanity.