Join USU Libraries at the Merrill-Cazier Library on October 20 and 22 from 9 am to 12 pm to celebrate Open Access Week.

What Is Open Access Week About?

Open Access Week is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

Open Access to information – the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.

Open Access Week is an invaluable chance to connect the global momentum toward the open sharing of knowledge with the advancement of policy changes and the importance of social issues affecting people around the world. The event is celebrated by individuals, institutions and organizations around the world.

This Year's Theme: "The Cost of Knowledge"

Accessing and sharing knowledge is a human right, yet the costs of doing both keep climbing. This year’s theme invites us to ask why, and who benefits. It challenges us to weigh the financial, human, and environmental costs of creating, sharing, and sustaining knowledge, especially when private rather than public interests drive those costs. Building on last year’s theme, "Who Owns Our Knowledge?", it also looks at ways to reclaim control of the systems meant to serve the public.

This Year's Theme: The Cost of Knowledge