Who Governs our Knowledge [Production]? Authors and Ownership in Open Access Publishing

OA Week 2025’s theme, and the recent Stockholm Declaration, exemplify growing concerns with ownership and rights in relation to research publications. However, these discussions largely take place within communities of policy-makers, funders, and OA implementers. Institutions implement policy-compliant responses, but researchers are often removed from these discussions. This leaves researchers, who are faced with competing agendas and time constraints, disengaged from key discussions around their rights and responsibilities. Additionally, the reduction of this complex discourse to the single issue of ‘ownership’ obfuscates significant variables that are equally important for researchers to understand, and exercise, their rights as authors. Key among these is the governance of OA publishers and infrastructures. It is critical for researchers to have an informed, holistic overview of the contemporary OA publishing ecosystem, and how this intersects with questions around knowledge ownership. This talk, aimed at researchers, provides an overview of the nascent interventions surrounding these complex issues. It focuses on our experiences of producing, publishing, and disseminating research. We draw from collective experience in organisations and operations that have forged successful, community-led, and collaborative open publishing opportunities. This talk will help to empower researchers by enabling them to find and identify equitable options to publish OA.