Three global experts discuss ‘Practical Open Access for Everyone’ Oct. 23 online

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State University Libraries will host three of the world’s foremost experts on the subject of open access during a public online panel discussion, “We Are Enough: Practical Open Access for Everyone,” at 11 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, Oct. 23, during International Open Access Week. Registration is required.   

“Our Open Access Week panel is a rare and exceptional opportunity to hear from three global giants in the field of open access in a single conversation,” said Faye A. Chadwell, dean of Penn State University Libraries and Scholarly Communications. “We have been honored to hear from Sarah Lamdan and Peter Suber individually in prior years and are thrilled they are rejoining us along with Samuel Moore, whose newly released book speaks to this year’s International Open Access Week theme of knowledge ownership. I’m looking forward to a rich and insightful discussion not to be missed.”  

Moore, Lamdan and Suber will share their expertise and views on open access to scholarly information during the Oct. 23 event. Moore, scholarly communication specialist at Cambridge University Library, is one of the organizers of the Radical Open Access Collective and author of the recently released University of Michigan Press book “Publishing Beyond the Market: Open Access, Care and the Commons.” Lamdan, deputy director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, authored the widely acclaimed book “Data Cartels.” Suber, author of the seminal monograph “Open Access,” is a leading theorist of the open access movement.  

“The more that knowledge and research matter, the more it matters to make them open access. OA facilitates their discovery, retrieval, reading, use, reuse and preservation,” Suber said. “OA improves research itself, education, journalism and every kind of evidence-based policy and practice.”  

The panel discussion’s theme was selected to appeal to a wide University audience, ranging from faculty members and researchers to independent scholars, students, faculty librarians and library workers, as well as professionals working in the publishing industry. As of Sept. 30, hundreds of individuals from 17 countries have registered for the event. 

“Threats to research funding and universities make open access advocacy more important than ever,” Lamdan said. “Scholars and innovators including scientists, technologists, historians and artists need information sources that are accessible and abundant, not prohibitively expensive and out of reach.”  

Open access principles and practices provide and advocate for barrier-free reading of peer-reviewed, published online academic articles, journals and longer-form publications. Open access has been a growing, worldwide concern for decades, accelerated when scholarly publications’ production shifted to for-profit publishers and distribution moved primarily online, further exacerbated by paywall restrictions and significantly rising content-licensing charges. These factors have made these research discoveries more challenging to access, especially as scholarly researchers and library institutions face funding issues.  

“Scholarly communication is shaped by multinational corporations and infused with capitalist logic,” Moore said. “Done right, open access can be one corrective to this exploitative and unsustainable system.” 

Penn State University Libraries’ faculty librarians have led Penn State’s pursuit of open access to University research for a decade, beginning in 2015, furthered by University Faculty Senate support in 2019 and enacted into University policy AC02, Open Access to Scholarly Articles, on Jan. 1, 2020.  

The free public webinar “We Are Enough: Practical Open Access for Everyone” is hosted by the University Libraries and will be held online via Zoom. Registration is required.   

International Open Access Week 2025 will be commemorated worldwide Oct. 20-26 with “Who Owns Our Knowledge?” as its overall theme.   

More information about open access at Penn State is available at openaccess.psu.edu.