Open Access for Climate Justice

"The theme of this year’s International Open Access week from October 24th – 30th is “Open for Climate Justice”. Each year, Open Access Week has a theme and this feels especially relevant in this region, given the almost continuous rolling climate disasters across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand that are now the new normal.

The importance of openness in climate research is also one that has gained attention from Creative Commons, which, in association with two open access policy groups,  EIFL and SPARC, have launched a campaign to increase open access to research on climate science and biodiversity, with backing from the Arcadia Fund. In addition to publications, resources like the IPCC Data Distribution Centre and the Biodiversity Heritage Library show the value of open access to a range of outputs from current datasets to historical images.

The sharing of research openly during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how innovation and solutions, such as the CORD-19 dataset of COVID-19 and coronavirus publications, could be developed collaboratively and equitably to make progress on a global problem. As the world faces the ongoing impacts of climate change, the same case can be argued for openly sharing research findings in order to drive rapid responses and solutions to the climate crisis.

2022 has seen a number of policy initiatives in open access in Australia and internationally including ...."