Open Access Week 2026: The Cost of Knowledge
This week, October 19–25, marks International Open Access Week!
OA Week is an opportunity for scholars and the public to learn about the benefits of open access from and with each other and to advocate for increased access to information worldwide. Open access to information – free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as needed – enables greater participation in research and advances opportunities for innovation and discovery.
Every year, OA Week is organized around a different theme. Last year’s theme, “Who Owns Our Knowledge?”, asked us to reflect on what commercial ownership of knowledge means in practice. Here at Colby Libraries, this inspired us to share about our work on gaining access to commercially published scholarship through read and publish agreements, to analyze our own faculty and staff’s recent article publishing habits, and to speculate on where commercial publishing and OA efforts may be leading us next.
This year’s theme is The Cost of Knowledge. We create and share knowledge in order to advance human understanding and the common good. We recognize that accessing and sharing knowledge is a human right. Yet, the costs to access and share knowledge continue to increase, often dramatically. Why? Who benefits?
What is the Cost of Knowledge?
Speaking from their unique perspectives as librarians with different functional and subject expertise, here is what the cost of knowledge looks like to four Colby librarians right now.
There is a cost to producing knowledge. The time and expertise of researchers, reviewers, and editors are a real cost that deserves to be compensated. But when the costs of accessing knowledge so far outpace what the knowledge producers receive, it points to fundamental flaws in the system. It’s also worth considering the costs of not sharing knowledge- what discoveries have been stymied or slowed by inequitable access to information?
Bonnie Paige, User Experience Librarian, Chair of Research & Academic Engagement
Bonnie joined Colby Libraries in 2017. She works primarily with students, faculty, and staff in the social sciences. Her functional focus areas include government information, open data, and assessment.
For me, the ‘cost of knowledge’ is an idea I think about with regard to not only who has the resources to participate in knowledge-making, but also what “costs” are changing our relationship to knowledge. While open access and open data are important steps toward democratizing information, democratizing knowledge means more than removing paywalls. It means protecting people’s ability to question, investigate, understand, and contribute to what we collectively know. What concerns me now is how AI is fundamentally changing our relationship with knowledge. We increasingly rely on machines to find answers, interpret information, and even formulate our questions, so what happens to our own ability to think critically, challenge assumptions, and create new knowledge? Do we risk becoming consumers of machine-generated answers rather than active participants in human discovery? And if a handful of companies control the technologies through which we access and produce knowledge, are we really “democratizing information”, or simply creating a new kind of gatekeeper?
Kara Kugelmeyer, Data Services Librarian
Kara joined Colby Libraries in 2016. She works primarily with students, faculty, and staff in the natural sciences. Her functional focus areas include research data management, critical AI studies, and research ethics and compliance.
We have access to so much information, but how much of it can we really call “knowledge”? As we’re bombarded with more and more information, we’re losing access to the time and attention we need to sift through it, understand, critically evaluate, and synthesize it–to really think about it and build new knowledge in turn. So many of our institutions reward speed and profit over anything else. In addition to advocating for the free exchange of information, how can we create systems that value and foster the slow, deep work of producing knowledge?
Sarah Sahn, Collections Strategies Librarian
Sarah joined Colby Libraries in early 2026. She works primarily with students, faculty, and staff in the humanities. Her functional focus areas include collections analysis and critical pedagogy.
When I think about the cost of knowledge, I think about the time and effort necessary to produce knowledge in a way that is recognizable and shareable with others. While many people may know things either from their own direct experience or generationally through the stories of their communities, they often don’t have the means to package that knowledge in a way that is digestible for larger consumption. The costs of knowledge are the costs of dedicated time for research, writing, peer review, publication, and marketing. These costs are often covered by colleges and universities for faculty members, but as higher education budgets and workforces face increased uncertainty, our already flawed scholarly communications system is going to lose out on sharing even more potential knowledge.
Natalie Hill, Scholarly Communications Librarian
Natalie joined Colby Libraries in 2023. She works primarily with students, faculty, and staff in the social sciences. Her functional focus areas include open education, intellectual property, and publishing.