The Cost of Knowledge: Open Access Week 2026 at JMU
Posted October 14, 2026 in Featured News, JMU Libraries News, Open Education News
Scholarly work and research created at JMU advances the public good and the global academic community. However, getting new knowledge into the hands of scholars, policymakers, students, and the public is often harder than it should be. Too often, commercial interests overshadow the value of open sharing of knowledge, resulting in subscription fees, paywalls, and publishing models that restrict access to the knowledge meant to benefit society.
This year’s International Open Access Week (October 19-25) challenges us to consider the financial, human, and environmental costs of creating, sharing, and sustaining knowledge—particularly when these costs are driven by private rather than public interests.
What is Open Access?
Open access (OA) is the practice of making research and scholarship freely available online. Journals, books, databases, and other materials can be made open access, expanding the reach of scholarship.
Why Open Access Matters at JMU
At JMU Libraries, we believe access to reliable, peer-reviewed information is essential. Prioritizing OA can help foster a more ethical, equitable scholarly ecosystem — one where students, researchers, and the public can benefit from knowledge without financial barriers.
4 Things You Can Do for Open Access (OA) Week
In honor of Open Access Week, we invite you to consider these 4 things you can do:
1. Learn About OA: Explore our resources on open access.
2. Retain your copyright: Don’t automatically sign your copyright away. Negotiate with publishers to retain your copyright — or publish in OA venues.
3. Assign Open Access Articles and Textbooks: Lower student textbook costs with high-quality, customizable open and affordable course content like open textbooks, OA articles, or JMU-licensed materials.
4. Publish Open Access: Share your work more widely, increase its impact, and boost citation rates.
How JMU Libraries Can Help You Publish OA
We’re committed to supporting JMU faculty, staff, and students in making their work as openly available as possible.
- Journals: Our publisher agreements can cover or reduce OA publishing costs with major publishers like Wiley, ACM, ACS, MDPI, and Springer. If you want to publish an OA article in a journal with which we do not have a publisher agreement, we offer a limited Open Access APC Fund for JMU authors. Our APC fund is provided in partnership with JMU’s Research, Economic Development and Innovation (REDI) division, while our publisher agreements are thanks to our participation in VIVA and other memberships.
- Books: Some OA book publishers don’t charge authors to make their work open access. You can also publish your own e-book using Pressbooks, a tool we provide for creating online books and interactive course materials.
- Online: Share articles, conference presentations, and more through JMU Scholarly Commons, our institutional repository, which has surpassed 2 million downloads per year, connecting JMU scholarship to a global audience.
Learn more
At JMU Libraries, we’re here to support you through every step of your OA journey. Learn more on our Open Access page or contact Yasmeen Shorish, Associate Dean for Research and Scholarly Communications.