Who owns science? Research findings form the basis for informed decisions in politics, business, and society. These decisions range from disaster control to the use of artificial intelligence to education. However, anyone who wants to access this knowledge often encounters a paywall. Many studies are publicly funded but published by private publishers, which charge fees to access their content. Should knowledge that belongs to everyone be accessible only to a select group? Open access offers free access to everyone worldwide. This allows research results to be disseminated and advanced more quickly, and the public gets something back for its investment: free access to the findings. But is that really the solution? Even in the open access model, publishers often charge publication fees that researchers or their institutions must pay. What could a system look like that is sustainably financed without creating new dependencies? In the August edition of Digitaler Salon, we will discuss who owns scientific findings and how knowledge can be made accessible to everyone.
The event “Paywall oder Payback. Wem gehört die Wissenschaft?” [Paywall or Payback. Who Owns Science?”] will be held in German.
Katharina Mosene (HIIG/HBI) will moderate the discussion on this topic, including the following experts:
Marcel Wrzesinski is responsible for open access and publication services at the Charité in Berlin. He previously led the BMBF project Acquisition Logic as an Obstacle to Diamond Open Access (ELADOAH) at the HIIG. His research is focused on governance and infrastructures for scientific communication and distribution. His work includes questions about the future of scientific journals, equitable access to scientific literature, and sustainable business models for science-led, fee-free publishing (diamond open access).
Barbara Budrich is a trained publishing manager and has worked in academic publishing for decades. Since 2004, she has owned and operated her own social science publishing house, Barbara Budrich. Of the approximately 180 new publications and nearly 30 journals published by the company each year, a growing proportion are gold and diamond open access.
Nikolas Eisentraut holds a junior professorship in public law at Leibniz University Hannover and the German Center for Higher Education Research and Science Studies. He studied and earned his doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin. His research focuses on science and higher education law, particularly open science, open access, and open educational resources. He is also a founding member of OpenRewi e.V. and the publication platform “Open Access Kommentar (OAK)”.
Katherina Holscher Blackman will give the introduction. She is a research associate in the Knowledge and Society research program at HIIG and is involved in the ELADOAH project, which aims to establish a living open access culture in German research and science practice.
This Digitaler Salon is part of the ELADOAH research project being carried out with Verfassungsblog.
