Today marks the start of the 2020 International Open Access Week (19–25 October), a global, community-driven week of action organised by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), who aim to make ‘open’ the default for research and education.

The theme of the 2020 International Open Access Week is ‘Open with purpose: taking action to build structural equity and inclusion’. For the third consecutive year, the theme highlights the urgent need to place equity at the centre of the push for openness.

“Openness can be a powerful tool for building more equitable systems of sharing knowledge…Yet today, structural racism, discrimination, and exclusion are present and persistent in places where openness is a core value.”

The organisers emphasise that inequities in current systems must be examined and addressed from the foundation of new structures designed to promote openness.

This International Open Access Week, upcoming events include virtual sessions:

• discussing the challenges of enacting change in scholarly communications
• sharing perspectives on open access in pharma
• exploring current developments in open access in Europe
• providing insights into managing open access data
• discussing the innovative solutions implemented by preprint servers in response to challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic
• exploring publishers’ perspectives on the Subscribe to Open

Why not join one of these events, or follow the conversation at #OAWeek.

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Summary by Beatrice Tyrrell DPhil from Aspire Scientific

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With thanks to our sponsor, Aspire Scientific Ltd