“Who Owns Our Knowledge?” is the theme for this year’s Open Access (OA) Week (October 20-26).
It challenges us to consider who has access to education and research, and how communities can reassert control over the knowledge they produce in a time of global disruption. It also asks whose voices are recognised and valued in this process.
Mac4Me’s commitment to open science 🔬:
The Mac4Me Doctoral Network is fundamentally aligned with Open Science principles, including Open Access (OA) publishing practices. As a European doctoral network, we are committed to making our metastatic cancer research findings available primarily through Green and Gold OA routes.
During our first year, we surveyed our researchers to assess their engagement with Open Access, and the results were:
- Publishing Open Access is already widely accepted and is becoming a standard practice within our research community.
- While a substantial number of our researchers already share preprints, this practice is less established and carries more uncertainty. Our training will focus on normalising this tool, and we expect to convert the large ‘would like to’ segment into active users by the end of the project.
By promoting open practices, we ensure that our knowledge is shared equally and is accessible, especially to the patient community.
