Welcome to Open Access Week 2024

by Helen Sharp, Scholarly Publications Specialist, Open Access Support Team, University Library Service

Today marks the start of International Open Access Week 2024 . Last year’s theme  “Community over Commercialisation” is continued for 2024 – seeking to raise awareness around the importance of community controlled knowledge sharing systems such as institutional and subject repositories and open publishing platforms and initiatives.

Cardiff University’s institutional repository ORCA facilitates open access for our research outputs, making the full text available for research articles as soon as the publisher allows this. The percentage of the University’s research articles that are made openly available immediately on publication, rather than after an embargo period, is growing. This is facilitated by our participation in  “Read and Publish” agreements with 29 publishers, and to a growing number of publishers allowing the accepted manuscript (post print) version to be made openly available with zero embargo period.

This special edition infographic provides a snapshot of Open Access publishing activity and downloads from our repository over the past year.

We will be posting to our blog throughout the week with news on a variety of open research initiatives the University is involved in. Look out for our forthcoming posts including an update on  the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) OR4 project, the launch of the University’s  new research data repository, the rights retention approach to Open Access, and and an open research  perspective from a Cardiff University researcher involved in the the UKRN “Train the Trainer” project.