Open Access Week: The Cost of Knowledge

International Open Access Week is October 19-25, 2026, and this year’s theme, “The Cost of Knowledge”, is an invitation to consider why the costs of open access and knowledge sharing continues to increase and who benefits.

According to Open Access Week:
Increasing consolidation and commercial control over all aspects of knowledge comes at a cost. This year’s theme 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. Last year’s theme of “Who owns our knowledge?” reflected on the reality of commercial ownership of knowledge. This year’s theme will reckon with the costs of that reality and avenues for reclaiming control of these systems meant to serve the public interest.

Understanding Open Access

Open access refers to the free, immediate, and unrestricted availability of scholarly research. There are several models of OA publishing:

Gold Open Access: Gold open access journals make all articles freely available on the journal's website, usually by charging the author an Article Processing Charge (APC) prior to publication.

Hybrid Open Access: Subscription journals offer an OA option for individual publications creating a mixture of open access and closed access articles. The content is made open access by charging the author an APC.

Green Open Access: Under the publisher's permission, authors make their work freely available by depositing a version of their article in an institutional or subject repository.

While Open Access and Public Access are often used interchangeably, they are not the same. Public Access refers to federally mandated policies, like the updated NIH Public Access Policy that requires free availability of research funded by public agencies. For a brief overview of the new NIH requirements and how they may impact your research, visit our NIH Public Access Policy GalterGuide.

Open Access Support

Transformative Agreements: Northwestern authors can publish at no cost in many journals from publishers. These agreements help reduce the financial burden of APCs while expanding access to your work. For a list of current agreements visit Open Access Support at Northwestern.

Prism Repository: Our institutional repository, Prism, preserves and shares the intellectual output of the Feinberg community. Depositing your work in Prism ensures it remains accessible and discoverable over time. For additional information visit our Prism GalterGuide.

GalterGuides: Review our expert curated guides to learn more about Open Access Publishing and Open Access Health Resources.