August 27, 2019 - 8:30am PDT
Athens, Greece

Join a panel of experts, including EFF Associate Director of Research Gennie Gebhart, to discuss the state of open access at the International Federation of Library Associations' 2019 World Library and Information Congress.

Libraries have the responsibility of providing democratic access to information for the benefit of all. The work of the Open Access (OA) movement has led to major progress in realising this goal in the field of research and scholarship, working to ensure that laws and business models do not stand in the way of the widest possible access.
 
Nonetheless, there remains a lack of consensus about the form of OA that is most desirable, and no one business model has proven itself to offer a means of supporting a shift universal openness. The need for sustainability and equity (both for readers and researchers), as well as broader questions around the factors that need to be in place to guarantee openness also remain.
 
In parallel, with prices for scholarly journals and packages continuing to rise, many libraries are taking matters into their own hands, cancelling deals which they deem not to be worth the price asked, underlining that one of the original drivers of the shift to OA remains an issue.
 
This session looks to explore some of the key underlying issues in OA, from a legal and ethical perspective. It will also bring together a panel of representatives of universities which have unilaterally decided to leave ‘Big Deals’ behind, in order to understand the issues in the non-Open world.