This year, we’re sharing our Open Access Week reflections a little later than usual, taking some extra time to look back on the insightful discussions throughout October.
Every October, researchers, librarians, publishers, universities, and open-science advocates around the world come together for International Open Access Week—a global annual initiative established by SPARC to promote openness in research that encourages stakeholders to explore ways to make knowledge more accessible.
The theme of Open Access Week 2026 (October 19-25) “The Cost of Knowledge” continues the discussions from recent years, including “Who Owns Our Knowledge?” in 2025 and “Community over Commercialization” in 2023 and 2024. This year, it invites the global academic and research community to consider the cost of creating, sharing, and sustaining knowledge, going beyond financial spend and expanding the discussion to human, and environmental costs, particularly when these costs are driven by private rather than public interests.
Preprints matter in the discussion
As a preprint platform, Preprints.org believes preprinting practice is an important part of open access and open science, which has also been mentioned in OA Week discussions over the years. For example, the discussion on “Community over Commercialization” in 2023 and 2024 highlighted preprint servers as examples of community-oriented infrastructure that can better serve the interests of the research community and the public. Even earlier, the 2016 theme “Open in Action” encouraged researchers to take actions toward openness, including posting preprints to make their work more accessible.
These discussions around preprints reflect a long-standing goal of all researchers: making research more accessible. At Preprints.org, we believe that openness, transparency, and timely research communication can benefit not only the research community but also the wider society.
Therefore, OA Week provides an important opportunity for us to reflect on the role of preprints in open scholarly communication. Since 2025, Preprints.org has hosted OA Week webinars to create a space for discussion of preprints alongside the challenges and opportunities in open science, joined by key stakeholders from open-science organizations and community initiatives working to advance transparent, inclusive, and reproducible research.
Our Open Access Week 2026 event
For OA Week 2026, Preprints.org brought together speakers from libraries, scholarly infrastructure organizations, preprint platforms, and the Preprints.org research community for a webinar on October 29, 2026.
We would like to explore the answer to an often-overlooked question: what does it cost when knowledge takes too long to reach those who need it? In the webinar, we explored these costs and the role that open and timely research sharing can play in addressing the issues. For researchers looking to disseminate their findings earlier, students seeking emerging research, and anyone interested in scholarly communication, we hope you can find helpful and insightful information in the session.
Missed the webinar? Watch the recording here.
You can also continue the conversation on SciProfiles, where the unaddressed questions during the webinar are archived for further discussion.
Join the discussion on SciProfiles.
Lower the cost of knowledge with preprints
Open access is not only about making research more accessible, but also about lowering the barriers to sharing, sustaining and disseminating knowledge. Preprints offer a way to address these challenges.
To help readers explore these topics further, we have selected several articles from the Preprints.org blog:
- What Is Open Access and Why Does It Matter?;
- Different Types of Open Access;
- Why Preprints Are Open Access;
- Tackling Open Access Challenges with Preprints;
- Are Preprints Open Educational Resources?;
- Gold Open Access vs Green Open Access: How Preprints Resolve the Debate;
- The Importance of Supporting Open Science.
As this year’s OA Week theme reminds us, the cost of knowledge extends beyond financial spend. It is also about how quickly research can be shared and who can participate in the dialogue.
We look forward to continuing the discussion with you beyond OA Week. Should you be interested, please follow the Preprints.org blog and our social media channels on LinkedIn, Facebook, Bluesky, and X to join the conversation.
Feature Image: 2026 Open Access Week Theme Graphic by International Open Access Week, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.