Paris, October 23 2025. EDP Sciences joins the global research community in celebrating International Open Access Week, this year themed “Who Owns Our Knowledge?”. The question feels especially timely in light of Cambridge University Press’s recent Publishing Futures 2025 report, which warns that academic publishing is “at a critical juncture” and calls for collective action to build a more open, equitable, and sustainable research ecosystem.

Shared responsibility for knowledge

The Cambridge report highlights that while progress towards open access has been significant, inequities persist, particularly for researchers without funding or institutional support. The findings indicate that ownership of knowledge cannot be confined to a few well-resourced actors; it must be shared across the entire research community.

At EDP Sciences, we see this principle in practice through our Subscribe to Open (S2O) and Diamond Open Access programmes, which remove financial barriers for authors and enable collective support from libraries and institutions. These community-based models reflect what the Publishing Futures report describes as essential: transparent, mission-driven publishing that prioritises equity and value over volume.

Towards equitable, sustainable publishing

Both the report and this year’s Open Access Week theme challenge us to rethink how knowledge is produced, funded, and shared. True openness means:

• Funding and governance are distributed across communities, not concentrated in commercial hands.
• Licences and infrastructures that protect reuse rights and transparency.
• Reward systems that recognise quality, collaboration, and peer review, not just publication quantity.

Open access is not merely about free availability, it is about ensuring that the systems supporting research serve the public good.

EDP Sciences will continue to collaborate with libraries, societies, and authors to ensure that access remains free, costs are distributed equitably, and governance is shared.

Knowledge should belong to everyone who creates, reads, and relies on it.

Learn more about our Open Access initiatives.