UNESCO Supports Open Access

UNESCO “believes that universal access to high quality education is key to the building of peace, sustainable social and economic development, and intercultural dialogue.” International organizations such as UNESCO already recognize this connection and officially recognize open access as a driver for achievement of the SDGs and sustainable social, political, and economic development. UNESCO believes that Open Access has a fundamental role to support the SDGs and supports the agendas of Open Access.

UNESCO’s OA initiatives are built around the SDGs to recognize the need to ensure that scientific research addresses the needs of society and responds to current and future sustainability challenges.

UNESCO supports Open Access to benefit the global flow of knowledge, innovation, and equitable socio-economic development. “UNESCO’s OA initiatives are built around the SDGs to recognize the need for ensuring that scientific research addresses the needs of society and responds to current and future sustainability challenges” Open Access can be defined as a 'global public good', an instrument to stimulate the growth and quality of global science, as well as an instrument to realize the rights to share the benefits of scientific advancement.

UNESCO believes Open Access advances the quality of education, public health, and economic progress.

Permanent Access is an important component to increase and diffuse knowledge by creating the possibility of re-use, re-analysis, and combining of publications and data, thus increasing productivity and new insights.

UNESCO believes there is an absolute need to remove restrictions to disseminate research outputs to intended stakeholders, irrespective of the geographic location and financial status of institutions and individuals seeking information.

UNESCO and the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) issued a joint statement about open access: “Open access is a global trend, with policies and practices rapidly being adopted around the world. As the world enters a new era of sustainable development, openness and inclusiveness in scientific research will become increasingly critical” (COAR, 2016).

UNESCO had already adopted an Open Access Policy (UNESCO, 2012) for all its publications with creative commons licenses, intend to reduce the gap between developed and developing countries making the content freely available to all, free of copyright and other costs. “Building peaceful, democratic and inclusive knowledge societies across the world is at the heart of UNESCO’s mandate. Universal access to information is one of the fundamental conditions to achieve global knowledge societies. This condition is not a reality in all regions of the world” (UNESCO, 2012)