Owning Our Knowledge: Non-Commercial Pathways for Open Access Publishing

Overview

As part of International Open Access Week 2025, the International Science Council (ISC) invites you to an online session exploring community-led and scholar-driven approaches to scholarly publishing.

This session will showcase non-commercial, open-access platforms that empower researchers and communities to share knowledge equitably and sustainably. The session is ideal for researchers, librarians, policymakers, and anyone interested in alternative publishing models that prioritize community ownership and equitable access to knowledge.

Join the meeting to learn about innovative platforms that are reshaping the future of scholarly communication. The session will conclude with a live Q&A, giving participants the opportunity to engage directly with the presenters and discuss key insights.

Featured Platforms

The session will feature presentations from the following platforms and organizations:

• Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) – SciELO South Africa
• International Society for Porous Media (InterPore) – InterPore Journal
• CLACSO – Institutional publishing project
• Érudit
• The Royal Society – Subscribe to Open (S2O)

Agenda

Times in UTC

Community spotlights

In addition to the platforms featured during the live webinar, several ISC Members and Affiliated Bodies shared inspiring examples of community-led approaches to scientific publishing and dissemination. These initiatives illustrate the diversity of models advancing equitable, open, and sustainable access to knowledge around the world.

IUFRO in-house publication series for forest science

IUFRO World Series: The International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) launched a publication series in 1990 to offer IUFRO scientists an opportunity to make their expertise known to a larger public. A total of 45 volumes have been published, many of them interdisciplinary global assessments produced by the Global Forest Expert Panels (GFEP) initiative under the Science-Policy Programme (SciPol). The IUFRO World Series publications do not require an external peer review procedure but are subject to quality control through an internal review process involving Coordinators of IUFRO Divisions, Task Forces, Programmes or Projects. These publications are freely available on the IUFRO website: IUFRO – Library

IUFRO Occasional Paper Series: The series was initiated in 1994. It covers topics of special relevance at a given point in time and offers rapid dissemination of short publications reflecting IUFRO activities, selected papers presented at international forums, and discussion papers. In 2005 this in-house publication became a purely electronic series, underlining its ambition of providing wider access to IUFRO’s latest scientific contributions to important forest-related issues. Occasional Papers are freely available on the IUFRO website: IUFRO – Library.

ISPRS Proceedings

The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences (ISPRS Archives, https://www.isprs.org/publications/archives.aspx) is the series of peer-reviewed proceedings published by the International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS). Since Volume XXXII-3/W14, 1999, the Archives are open access publications, they are published under the Creative Common Attribution 3.0 (4.0 since June 2017) License, see https://publications.copernicus.org/for_authors/licence_and_copyright.html for details.

The ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences (ISPRS Annals, https://www.isprs.org/publications/annals.aspx) contain selected full paper double-blind peer-reviewed scientific contributions of ISPRS Congresses, Symposia and a number of Conferences and Workshops. The series was newly established in 2012. The Annals are open access publications, they are published under the Creative Common Attribution 3.0 (4.0 since June 2017) License, see https://publications.copernicus.org/for_authors/licence_and_copyright.html for details.