SAGE Celebrates Open Access Week 2022, Open for Climate Justice

By Lucy Robinson, Director, Research Publishing

The theme of this year’s International Open Access Week is “Open for Climate Justice”. Climate change affects different people and places unevenly, leading to inequalities within and across nations, and between current and future generations.

This theme seeks to encourage collaboration among the climate movement and the international open community and raise awareness of how openness creates pathways to more equitable knowledge sharing - which is fundamental for addressing the unequal impacts and responses to climate change.  

SAGE celebrates Open Access Week 2022 and supports the call for rapid exchange of knowledge across geographic, economic, and disciplinary boundaries in tackling the climate crisis. As long-term advocates of open science, we are committed to increasing the transparency and accessibility of scientific research so that it has the best chance of creating real-world impact. As an independent publisher, we are free to think long-term in providing sustainable paths to open access and in championing social and behavioral science (SBS) researchers who historically receive less funding than others. 

We led the way in providing accessible publishing routes to open access through the launch of the first broad spectrum OA journal, SAGE Open, aimed specifically at the SBS community. As an interdisciplinary journal, SAGE Open facilitates new connections within and between disciplines. The journal has published thousands of articles from 145 countries and receives millions of article downloads ensuring all published research benefits from openness globally. 

We also recognize the importance of providing equitable and transparent pathways to open publication and are embracing several models to increase the availability of research open to all.  We have agreed over 20 open access agreements, the number growing every year, including an early pilot at the University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill which was specifically structured to provide funding for SBS research, and early career researchers. We are also experimenting with Subscribe to Open (S2O) with a new S2O pilot on two journals. This approach converts subscription journals to open access, making OA publishing available to everyone by removing all payment barriers.

SAGE’s mission is to enable people from all backgrounds to contribute to and benefit from teaching and research resources. In our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, SAGE pledges to publish resources that represent diverse populations and perspectives as well as highlight content that helps to decolonize curricula and reduces barriers for marginalized communities.

As a company, SAGE is also committed to sustainability and minimizing the impact we have on the environment. We were one of the first signatories to the UK Publishers Association Declaration on sustainability, which commits us to meet the Net Zero target as soon as possible, and by 2050 at the latest. This follows the setting up of SAGE’S Global Sustainability Group in 2021 and our signature to the Publishers Compact of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In our collection on Research and Ideas aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we share freely accessible articles to support researchers in future scholarship and to amplify this critical work.

Find out more information about International Open Access Week and join the conversation at #OAWeek.