Open Access Has Long Been an Intellectual Property of Learning and What You Can Do About It (Keynote by John Willinsky and Faculty Panel)

Rather than regarding open access as a twenty-first century digital disruption (or distraction) within scholarly publishing, this talk will illustrate how this principle has long distinguished such publications from other sorts of activities and goods. By drawing on a few brief examples from this history, it will bring to the fore the longstanding rights and responsibilities — framed as the intellectual properties of learning — associated with scholarly pursuits. These properties, it will be shown, can help to guide scholarly publishing’s principal stakeholders — researchers, librarians, societies, publishes, funding agencies — in reviewing and navigating the current complexity of open access ventures and proposals with this shared goal of better realizing the promise of learning in the digital era.