Happy Open Access Week 2022! 

Each year, researchers, librarians, publishers, and students across the globe come together to spotlight the importance of open access to research. By making scientific research openly accessible, it increases its reach, validation, and potential for reuse for further scientific research. This year’s theme is “Open for Climate Justice to highlight the need for accessible climate science across the globe to enable communities, policymakers, and scientists to respond to climate change and its impact. Lack of equitable access to climate research has long-lasting implications on humanity’s ability to respond to our changing climate.

UMN Libraries is celebrating the week by featuring short profiles of researchers across campus who are working in climate science. We asked these researchers to consider how open access impacts their work. Each day of week, we’ll add another profile to our blog. The Libraries celebration of Open Access does not end after this week, every day we’re focused on ensuring that UMN research is openly accessible through our research services and collection agreements.

Three *free* ways to make your work open access

You can make your work open at no cost by: 

1. archiving a copy of your work in the University Digital Conservancy or a discipline specific repository —following the publisher’s* policy,
2. using the UMN Open Access Policy (contact openaccess@umn.edu for more about this),
3. taking advantage of one of the agreements with publishers that waives or offers a discount on open access publishing fees (article processing charges, APCs)

For more information check out So you want to make your work open or contact your liaison librarian for more information. 

You may have funding requirements to make your work publicly available. You may have heard of the coming changes for public access policies for federal research funding. Nothing has changed yet—the University Libraries are tracking developments and will provide more information as it becomes available.