You find an article that looks perfect for your research. The abstract addresses precisely the question you are exploring. You click to read more—and encounter a payment request. Before you can assess whether the article is useful, you have another problem to solve: getting access.
As a research librarian and digital scholarship librarian, I think about access across the research process: finding sources, developing projects, and sharing the results. A paywall can interrupt any of those activities. It also raises a larger question: who gets to participate in the creation and exchange of knowledge?
That question is central to International Open Access Week, October 19–25, 2026. This year’s theme, “The Cost of Knowledge,” invites us to examine the financial, human, and environmental costs of producing, sharing, and sustaining research.
Access is part of the research process
My work involves helping students and faculty find information and make informed decisions about using it. Open access supports that work by making scholarship freely available online. Open licenses can also provide permission to share and reuse it under specified conditions.
The benefits extend beyond campus. A teacher preparing a lesson, a community organization researching a local issue, or a graduate continuing an intellectual interest may all need scholarly information. Their questions matter, even when they lack university subscriptions.
From my perspective, helping someone locate an article is one part of a broader responsibility: helping research reach the people who can learn from it and use it.
Free to read still requires support
Making scholarship openly available requires resources. Publishing platforms, editorial work, accessibility, and preservation all need sustained support. Library subscriptions cover some of these expenses in traditional publishing. Students and faculty may encounter no payment screen when accessing an article through the library, but that access still carries an institutional cost.
Some open access journals use article processing charges, paid by authors, institutions, or funders. Other journals charge neither readers nor authors, relying on support from institutions, scholarly organizations, or other sources. Through membership in NERL (NorthEast Research Libraries Consortium), CUA Libraries support open access publishing in Cambridge University Press journals under a transformative agreement. Eligible authors can apply to have their article processing charges (APCs) covered through the agreement, making their articles freely available to readers. These differences matter when discussing publishing options with researchers. Removing a reader’s paywall is valuable, but an author needs to consider cost alongside audience, quality, licensing, and author rights. Websites like Think, Check, Submit can help with the process.
Digital scholarship broadens the conversation
A digital scholarship perspective goes beyond the journal article. A project might produce a dataset, digital exhibit, text collection, or interactive website. Making those materials available can create opportunities for teaching, collaboration, and further research.
Yet putting a project online is only a beginning. Can people with disabilities use it? Is its documentation understandable? Are permissions clear? Who will maintain it when a grant ends or its creator moves on? Openness requires planning across a project’s life. It also requires judgment: privacy, consent, copyright, and community expectations may shape what should be shared and under what conditions. Responsible access means considering both the people who might use a project and those whose lives, words, or cultural materials it represents.
The costs we may overlook
The cost of knowledge also includes time. Searching for an accessible article, navigating an unfamiliar platform, or determining reuse permissions can take time away from research itself. Under deadline pressure, those obstacles may influence which sources someone ultimately uses. There is labor behind accessible scholarship, too: reviewing submissions, preparing files, describing materials, maintaining platforms, and preserving content. Digital infrastructure also requires equipment and energy.
Three ways to navigate your research process
Finding an article, sharing your work, and choosing where to publish all involve decisions about access to knowledge. These three steps can help you navigate those decisions, with support from the library along the way.
Ask for help finding an article. If you encounter a paywall and are unsure what to do next, contact the library. We can suggest other access options, including repository copies (preprint, postprint, or published versions) and interlibrary loan.
Plan how to share your work. Consider an institutional or disciplinary repository. Check your publishing agreement and the journal’s sharing policy to determine which version (preprint, postprint, or published) you may deposit and whether conditions apply. A librarian can help interpret those requirements. See the CUA Institutional Repository.
Explore publishing options early. Examine a journal’s audience, editorial practices, fees, licensing, and author rights. The ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit: Evaluating Journals offers a starting point.
Open Access Week is an opportunity to connect these everyday research decisions with a larger purpose. As a research librarian and digital scholarship librarian, I want to help people find knowledge, contribute to it, and share it thoughtfully. Knowledge takes resources to produce and our choices about supporting it should help more people participate.
See the variety of events being offered around the world and online during Open Access Week. #OAWeek.
Kevin Gunn is the Coordinator of Digital Scholarship at The Catholic University of America Libraries.
CUA Libraries Research Guides
Scholarly Communication: Open Access Scholarship.
References
Open Access Network. 2026. Green, Gold, and Diamond Open Access. October 8th. https://open-access.network/en/information/open-access-primers/green-and-gold
Research Thread. 2026. Journal Publication Cost: A Complete Breakdown for Researchers. July 13th. https://researchthread.com/blog/journal-publication-cost
Research Thread, 2026. Understanding Article Processing Charges for Academic Publication. July 3rd. https://researchthread.com/blog/en/article-processing-charges