Defending Academic Freedom in an Age of Censorship: Why Open Access Matters More Than Ever

By the OBP team

The recent wave of government censorship in America under the Trump administration has sent a chilling message to US scholars, librarians, universities and publishers alike: the freedom and stability we often take for granted in order to undertake and publish research is not guaranteed. As publishers committed to open access (OA), the suppression, distortion, and erasure of research is antithetical to our core mission: to share rigorous academic work freely. This is why we have signed the Declaration to Defend Research Against U.S. Government Censorship, and we urge others to do the same.

The assault on academic freedom is not a hypothetical risk; it is happening now. Government agencies have restricted the terminology that can be used in government-funded research, frozen funding for politically ‘sensitive’ topics, and removed publicly available data from official sources. Researchers have been targeted for pursuing knowledge that challenges political narratives, while universities have been threatened with the removal of funding in order to coerce their obedience to the administration’s will. In response to these actions by the American government, we have even seen attempts by scholarly societies to censor published research without informing the author. These acts do not merely impact the individuals and institutions directly involved; they strike at the very heart of scholarly integrity and global knowledge production.

We believe that OA publishing is crucial because it is an act of resistance against censorship and control. When knowledge is published OA, it can be accessed and shared in many places with no restriction – making it much more difficult to smother once published. When knowledge is openly available, it cannot be erased.

At OBP, we do not limit research to a single proprietary platform. We distribute widely and openly, ensuring that scholarship is available across multiple external repositories, platforms, and archives, freely available to download and share. This decentralization means that if one source is lost or modified, the research remains available elsewhere, safeguarding it for future generations. It ensures that authors' hard work will not disappear due to political pressure or institutional instability. By publishing OA, authors have confidence that their contributions to knowledge will persist, no matter the challenges ahead.

Arguments for the benefits of OA often focus on the reader: the reader’s access is not inhibited by a paywall or a price for a physical copy that is too expensive to afford. But OA can also liberate and protect the author, ensuring global reach for their work, and safeguarding it from erasure under political or institutional pressure. However, for the freedom to publish and preserve one’s research to be meaningful, it must not be dependent on the author’s ability to pay a fee.  This is why we use a Diamond OA model that does not charge authors, and support other publishers in developing the same via our work on Copim’s infrastructures.

OA is often perceived as a risk: can a publisher risk shifting to an OA model; can libraries have confidence that their OA investments are worthwhile or that an OA initiative is ‘sustainable’; can authors take the risk of publishing with a less well-known Diamond OA press? But in a world where old certainties are crumbling – where censorship, platform instability and political interference pose real threats – OA offers something traditional publishing cannot: resilience. Once knowledge is openly available, it cannot easily be silenced. In this light, OA is not a gamble: it is a safeguard.

Open Book Publishers stands unequivocally against threats to academic freedom. We will continue to support researchers in sharing their work freely, without fear of suppression. We urge our colleagues to recognize the urgency of this moment and join us in this commitment.

What do our authors say? We share here a post from Ash Lierman, author of The Struggle You Can’t See: Experiences of Neurodivergent and Invisibly Disabled Students in Higher Education, who writes from their perspective as a US-based researcher, author and librarian, and as a disabled and transgender person. Read Ash’s post.

Sign the Declaration to Defend Research Against U.S. Government Censorship here. Use the hashtag #DefendResearch to spread the word.