Access to science is a fundamental human right, and yet, much of that public good is inaccessible because of paywalls and limited in its reuse because of restrictive copyright licenses. The CC licenses are an essential part of open science infrastructure and provide a legal tool for sharing, reusing, innovating, and further benefiting from publicly-funded scientific research that belongs to all of us. 

For more than 20 years, research outputs such as journal articles, books, conference proceedings, theses, and more have been made available through the application of a CC license. CC licenses are embedded into the workflows of scholarly publishers and academic librarians in ways that have dramatically increased the discoverability and usability of research outputs by other researchers and the general public, including journalists, policy makers, activists, and curious individuals. Increased access to knowledge is enabled through open science practices and policies which are empowered by CC licenses. 

As we wrap up a year of global elections, increasing global warming, enduring the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, while ensuring innovation and discovery to address the next, all while navigating sharing in an age of COVID-19, nothing seems more important than ensuring open access to research. It is for that reason that we are proud to share some highlights of our open science initiatives at CC in 2024 and share our plans and priorities for open science and the role of CC licenses in the coming years. 

Advances in Open Climate

Open access  is a necessary condition to solving the climate crisis. Not only is the  knowledge about our understanding of climate change and its impacts contained in research outputs but so are the solutions to climate change. At CC we want to enable access to these research outputs to help address the climate crisis. CC is well positioned to leverage our expertise in the open access, data and licences to help  researchers, librarians, consortia, policy makers, and other stakeholders in scholarly communication open research outputs. Opening up climate change research and data is climate action.

Open Climate Data Project

Generously funded by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, this project is  facilitating better sharing of climate data with CC licensing, metadata, and database user-interface practices.  CC published Recommendations for Better Sharing of Climate Data, a seminal resource to help national and intergovernmental climate data-producing agencies use legal terms, licenses, and metadata values that ensure climate data is accessible, shareable, and reusable. Our goal is to share strategies and provide resources that enable interconnected and interoperable climate data to be used to find faster solutions to mitigating the climate crisis. The Recommendations are available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. CC is also working with some of the largest producers of climate data including the GEO (Group on Earth Observations) to guide and  implement these recommendations. 

The Open Climate Campaign

This year is also the last year of the Open Climate Campaign, a joint initiative between CC, SPARC, and EIFL, funded by Arcadia. The Campaign, which ran for two years made a significant impact in raising awareness about the lack of access to climate research and unveiled how essential open science and open climate is if we are to find faster, more equitable solutions to address the climate crisis. By bringing together a network of endorsers and galvanizing the academic library community, the Open Climate Campaign launched, or supported the launch of,  proactive and lasting initiatives to increase access to climate research. Read more about some of the successful projects from the Campaign that are continuing at CC below.

The Paper Pledge for the Planet: Open repositories can be a tool for climate action. This year CC launched an initiative encouraging authors to upload a version of your work, as agreed within the terms of your publishing agreement, to an open repository. Authors can check at Share Your Paper what version you can upload and even directly email the permitted version right on the same website. We are also partnering with the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) and EIFL for direct outreach to researchers through academic and national institutions.  

Unbinding: About 40% of papers cited in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report are behind a paywall. That means that some of the world’s most important research on climate change is inaccessible. We are directly appealing to publishers to open up the papers. As partners CC will provide the data and information about this key literature and celebrate publishers participation and contribution to addressing climate change. 

Taking action to increase the availability of access to climate research is collective climate action. The more we can collectively work together to ensure that all climate research is available as open access as the default, the more we will collectively be able to do to address the climate crisis.  We are actively seeking partnerships and funding to continue this work. If this resonates, please reach out. 

Supporting Policy Development to Advance Open Science

CC actively develops and contributes to open science and access policies with funders, institutions, national governments and international bodies. This year we worked with over 10 countries developing, consulting and aiding in the implementation of open access policies including Morocco who recently announced their national strategy for open educational resources and open science. 

Increasing the Accessibility and Reusability of Preprints

CC and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are collaborating to promote the use of the CC BY 4.0 license on preprints (otherwise known as the versions of research manuscripts that are published before undergoing formal peer review). Openly licensing preprints enables researchers and readers to benefit from rapid dissemination, rigorous review, and equitable contribution to scientific knowledge that doesn’t require paid access to exclusive research journals. As part of our Open Preprints project, we develop and share practical licensing guidance for researchers in the life sciences, as well as make policy recommendations for funders and preprint servers.

We meet regularly withorks with arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and Research Square, and other preprint servers to help streamline their open licensing practices in standard alignment with each other. We’re also engaging funders of open science to develop model policies aimed at increasing the adoption of CC BY licenses on preprints and ensure that grant-funded research outputs are accessible, adaptable, and aligned with the growing demand for transparency and collaboration in scientific communication. This  year CC developed a series of resources to help preprint authors, librarians, preprint servers, and others in the scholarly communication space adopt CC By licences for preprints. 

• Why Use the CC BY License for Preprints? 
• How the CC BY License for Preprints Impacts Journal Publication
• Webinar: How to Choose a License to Amplify the Impact of your Preprint – hosted by arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and Creative Commons 

Coming up in 2025

We look forward to engaging and connecting with researchers, funders, data organizations, preprint servers, and other stakeholders through our workshops, events and projects in 2025. You can find out more information about how to get involved in our work on CC’s new Open Science website. You can also join one of our upcoming Open Climate Community Calls in partnership with the Open Environmental Data Project or join our Open Goes COP Collation working to raise awareness of open at the UNFCC’s Conference of the Parties.   

Contact us at info@creativecommons.org for more information or to work with us.