The week of 22–28 October is the International Open Access Week (#OAweek), which Zendy and Knowledge E will celebrate with you by highlighting different Open Access initiatives and perspectives.

Open Access has stepwise gained significance and momentum since its inception in the 1990s as a model for publishing research findings in a barrier-free way. Over the last few years, Open Access has been accelerated by global government initiatives to increase public accessibility to publicly funded research. The European Commission is pursuing an ambitious plan to move publicly funded research into a culture of Open Science as laid out in several initiatives, for example, as part of the Work Programme ‘Science with and for Society’ of Horizon 2020, and the lately taken ground-breaking step through ‘Plan S’.

However, the Open Access initiatives don’t stop at Europe’s borders, and the benefits to openly accessible data to stimulate collaboration and discovery are globally known, and perhaps most felt in developing countries where paid content commonly is not affordable to institutions.

Several scholarly, diamond Open Access journals and over 1,500 conference papers are now available on Knowledge E’s ‘KnE Publishing Platform’, which is a significant contribution to the developing countries’ knowledge infrastructure, and is benefitting the academic community worldwide by ensuring visibility of regional findings.

This month, Knowledge E has gone a step further in democratising access to knowledge by announcing the beta release of Zendy with the aim to provide academic literature at your fingertips. Zendy already provides access to an impressive 20,000 peer-reviewed journals and over 100 million publication records available as Open Access.

The beta-release almost coincides with the International Open Access Week, a reminder of the importance of free-for-all data of high value. The Open Access Week initiative offers a video archive, which gives glimpses into the merits of Open Access globally: www.openaccessweek.org/video

Knowledge E celebrates the International Open Access Week through daily social media feeds showcasing the company’s Open Access initiatives through a prism of vantage points.