Who owns our knowledge? Reflections from UKSG 2025
Earlier this year I attended the UKSG Conference in Brighton, a key event for those of us working in scholarly communication and open research. This annual event brings together librarians and other HEI professionals, publishers, and intermediaries. This year’s Open Access Week theme, ‘Who owns our knowledge?’ echoes many conference discussions about systems, trust, and culture. The strongest sessions weren’t about policy or tools but people – how systems either enable or exhaust us, and how change starts with empathy.
Agency and systems
Agency depends on how systems shape choice. Navigating AI Futures explored how AI is reshaping academia. The focus was not only on efficiency but on keeping human agency as infrastructures evolve. If AI becomes a co-author that could signal ownership starting to shift from humans to systems.
In Doing DORA – Research Culture and Integrity, a small-scale project used outreach funding to build research culture and integrity. Success came through planning and empowerment, not scale. The message was there is no single fix, just repeated, connected efforts.
Empowering Neurodivergent Staff, Learners, and Researchers added the human dimension. Barriers such as noise and light pollution, and architectural design can block access. Peer learning and empathy-based training showed the potential for more compassionate systems that let everyone exercise agency – another form of ownership.
Trust and adaptability
Trust makes change possible, and adaptability helps make it sustainable. Cybersecurity in Academic Libraries described responses to catalogue intrusions and distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. Libraries have an important role mediating between IT and academia, balancing openness with protection. Even in open research, some data must stay closed.
Doing DORA reminded us that changing culture is slow. Research populations change; lessons are lost and relearned. Progress means valuing small, incremental wins.
In Navigating AI Futures, adaptability was a constant. Universities now face AI use in teaching and research while publishers test restrictive clauses in Read and Publish deals. The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) statement highlighted by Jisc warned against clauses that “restrict user actions in ways that are unenforceable.” Ownership here is ethical as much as legal – research and repositories are already used in training AI models, often without agreement.
Culture and participation
Culture is what turns open research from policy into practice. The Hidden REF and Embedding Trust in Evaluation challenge how we value work in research support that happens behind the scenes. The 2024 award-winning Open Research Scotland Group, shows how shared practice and inclusion builds culture as much as funder policy does.
PALOMERA and Open Access Books showed collective funding and policy alignment in action while Think. Check. Submit. tools help researchers improve their practice choosing trusted publishers and retaining their rights.
Supporting PGRs in Scholarly Communications showed that open research training still misses many students. Short, on-demand content and closer links to doctoral schools could help. Early participation builds ownership and understanding.
Reflection
Across AI, research integrity, and inclusion, knowledge ownership looked less like possession and more like stewardship. Libraries sit at the intersection of policy, people, and infrastructure – keeping openness workable and humane.
Open research isn’t defined by where we publish but by how we build culture: sharing credit, widening access, and sustaining trust.