By Tila Cappelletto, Catalina Olivas, PhD., jeanna purses
(Knowledge Equity & Open Scholarship Week 2026 – Co-creation Experiment Group)
“How can we bridge the opens?”
Since the 1990s, the World Wide Web, brainchild of Tim Berners-Lee, and the mid-’90s rollout of fiber optic cables have made it possible for the internet of today (Internet Society, n.d.). Since the internet has been operational and more and more widespread for 30+ years, during which considerable growth and development from the earliest days has and continues to occur, a more appropriate version of the question How can we bridge the opens? may be better stated as Why haven’t the opens, as of yet, been pervasive within a thriving ecosystem of accessibility throughout global society?
The past decades and the continuing fragmented nature of open scholarship has shown us that there is gross resistance to a bridged and flourishing open landscape, especially by the traditional knowledge producers and sharers as found in such communities like higher education. We want to be provocative in asking about these resistances in open scholarship. Only by acknowledging the resistance, understanding it fully, and working to enhance and amplify open scholarship do we see a path to greater connection through open scholarship—the path by which it can be its own bridge.
Two of the biggest blockers are cultural mindset and structural systems, and both are pervasive and have been hampering open scholarship. The overarching interconnectedness of an open ecosystem can only be attained with major shifts in our cultural and information landscapes and perspectives.
Mired in a Western, individualistic, and capitalistic mindset and system, we have a hard time grappling with the critical things that will make the open approach become the default approach, as well as the approach that is primary, thriving, and pervasive. Below are tenets to focus on in order to begin to establish the thinking that will bridge the opens and make them the core of our information environment.
- Knowledge must be recognised as a common good
- Every social group and culture has knowledge to offer to enrich our world, systems, and information ecosystem.
- Each culture’s language(s) should be respected and included for maximum global access and richness.
- Each contributor and each user within the knowledge and information landscape must accept their part humbly and aspirationally in the collective struggle to attain and disseminate knowledge that improves lives and communities.
- The acts of co-creation and collaboration are integral in proliferation and in helping us counterbalance bias and exclusion.
- We must use systems and institutions to give back to both smaller and greater communities.
- Self-actualization and community-actualization depend on the health of the knowledge and information ecosystem and its accessibility.
- A thriving knowledge ecosystem is bedrocked in justice, access, multi-ownership, and sustainability.
3 Ways to Bridge the Opens on a Local Level
In order to bridge the opens and start to interact in scholarly conversation (ALA, n.d.) more pervasively throughout open scholarship, it is necessary to boost their utilization by contributing back to our communities through open methods. In Higher Education (HE), the focus is often inward instead of outward. The faculty and their students must begin through open pedagogy to enhance the educational experience and to encourage production in the open mindset to offer findings back to our communities.
- Co-creation must be used as a means to include students in the creation of knowledge so as to access their talents and further their learning while combatting bias and elitism by the inclusion of many voices. Including students in co-creation is education itself for both faculty and students, but the practice also becomes educational more broadly when also shared with those outside classrooms.
- Co-creation must take place on open platforms so the knowledge is accessed, not just by local communities, but by a global one.
- Platforms that make multilingualism a natural fact must be prioritized. Language justice matters because language determines access to, participation in, and benefit from knowledge. Privileging a few dominant languages excludes many people from the knowledge ecosystem. As an example, there are more than 300 language Wikipedias. There, information can be easily translated from one language to another, but knowledge is also locally and independently created by different linguistic volunteer communities.
To fulfill these ways, we would like to suggest that the Open Knowledge Network (OKN) should be one aggregating and promoting best practices and lessons learned in HE. The OKN has built up its network to groups in more than 40 countries and can offer a repository for connecting global initiatives, as well as offering a blueprint for future initiatives. Their directory of specialists helps to connect people worldwide (OKN, n.d.).
Another important model as we move forward is the Action Plan by the Commission to implement the ten commitments of the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment (ARRA). This document clearly outlines a path forward to prioritize review, evaluation, communication and awareness, and exchange practices. A blueprint of action will help policy-makers find a path and bring their institutions to that path (CARA, n.d.).
Conclusions and Vision
We feel discouraged to see that although the Internet is already about 35 years old, open and accessible systems and materials are not being pervasively adopted and promoted and thus are not having the transformative social impact they could. That we are still asking a question about bridging opens that are already connectible and connected is a damper on the ignition of our passion for open scholarship. In our point of view, it requires will and action to promote their impact. But first, we all must agree that:
- Knowledge should not be treated as private capital. A thriving open ecosystem exposes knowledge to the breath of life and the power that its circulation and reinvention generates.
- Open systems and approaches exist and should be adopted now to share, spread, experiment, mandate, report, and ameliorate within an ecosystem that is already fully functioning in the internet and World Wide Web. Leaders’ plans and policy must be tailored to this purpose.
- Knowledge should remain a human creation; machines depend on it, and their purpose should be to serve humans.
Overarching policy throughout institutions can guide our movement down the path to fully open scholarship. Small actions of each member/part of the ecosystem will build upon themselves to make the ecosystem thrive. How do we teach? Through open pedagogy. Which platform do we use? Established Wiki resources and OER Commons and open sites. How do we contribute to the community, greater or smaller? By contributing knowledge to open platforms accessible by global and local communities. Why do we want to? Because change is already here in the guise of machine-created and thus unreliable and unsourced AI material, which was gleaned from OA materials to begin with! We must protect transparency and human domain over our own knowledge landscape. Human domain must be shared across the globe in order to remain inclusive and ever-expanding.
This is open mindset and right action. These are the drivers of change. We are connected, we merely need see ourselves as part of the greater ecosystem that we should all be contributing to and thriving within.
References
American Library Association (ALA). (n.d.). Framework for information literacy for higher education. Retrieved April 20, 2026, from https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework
Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CARA). (2024, April). Action plan by the commission to implement the ten commitments of the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment (ARRA). https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/document/download/e69aff11-4494-4e5f-866c-694 539a3ea26_en?filename=ec_rtd_commitments-reform-research-assessment.pdf
Internet Society. (n.d.). A brief history of the internet. Retrieved May 9, 2026, from https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet/
Mbembe A. (2023). The paths of tomorrow: Contribution to thinking commensurate with the planet. ED-2023/WP-32/2. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000387026_eng
Open Knowledge for a Fair, Sustainable and Open Future (OKN). (n.d.). We are a crowd. https://okfn.org/en/network/#projects
SPARC*Europe. (n.d.). The case for connecting the opens. Retrieved April 20, 2026, from https://sparceurope.org/the-case-for-connecting-the-opens/
Tikly, L. (2025). Transforming Knowledge and Research for Just and Sustainable Futures: Implications for Higher Education Policy and Practice. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 19(2), 259–273. https://10.1177/09734082251336558
Notes
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