As in previous years, a number of Swiss universities and libraries have joined forces to put together a wide-ranging programme of online, hybrid and local events in different formats for the OA-Week in Switzerland this year.
“The cost of knowledge” – this year’s Open Access Week motto asks why publishing publicly funded research still costs so much, and who benefits.
Björn Brembs will argue that today’s journal system is structurally broken: a handful of publishers extract far more from public budgets than the service justifies, starving the infrastructure that reliable, reproducible research actually needs. Thus, the research system faces not only a replicability crisis but also an affordability crisis and a functionality crisis.
Drawing on his paper “Replacing academic journals” he will sketch what a leaner, community-owned alternative could look like.
Björn Brembs is Professor of Neurogenetics at the University of Regensburg, Germany, and an advocate for reforming scholarly publishing for many years.
Date: Wednesday, 21 Oct 2026
Time: 15:30 - 16:30
Venue: Eawag, Forum Chriesbach, FC-D 24 or online via Teams