I had walked the mile from my home to the rally thinking about a call with colleagues the day before where we had talked about the ways in which our campuses were promoting Open Access Week, which was founded in 2009.  Open Access describes scholarly literature that is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and reuse restrictions (Suber). My collaborators and I had talked about the challenges of making open access compelling to scholars, particularly scholars who have already succeeded in a world of proprietary, often expensive, access to the scholarly record. Those scholars aren’t necessarily motivated to openly share their work when they have succeeded while allowing commercial publishers to keep it close to the vest.

Political protest and open access were tugging my attention in different directions that day. Until I saw the Save Our Science signs, the connection hadn’t clicked.

In the United States, science is under threat in many ways. The political administration is actively seeking to eliminate federal funding for scientific research or to only grant that funding to those who advance its agenda. On February 12, 2026, President Trump announced that he was erasing bedrock scientific findings that greenhouse gases endanger the environment, with significant consequences for human health and safety, findings that were supported by decades of research. Science is ignored and attacked when it doesn’t serve the needs of those in political power. Inconvenient truths indeed. At the same time, the scholarly record is often behind high walls of expensive subscription and licensing models, making it inaccessible to ordinary people and to scholars at small and under-resourced institutions.

When I saw the SOS signs, I thought about how difficult it is to protect something we can’t see, how difficult it is to convince people of the value of something that they can’t use.

Proprietary and profitable scholarly publishing has been providing access to the scholarly record for centuries. For those that can afford it or use a library that can. Academic publishing is estimated to be a more than $25 billion dollar per year business, with a small number of companies-some publicly traded-generating substantial revenue by locking up a significant share of the market. These paywalls make it difficult for ordinary people to find and use information at important moments of personal and professional need. They also make it difficult for working scholars to find and make use of scientific research results that can inform and extend their own work. Building upon research foundations that others have laid is a vital part of the scientific process. Science needs science.

And we need science. We need it for the benefit of the economy, of society and of individuals. The more people who have access to the scholarly record, the more scholarship will be produced. Open access to the scholarly record promotes its use and reuse. Scholars build upon the work of other scholars.  Science gives rise to science.

Open Access Week is a good start. My research colleagues and I, along with our institutions, do our part to promote it each year and should continue to do so. But we can’t stop there.

To continue to develop and to make contributions independent of political and commercial interests, science needs to be shared. It needs to be used. Open access to scholarly literature contributes that literature to an intellectual commons that we can all benefit from and that we can all care for. That is one way to save our science.