The act to make public: Reflecting on COPIM 2026
Summary
My reflections on the COPIM 2026 conference. The conference included presenters from the UK and USA, with discussions about open access publishing infrastructure, peer reviewing, embedding open access cultures, and how to get started with open access publishing.
On Thursday 26th and Friday 27th of February 2026 I have the privilege of attending the COPIM 2026 conference online.
Copim is a community of people and organisations who collaborate on community-led and values driven initiatives, which help to support open access authors, publishers and readers.
I found myself at this conference, after leading on a project to investigate how my Graphic Design Service can collaborate with our OER service to publish open-access textbooks (and other learning & teaching materials). This project has been my first foray into the world of open publishing, and it has brought me to so many interesting places. Open-access knowlege has forced me to reflect on the value we put on knowlege – is it economic? is it social? is it moral?
COPIM 2026 was an opportunity for me to listen to expert professionals working on open access publishing projects across the higher education sector. Some of my favourite ideas from this conference:
- Publishing is the act of making public and so the open access publishing movement reclaims publishing from a commercial enterprise which is sucking value from academic spaces
- Don’t get bogged down in the paperwork, and trying to define best practice; start something, and see how it goes
- Open access publishing should be a community phenomenon; start small and local
- Network and share resources; work with people
- Educate authors about open practice; embed open-knowlege approaches into business-as-usual work
I was emboldened when many of the presenters talked about publishing approximately 6 texts a year – this is not much more than the few prototypes my team have been working. For many, the small and local approach has allowed publishers to be responsive to the needs of their authors and their readers. While managing a service at scale is important to support a whole university organisation, we need to make sure that scaling up does not diminish the inital goal of disseminating open access information.
I am very excited to see where our open textbook publishing project leads in 2026.
