As we wrap up Open Access Week 2025 and reflect on this year’s theme, who owns knowledge?, one concern keeps coming up: what happens to research after it is published. A 2024 study examining more than seven million digital articles found that more than one quarter of scholarly publications are not being properly archived or preserved for the long term. In other words, millions of research outputs — including openly available articles — are at real risk of disappearing from the record because our preservation systems have not kept pace with the volume of scholarship being created. If access can vanish, then “open” is not enough. The question is not only who can read knowledge today, but whether that knowledge will still exist tomorrow.
Preservation is power. The research created at the University of Victoria deserves to be readable, citable, and still accessible years from now. It should not be locked behind a publisher paywall, stuck on a grad student’s USB, or lost the next time a departmental site gets redesigned. UVicSpace is how we prevent that loss.
UVicSpace is the University of Victoria’s open access research repository, managed by UVic Libraries. Its purpose is to preserve and share work created at UVic so that it remains accessible to readers here on campus and around the world. We prioritize publications from UVic authors, along with graduate theses, dissertations, and master’s projects, and we also support select research centres and labs. This work has deep roots at UVic. In 2004, librarians proposed using an open source repository to preserve and share UVic theses, a pilot that became the foundation for UVicSpace.
When UVic authors deposit their work in UVicSpace, that work becomes easier to find, easier to cite, and easier to keep. Items in UVicSpace receive a stable link that is maintained by the library, rather than living on a personal site or in a shared drive that might later disappear. Making research available through the repository also supports open access requirements from departments and funders, without additional cost to the author. This helps ensure that work produced at UVic can continue to be accessed and read by the communities, students, and researchers who rely on it, and not only by those who have subscription access to commercial platforms.
UVicSpace remains a core part of how UVic Libraries supports long term access and preservation to scholarship. Graduate research, faculty publications, and work produced by UVic labs and centres are part of the university’s scholarly record, and we are committed to maintaining that record so it can continue to inform teaching, policy, public engagement, and future research and scholarly activity.
Open Access Week asked, who owns knowledge? Our answer is that knowledge created here should remain available here, and it should remain available to the public. If you are a UVic author and would like to deposit your work, or if you would like support with the process, please contact the Scholarly Communications team at scholcom@uvic.ca, or visit UVicSpace to get started.
