Open Access as Social Practice

This paper examines the growing movement towards open access (OA) in research, emphasizing its role in democratizing knowledge amid rising misinformation. Despite OA’s benefits, disparities in access remain across disciplines and economic contexts. Focusing on applied linguists, we investigate how OA as a media practice intersects with social hierarchies and access barriers through a questionnaire survey. Our findings indicate that while OA improves access for readers, it may also reinforce inequalities among authors. We situate our analysis within broader discussions on the reconfiguration of public space and Jacques Rancière’s “distribution of the sensible”, and advocate for evolving OA frameworks to ensure equitable knowledge dissemination in the humanities and social sciences.