Header There are many systemic problems in academia. Click here to see our vision for resolving them.

Rationale We believe that collective action could be a powerful tool in addressing systemic problems in academia, from the ‘publish-or-perish’ culture to poor employment conditions and associated mental health problems. Many of these problems exist because researchers keep ‘playing the game’, rather than unifying around new rules that we want to play by. There is plenty of money in the system (just look at the $25b we spend on publishing every year), which could otherwise go toward easing competition with more jobs, but retaining that money within the research sector will require collective action.

Our initial target is scholarly publishing, as the low-hanging fruit, but long-term we expect Free Our Knowledge to evolve into a ‘marketplace of ideas’, where distributed communities of researchers self-organise to address problems in academia. To achieve this, we’re developing the platform to host any number of campaigns, created by you – the research community. Some of the campaigns we’re planning include:

• Registered Reports (in collaboration with the Center for Open Science)

• Open Peer Review (in collaboration with Transpose)

• Rapid PREreview (in collaboration with PREreview)

• Preprints (in collaboration with ASAPbio)

Following beta development, you’ll be able to create and drive your own campaigns (just like Kickstarter). In the meantime, get in touch if you’re interested in collaborating on any of the above campaigns, or another that interests you. And make sure to register on the platform so we can keep you informed as the project progresses!

Criteria New campaigns will be vetted to ensure that they advance open science principles and serve the needs of researchers. Beyond that, you will be able to create any campaign that serves you and your community. (ignore the pledge button below, this is just a dummy campaign :))