Reflections on Open Access Publishing: Ethical Challenges in Community-Engaged PhD Research

by Yorgos Paschos, Postgraduate Researcher, Department of Archaeology

This case study reflects on the challenges and tensions I currently encounter while preparing to publish my PhD thesis, funded by the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH) in collaboration with York Music Venue Network, as open access. The research, which explores the subcultural heritage significance of grassroots music venues in Yorkshire and the values that local communities attach to such places, has been shaped from the start by my efforts to critically engage with public audiences and communities beyond academia. Yet, such efforts are interlinked with complex academic and ethical dilemmas concerning AI technologies, which increasingly harvest open content for commercial purposes. This case study reflects on the ways that I am navigating these tensions and outlines how my commitment to open research evolves alongside concerns about digital ownership, consent, and the future of academic labour.

My doctoral research, More Than Just Buildings: Assessing the Subcultural Heritage Significance of Grassroots Music Venues, has investigated the ways that grassroots music venues are experienced, remembered, and valued as sites of living heritage, often in ways that are unconventional and do not meet formal heritage criteria. Using a qualitative methodology,  I examined how collective memory, affective atmospheres, heritage values and DIY cultural practices contribute to the emotional and cultural significance of these spaces for local communities.

The project has always been public-facing at its core as it existed at the nexus of policy, academia and local culture. One key example is the Archive: All Areas exhibition, which I co-curated in York as part of a wider collaboration between academic researchers, venue managers, artists, and local music communities. The exhibition celebrated the heritage of music venues in York,  the artists, organisers and audiences that use them, and questioned how and why we remember them. It included memorabilia from audiences, photographs, and oral histories to commemorate the heritage of music venues in York and aimed to make academic research accessible beyond the university. This openness, collaboration, and care continue to guide how I disseminate my research now that my PhD is complete.

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Archive All Areas exhibition poster (©2025 StreetLife project)

In the weeks after I passed my viva, I started reflecting on the ways I would like to disseminate my research both academically and publicly. Making the full thesis openly accessible seemed the only way forward, continuing the collaborative and community-oriented nature that I had adopted. I wanted the communities who contributed their stories, perceptions, memories and time to be able to access the final output without barriers, especially those outside academia who may not have institutional log-ins or access to paywalled journals. As part of this process, I also plan to deposit the examined thesis in the White Rose eTheses Online (WREO) repository, where it will be openly accessible by default and, if I choose, published under a Creative Commons licence to support broader reuse and visibility.

However, as I began navigating the practicalities of open access publishing, several tensions emerged. While WRoCAH’s support has enabled me to work towards open dissemination, the process has also revealed several limitations and concerns about authorship and the ethics of open research in an environment increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. One major concern is that publicly available academic research is being used to train AI models, often without researchers’ knowledge or consent. This is particularly problematic for a project like mine, grounded in community voices and their embodied affective experiences, as there is the inherent risk that such work could be decontextualised, abstracted, or commodified by technologies designed to automate human expression. Such risk is in direct contrast with the values that underpin my research. What happens, for instance, when large machine learning and language models use open-access academic work to train generative AI systems? How are openness, opacity, consent, trust, transparency, and copyrights understood in an ecosystem where publicly shared writing can be scraped, sampled, and repurposed with no trace or attribution as a form of weird AI simulacrum? 

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As part of recreating the iconic Fulford Arms signature wall, we invited exhibition visitors and local community members to leave their mark, just as bands and musicians do at the original venue.

These are not just abstract, theoretical concerns but rather structural problems that we need to address as members of an academic community. As someone who also engages with AI tools for proofreading and structuring my work, I am well aware of their usefulness. But l also recognise the asymmetry that exists between using AI to proofread a text and the fact that we are feeding AI and unwillingly training it based on our methodological insights, and situated knowledge embedded in academic work. That process feels extractive and exploitative when it occurs without dialogue or permission.

Throughout this process, I remain in conversation with the University of York Library’s Open Research team, both as a researcher and through my role as Open Research Graduate Engagement Lead. Such a perspective offers me a wider view of how researchers across disciplines reflect on questions about attribution, intellectual ownership and the boundaries between public good and exploitative commodification. Publishing my thesis openly is still a priority. But I now approach it with a more critical awareness of the systems in which open research circulates. Finally, I sincerely agree with the N8 statement regarding the need to reform scholarly publishing models. Drawing on insights from the statement, I am reminded that truly equitable open research should both remove paywalls and also challenge the structural inequalities that shape who can publish, what is read, and whose knowledge is valued.

York StreetLife: Archive all Areas

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