The philosophy of open access has an important role in the academic publishing world, as it wants to make access to scientific information less restricted to researchers. The reality of it is,...Show moreThe philosophy of open access has an important role in the academic publishing world, as it wants to make access to scientific information less restricted to researchers. The reality of it is, however, more complicated than it seems. The first step is to accept that we are not dealing with a single academic publishing field but with a number of different ones. Each field is highly influenced by the environments in which it emerged. This thesis wants to present two different approaches to the idea of open access to science, and how these approaches were influenced by their regional environments. The two regions analysed in this thesis are Latin America and the Global North. Even though open access has a global character, being part of an international establishment such as academic publishing, the two regions present a diverse development of the idea of open access. These were influenced by the different social, technological and historical environments that the two regions displayed when the ideas of open access were emerging. After presenting a general picture of how the publishing process works and the role of its agents, I analyse the reasons for the use of open access in the two regions and create two timelines portraying the main events, infrastructure, initiatives and regulations that took place and that shaped the two approaches in use today. These two approaches of open access developed at different tempos and they were driven by contrasting motivations. The relationship that the Global North and Latin America have as academic circuits is, however, responsible for the flow of interaction between the two connotations and implementations of open access. In this thesis, I argue that the uneven power dynamics between the two approaches of open access have been influenced by a historical relation between the two regions through a core-periphery perspective. This has created an asymmetrical flow of influences moving from one region to the other, and vice versa. After presenting how these convergences of interactions are experienced on a practical level by researchers and academics, I conclude by suggesting that the discussion should not be about an open access connotation prevailing over the other, but rather about initiating a dialogue and starting a conversation between the two approaches and accepting both perspectives as legitimate and valuable.Show less