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Abstract
In this article, I propose exploring open access publishing through the lenses of Knowledge Commons. Instead of focusing on users’ rights to access and reuse the output under open copyright licensing conditions, I study the governance of the academic publishing ecosystem, and its political economy, technical and labour infrastructure. Based on selected examples, I discuss how they comply with the concept of the commons.I use analytical frameworks from the Ostromian literature of the governance of Knowledge Commons to provide insights on the various steps of academic publishing work as a process. I then analyse a scope of open access publishing projects, including gold, green, diamond, platinum and pirate libraries. Finally, I draw from practices a repertoire of advocacy actions and I make recommendations for academics to develop policies supporting Academic Commons. 
Highlights
A large portion of academic journals can be accessed only through paywalls
I consider only the final resource produced and published. Another understanding of academic knowledge commons could be the development of a research community, a collective involving researchers’ and citizens’ contributions to a scientific project to produce knowledge around a certain topic or area in to a repository, but this is not the type of academic commons studied in this article
The first degree of open access pertains to the legal affordances of academic resources, which can be made available under Creative Commons licenses, allowing the means to segment copyright ownership and offer to the public various levels of use, from only reading to reusing in commercial training, translating and reselling, or mining for research purposes
Summary
I propose exploring open access academic publishing through the lenses of Knowledge Commons. I discuss how they comply with the concept of the commons. I use analytical frameworks from the Ostromian literature of the governance of Knowledge Commons to provide insights on the various steps of academic publishing work as a process. I analyse a range of open access publishing projects, including gold, green, diamond, platinum and pirate libraries. I draw from practices a repertoire of advocacy actions and I make recommendations for academics to develop policies supporting Academic Commons
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