Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 15 October 2025 (IUCN) – Over 1,500 historical IUCN publications are now available online, following a three-year grant from Arcadia. The project has enabled the creation of IUCN’s Open Access Policy and upgrades to the IUCN Library, cementing the Union’s commitment to open access conservation knowledge. The project has enabled the creation of IUCN’s Open Access Policy and upgrades to the IUCN Library, cementing the Union’s commitment to open access conservation knowledge.
“The digitisation of thousands of pages of historical documents has transformed our access to knowledge about our past, ensuring that decades of learning, growth and transformation are perpetually stored in the IUCN Library and made easily available to the Union and beyond,” said Dr Jon Paul Rodriguez, Chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC).
In 2021, IUCN was the recipient of a 3-year grant from Arcadia—a family philanthropy—enabling IUCN to promote and improve researchers’ open access to high-quality conservation knowledge. Specifically, the grant aimed to support IUCN in advancing and promoting principles of open access through scholarly communications amongst IUCN’s membership and expert network. Since the grant was awarded, it has allowed IUCN to digitise its back catalogue of publications and to develop an open access policy.
In total, the grant has allowed more than 115,000 pages across 1,540 unique titles of historical IUCN publications, including all previous issues of Species and of IUCN’s Members’ magazine going back to 1948. Beyond this, an additional 167 publications were made available to the public through the IUCN Library System.
In addition to the works uploaded, IUCN has upgraded the user experience and functionality of the publications search of the IUCN Library System, allowing users to locate publications by filtering by online and physical availability, by IUCN subcollection, and the publishing entity.
Furthermore, the grant enabled development and approval of the IUCN Open Access Policy for Publications, approved by the IUCN Executive Board in October 2024, leading to the adoption of CC-BY-NC licenses for all publications published under IUCN copyright since then, such as Enhancing climate change mitigation in protected areas. Building on this success, IUCN worked with its journal editors to improve the quality of journal articles to a level where they can be accepted into the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), specifically PARKS, Gajah, and Edentata (now Xenarthra).
In total, IUCN reached hundreds of conservation professionals on open access and other scholarly communication topics through 20 dedicated information sessions and panels, with 832 total attendees present across all sessions. These events included: a hybrid panel event at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in September 2021; organising programming for IUCN’s first-ever participation in International Open Access Weeks in 2022, 2023, and 2024; and organising six other information sessions for IUCN constituencies. Recordings can be accessed through Vimeo.
All of these efforts have contributed towards IUCN’s goal to improve the availability of, quality of, and access to conservation literature online, as well as to ultimately secure the scientific integrity and impact of nature conservation efforts.
Arcadia helps people to record cultural heritage, to conserve and restore nature, and to promote open access to knowledge. Since 2002 Arcadia has awarded more than $1.3 billion* to organisations around the world.