International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA)

Background: The International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA) was founded in 1951 to foster cooperation and collaboration among medical students. It represents more than 1.5 million medical students in 123 countries. About 15,000 students annually take part in IFMSA exchange programs to explore health care delivery and health systems in different cultural and social settings.

Mission: IFMSA brings together medical students from around the world to engage in health issues and empower them to influence policies at a regional and global level. Its members have been supportive of the open concept in research and education, actively participating in OpenCon, International Open Access Week and the Open Education Conference.

Who Owns Our Knowledge?

“Knowledge is still closed because you have to pay to access it and people are left behind because they don’t have the funds or the connections. This is especially true for young people, because we're not there yet. We're trying to find our way. At IFMSA, we do a lot of work in sharing knowledge. We build our own tools on how to educate students on specific topics and one of those is open science.”

“I’m glad that Open Access Week tackled this theme. We're reflecting on the idea that knowledge exists - we have AI, we have Google - but at the end of the day, who is controlling this knowledge? Who is in charge of the knowledge?”

“We need to share openly that there are people who don't own the knowledge that they should. They don't have access to it. It should be open and accessible to everyone and not mine or yours or owned by someone else. It should be a public tool.”

“Even using the word ‘owns,’ it makes people think, ‘Oh, it is owned by someone.’ But why is knowledge owned by another person?”

“One of the missions of IFMSA is to share what we're doing, to have research published openly in different languages. We are an organization that is international with so many members from Africa, Asia, Latin America...not all know English. This can also be a barrier for them to access knowledge.”

-Anna Liakopoulou, IFMSA Liaison Officer for Medical Sciences and Research Issues and student at University of Ioannina, School of Medicine in Greece