XploreOpen Celebrates Open Access Week 2025
November 14–15, 2025 | Global Theme: Equity, Openness & Inclusion - Open Infrastructures

UCLA Library will present initial findings from its Open Books Pilot, a project designed to restore copyright ownership to UCLA faculty for selected monograph publications. Supported by a 2023 grant from the Arcadia Fund, the pilot facilitates the re-acquisition of rights from publishers. This enables faculty to regain control over their intellectual property and makes the titles available open access.

Through Creative Commons licensing and deposit in the UC eScholarship repository, the program ensures long-term preservation and global access to faculty scholarship. This initiative aligns with Arcadia’s mission to promote open access and the free exchange of knowledge.

We will discuss how the pilot is a win-win for all participants. Join us to learn how this model empowers faculty authors, institutions and publishers, and how it contributes to a more open and equitable scholarly publishing ecosystem.

Presented by Rina Pantalony and Jennifer Chan

Disappearing data! Unreadable ancient files! Ordinary researchers losing hours of their time trapped in data nightmares! This Halloween week, join UNM HSLIC's Research Data Specialist for an hour of spine-tingling, hair-raising data horror stories...and some advice to prevent them from happening to you. Feel free to lurk or bring some data horror stories of your own to share. Beware: This session is not for the faint of heart.

This session explores how open-science practices and data-integrated publishing can strengthen reproducible research in Pakistan. Based on the Conduct Science flagship presentation, it will highlight open instrumentation, FAIR data workflows, and metadata standards that can make regional research more interoperable and transparent.

What is "open source"? In reality, answering to this question is extremely complex, this concept is even a source of conflict in its interpretation. Usually associated with software, we could be at the dawn of a paradigm shift in the very meaning of this concept which could extend beyond software which could encompass various typologies of digital resources.

This will be a discussion about the idea of open source resources, this (open) resources where source files are provided to enable truly their modification (ex: odt/docx/latex files of a pdf). Open licenses provide the right to modify without the ability to do so, open source resources is probably the missing step in open science.

Come to this exchange to try to understand "open source" together!

Initiative related to a citizen research project on the meaning of open source with the intent to build a collaborative open science and open education project (https://open-source-undefined.org/).

Open science is transforming how we share knowledge, data, and discoveries. This webinar introduces the core principles of open and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data for early-career researchers and medical students. Learn how transparency, collaboration, and smart data management can make your research reproducible and impactful across disciplines.

We’ll discuss real examples of how open-data ecosystems connect devices, data, and publications to make every discovery traceable and reusable.

Join us to explore how you can be part of a global movement making science more connected, transparent, and fair.

What would happen if Google Scholar were to vanish tomorrow? For many researchers, it has become the default gateway to academic literature, yet its dominance also exposes vulnerabilities in how knowledge is discovered and accessed. This presentation will discuss how the proliferation of open access journals, led by scholars and published out of universities from around the world, is challenging publishing models, reshaping access to knowledge, and redefining the global landscape of scholarly communication. It concludes with a call to strengthen and sustain scholar-led publishing infrastructures—so that access to knowledge is secured by the academic community itself, not left at the mercy of corporate platforms.

Adopting open data practices can improve collaboration, safeguard data, and help researchers get ahead of data sharing requirements from funders and publishers. Data sharing and transparency can benefit science and increase researcher impact. But what does it take to make data genuinely open? This presentation will provide strategies for meaningfully open data, offer choices in data sharing, describe some limitations of openness, and help researchers get a jump start preparing data for openness.

Open scholarship and open education can often feel mystifying—especially from the outside. But even for those working within these practices, common challenges and shared experiences are bound to emerge across institutions.
Approaches to countering the gatekeeping of knowledge manifest in various forms, including library-led initiatives and programming, teaching and learning centres' guidebooks, and collaborations, as well as student union endorsements of open education, open-access university press publishing, and open science working groups. These efforts—led by libraries and librarians, university presses and their dedicated staff, teaching and learning centres and their instructional designers, faculty groups, student unions, and more—might often be united by a common goal: to prioritize community over commercial interests in the pursuit of democratizing knowledge.
This Behind the Scenes hybrid event brings together practitioners from different institutions to share what excites them about a current project, the behind-the-scenes work that makes it possible, and a key challenge they face in their practice!

Join Sarah Lamdan, Deputy Director of ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, for a discussion of her 2022 book, Data Cartels: The Companies that Control and Monopolize Our Information (Stanford University Press). Drawing from her expertise in law and library science, Lamdan explores how a handful of powerful corporations—often better known for legal and academic databases—have transformed public data into private commodities, which raises urgent questions about privacy, surveillance, and access to information in our digital society.

Drop by to learn how to deposit your scholarship in Harvard’s open access repository, DASH! Claire Blechman, Digital Repository Coordinator, will give a brief live demo, explain the benefits of making your research openly available, and answer all your questions.

Join us for a webinar exploring KCWorks, an open repository platform designed to support collaborative creation, sharing, and stewardship of open knowledge. In the spirit of Open Access Week, this session will introduce participants to the features of the Knowledge Commons, demonstrate how KCWorks empowers communities to contribute and curate content, and highlight real-world examples of uploads to the repository. Whether you're an educator, researcher, student, or open education advocate, you'll leave with practical tools and inspiration for contributing to a more open and inclusive knowledge ecosystem.

Who really owns the information we create and use? Join us for Copyright and Licensing – Helping to Understand “Who Owns Information” and explore how copyright, Creative Commons, and open licensing shape access,

Session 1: 8:30am-9:45am EST

Corpus creation from open access repositories and their analysis with semantic tools presented by Ms. Udita Agarwal, Ph.D. student, National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR) and Dr. Renu Kumari, Program Manager #semanticClimate and Ms. Shaik Zainab, Anurag University, Hyderabad. The session will provide an introduction to corpus creation and pygetpapers for literature review. Links to the recording will be available after the session.

They will be showing their complete READER-oriented toolkit. This takes OA material (both academic articles and more generally Open material such as the UN IPCC reports) and automatically turns it into semantic form (no AI contamination at this stage). There are several components, all Open, and managed by Renu, and largely automatic (i.e. their default use can scope a query in the time it takes to download material):

corpus builder
semantic encyclopedia
search
annotation
knowledge graphs
Jupyter notebooks for demonstration and learning

This is highly flexible (written in Python) but designed for use by those without technical knowledge (other than having Python on the machine).

In the evolving landscape of academic research, the principles of Open Science are reshaping how knowledge is created, shared, and governed. This event invites researchers, administrators, and institutional stakeholders to explore a critical question: Who owns our knowledge?
Through a series of focused presentations and interactive activities, we will examine the institutional and practical dimensions of knowledge ownership in the context of Open Science.

Participants will gain insights into:

Open Science Policy.
Practical tools and templates for research data management.
Community-building efforts to support an open research culture.

The lecture focuses on the development of open science and open access in Ukraine in the context of global trends and open science policies. It will explore the concept of open science, the FAIR principles, and key directions for implementing open practices worldwide and in Ukraine. Special attention will be given to the National Repository of Academic Texts — the largest Ukrainian initiative in the field of open access that brings together scientific, educational, and research outputs. Participants will learn about the history, current state, and development prospects of the Repository, as well as its role in enhancing the visibility of Ukrainian science on the international level.
Additionally, the lecture will cover the open science tools available on the official NRAT web portal, including those for open peer review, dissemination of research results, and popularization of scientific achievements as key factors in boosting economic competitiveness and supporting social progress.

This webinar, organized by The Digital Librarian in collaboration with LIBSENSE Nigeria and Upskill & Connect Village seeks to spark conversation around the roles of AI, licensing, data ownership, and institutional practices in knowledge governance. International Open Access Week 2025 runs from October 20 to 26, under the theme “Who Owns Our Knowledge?”, which challenges us to ask who controls knowledge production, access, and dissemination.
We hope to create a platform for academics, librarians, and researchers to reflect, engage, and plan toward reclaiming community control over research outputs and infrastructure.

The 2025 International Open Access Week, themed - 'Who Owns Our Knowledge?', invites reflection on the tension between knowledge as a shared public good and as a commodity controlled by publishers and commercial platforms. For LIBSENSE Early Career Researchers, this question underscores critical issues of equity, integrity, and sustainability in scholarly communication. The roundtable brings together librarians and researchers to explore how Creative Commons (CC) licensing can empower knowledge creators to retain rights, enhance visibility, and promote responsible sharing. By bridging perspectives from both groups, the session seeks to deepen understanding of ownership, licensing, and access in the context of Open Access publishing.

The 90-minute roundtable will include short presentations, reflective discussions, and an open dialogue segment to unpack the theme and explore practical pathways for adopting CC licensing in research practice. Participants will learn about different types of CC licenses, the roles of authors, publishers, and institutions in knowledge ownership, and how librarians can support responsible licensing choices. Expected outcomes include increased awareness of CC licensing, shared insights on the challenges and opportunities of Open Access, and practical recommendations for embedding CC licensing in institutional strategies. The event targets academic librarians, researchers, repository managers, and Open Access advocates committed to advancing equitable and sustainable scholarly communication.

International Open Access Week 2025 runs from October 20 to 26, challenges us to ask who controls knowledge production, access, and dissemination. This webinar, organized by The Digital Librarian in collaboration with LIBSENSE Nigeria and Upskill & Connect Village seeks to spark conversation around the roles of AI, licensing, data ownership, and institutional practices in knowledge governance. We hope to create a platform for academics, librarians, and researchers to reflect, engage, and plan toward reclaiming community control over research outputs and infrastructure.

Session 1: Understanding Creative Commons Licenses.

Session 2: How to Publish Your Thesis in BUScholar (Self-Archiving Demo).

Highlights: Launch of the BU Journal, Self-Archiving Platform, and Research Data Management Portal. Award of prizes to quiz winners and certificates to participants. Chief Guest: Chairperson, University Council.

Join Sonoma State researchers for an Open Access Week discussion on October 23, 12-1:30 PM, in 2900 Stevenson and online via Zoom, to be moderated by Dr. Eileen A, Joy, punctum books. Panelists will speak on their own OA scholarship activities, insights on the direction of research and dissemination globally and especially within the United States, and how generative artificial intelligence might affect the system.

“Who Owns Our Knowledge?” is the theme for this year’s International Open Access (OA) Week (October 20-26). It asks a pointed question about the present moment and how, in a time of disruption, scholarly and research communities can reassert control over the knowledge they produce. It also challenges us to reflect on not only who has access to education and research but on how knowledge is created and shared, where it has come from, and whose voices are recognized and valued as knowledge producers.

It can be exciting to get an article accepted – and you might be tempted to rush through signing the publication agreement or author contract without reading all the fine print. However: signing a contract without understanding it can mean giving away your intellectual property – and can have long-term negative consequences. In this session, you'll learn how to read author agreements, and how to negotiate them, so that you’re not giving away your work for free!

This year’s International Open Access Week asks us to reflect on Who Owns our Knowledge—a question made especially urgent when we consider the systems that shape how research is created, shared, and valued. How can we collectively reclaim ownership of scholarly knowledge and support sustainable, open infrastructures that serve the public good?

Join the University of Ottawa Library for a bilingual (French/English) hybrid event featuring Dr. Stefanie Haustein and Dr. Juan Pablo Alperin, who will examine the evolution of research assessment infrastructure and its implications for equity, transparency, and inclusivity in scholarly communication. Dr. Haustein will trace the history of closed bibliometric infrastructures and their lasting influence, while Dr. Alperin will outline the opportunities presented by open infrastructures—systems designed to be community-driven, transparent, and inclusive of diverse types of research outputs. Together, they will invite us to consider how today’s choices shape who is recognized, rewarded, and included in the scholarly record of tomorrow.

* The event is bilingual, with transcription for the online portion provided via Zoom features.

Qui contrôle nos connaissances? Des infrastructures fermées aux infrastructures ouvertes pour l'évaluation de la recherche et la métascience

Cette année, la Semaine internationale du libre accès nous invite à réfléchir sur Qui contrôle nos connaissances. Cette question devient particulièrement importante lorsque l'on considère les systèmes qui déterminent la manière dont la recherche est créée, partagée et valorisée. Comment pouvons-nous collectivement nous réapproprier les connaissances savantes et soutenir des infrastructures durables et ouvertes qui servent l'intérêt général?

Rejoignez la Bibliothèque de l'Université d'Ottawa pour un évènement bilingue (Français / Anglais) en format hybride avec en vedette Dr. Stefanie Haustein et Dr. Juan Pablo Alperin, qui examinerons l’évolution de l'infrastructure d’évaluation de la recherche et ses implications pour l’équité, la transparence et l’inclusivité dans la communication scientifique. Dr. Haustein retracera l’historique des infrastructures bibliométriques fermées et leur influence sur le long-terme, alors que Dr. Alperin présentera les opportunités offertes par les infrastructures ouvertes, des systèmes conçus pour être communautaires, transparent et inclusifs de divers types de travaux de recherche. Ensemble, ils nous inviteront à réfléchir à la manière dont les choix d’aujourd’hui déterminent qui sera reconnu, récompensé et inclus dans les archives scientifiques de demain.

* L'événement est bilingue, avec transcription fournie via les fonctionnalités de Zoom

As commercial scholarly publishing consolidates and costs continue to rise, universities are working to regain control over how scholarship is disseminated, maintained, and acquired. This panel will examine the promise and challenges of university-based publishing—from university presses to library publishing programs and beyond.

Hosted by Sysrev and led by Neal Haddaway, this webinar will focus on the importance of Open Science principles in evidence synthesis and how adopting Open and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) workflows are vital for maintaining rigour in evidence synthesis. The session will cover both theory and practical advice, indicating the tradeoffs and cost implications of each component of Open Synthesis. We will discuss examples of good and bad practice, as well as becoming aware of tools to support open practices.

A panel discussion with three thought leaders in the field: Dr. Samuel Moore, Scholarly Communication Specialist at Cambridge University Library, one of the organizers of the Radical Open Access Collective, and author of the forthcoming book Publishing Beyond the Market: Open Access, Care and the Commons, Sarah Lamdan, Deputy Directory of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and author of the widely acclaimed book Data Cartels' Peter Suber, author of the seminal monograph Open Access and a leading theorist of the Open Access movement. Details of the virtual session on their website.

Please join the Penn State University Libraries for a panel discussion with three thought leaders in the field:

Dr. Samuel Moore, Scholarly Communication Specialist at Cambridge University Library, one of the organizers of the Radical Open Access Collective, and author of the forthcoming book Publishing Beyond the Market: Open Access, Care and the Commons.

Sarah Lamdan, Deputy Directory of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and author of the widely acclaimed book Data Cartels.

Peter Suber, author of the seminal monograph Open Access and a leading theorist of the Open Access movement.

The theme of the panel discussion is “We Are Enough: Practical Open Access for Everyone.” Whether you’re a faculty member, a researcher, an independent scholar, a student, a librarian or library worker, or someone working in the publishing industry, we hope you’ll join us for this event, which is free and open to the public.