Welcome to the Open Access Australasia website

Open Access Week

International Open Access Week is an annual, global campaign held during the last full week of October that raises awareness and fosters engagement in open access to scholarly research and knowledge. Established in 2008 by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and partners, it provides a platform for researchers, libraries, institutions, funders, publishers, and communities worldwide to host talks, workshops, and outreach activities promoting free, immediate, and unrestricted access to research outputs. Open Access Week aims to accelerate the transition toward openness as the default in research dissemination, enhancing the visibility, impact, and equitable sharing of knowledge across disciplines. Each year highlights a specific theme to encourage reflection and discussion on the social, ethical, and policy dimensions of the open scholarship movement. 

Open Access Australasia and Open Access Week.

Open Access Australasia plays a leading role in coordinating and amplifying Open Access Week activities across Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific region. Each year, the organization:

  • Facilitates Regional Campaigns: Organizes and promotes a range of events, webinars, and discussions that spotlight open access initiatives, policy developments, and success stories from universities, libraries, researchers, and communities.

  • Develops and Shares Resources: Produces promotional materials and graphics to support institutions and individuals in hosting their own Open Access Week events, and curates and promotes the annual list of OA Week events across the region .

  • Connects Local and Global Efforts: Acts as a central hub, connecting Australasian participants with the broader international open access movement and sharing regional perspectives with the global community.

  • Showcases Regional Voices: Highlights achievements, challenges, and priorities unique to Australasia by centering regional topics and Indigenous leadership, ensuring Aboriginal and Māori voices are not only given space but are integral to shaping events.

  • Drives Advocacy and Change: Uses the momentum of Open Access Week to advance and encourage the adoption of open research and scholarship practices within research and education sectors in our region.

As an active member of the International OA Week Planning Committee each year, Open Access Australasia ensures that our regional engagement shapes and energizes the global movement for open, equitable access to knowledge.

 

Watch Open Access Australasia’s OA Week 2025 events:

Who owns our knowledge?

Many thanks to our 2025 Planning Committee: Em Bulger (La Trobe) Donna Coventry (AUT) Richard White (Otago) Cheri Joy (USC) Lyndall Holstein (CSU) Koichi Inoue (VUW) Elizabeth Lawrence (La Trobe) Tracy Creagh (QUT) Zachary Kendal (UMelb)

 

The politics of knowledge: who controls the story and who has access to it?

The opening event of Open Access Australasia’s OA Week 2025, this session brings together speakers from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia to explore how government administrations are exerting ownership and control over knowledge, shaping narratives and gatekeeping access. This diverse panel sheds light on the politics shaping knowledge ownership and access in a range of countries, with an emphasis on ways to defend and reclaim our knowledges in the face of these threats. More information

Tuesday October 21, 2025.
 
7am AWST (Perth) / 8.30am ACST (Darwin) / 9.30am ACDT (Adelaide) / 9am AEST (Brisbane) / 10am AEDT (Sydney & Melbourne) / 12pm NZDT (all of Aotearoa New Zealand)

WATCH RECORDING

Community ownership: Relation, reciprocity and responsibility

This session focuses on unpacking the concept of knowledge ownership within community and collective contexts. Panellists will reflect on their definitions of knowledge ownership, rooted in collaboration, lived experience, and cultural relevance, highlighting how knowledge can be created, shared and protected collectively rather than claimed individually. Unlike traditional academic models that emphasise individual authorship, proprietary rights, and institutional control, community-based understandings of knowledge foreground collective stewardship, reciprocal relationships, and respect for cultural protocols. More Information

Wednesday October 22, 2025.
 
10am AWST (Perth) / 11.30am ACST (Darwin) / 12.30am ACDT (Adelaide) / 12pm AEST (Brisbane) / 1pm AEDT (Sydney & Melbourne) / 3pm NZDT (all of Aotearoa New Zealand)

WATCH RECORDING

Vive la révolution! Taking our knowledge back

What does it mean to “own” your research in 2025? How can academic authors make informed choices about where and how people (and/or machines!) can access and build on their work? This session explores how the scholarly community can wrest control back from the oligopoly and maintain agency over their own work, ensuring their research has the widest and most meaningful impact. Vive la révolution! More information
 
Thursday October 23, 2025
 
10am AWST (Perth) / 11.30am ACST (Darwin) / 12.30am ACDT (Adelaide) / 12pm AEST (Brisbane) / 1pm AEDT (Sydney & Melbourne) / 3pm NZDT (all of Aotearoa New Zealand)

WATCH RECORDING

Recordings from previous years are available to view below

Open Access Week 2024

This year Open Access Australasia is holding three events, continuing with the theme of community over commercialisation, bringing together experts to discuss how to widen our inclusivity, to showcase new approaches and initiatives, and to consider the impact emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence are having on our knowledge systems and our communities.

Open and Accessible: When open isn’t enough.

Communities in Action: Cutting through the rough with diamond journals and open knowledge

Communities con-tech-ualised? How can technologies support communities and their decisions around opening their knowledges?

View recordings

Open Access Week 2023

Open Access Week 2023 (October 24-27) is an opportunity to join together, take action, and raise awareness around the importance of community control of knowledge sharing systems. This year’s theme is  Community over Commercialization. When commercial interests are prioritized over those of the communities that research seeks to serve, many concerning issues arise. Open Access Week provides an opportunity for individuals to discuss the questions that are most relevant in their local context. Open Access Australasia is therefore presenting four events: 

Community over commercialisation – What is community control and why does it matter?

Like an open book: can academic communities ensure our voices are heard by all?

Shine on Diamond journals: making sure they’re forever

Creating space for Indigenous and Pacific research

 

View the recordings

Open Access Week 2022

This year’s Open Access week theme – Open for Climate Justice –  seeks to encourage connection and collaboration among the climate movement and the international open community. Sharing knowledge is a human right, and tackling the climate crisis requires the rapid exchange of knowledge across geographic, economic, and disciplinary boundaries.

Open Access Australasia presents 10 events to explore how open science and open access can support vulnerable communities in the Pacific facing climate injustice, to question the complexities and risks of openly sharing climate science data, including how such openness can be both a benefit and a risk, and to discuss the role of climate journalism and the importance of accessible scientific information for public awareness, how citizen science can promote climate justice through community engagement and action and many other topics.

View the recordings

Open Access Week 2021

This year Open Access Australasia, through its OA Week practitioners’ group and in consultation with the wider open access community, has planned a festival of thoughtful panels and topical presentations for OA week 2021, presenting 8 events throughout the week.

In keeping with the theme of It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity we will be looking at, using open science to combat global challenges, openness through a First Nations lens, the benefits and barriers to OERs, what open means for different disciplines, accessibility, and non-technical communication, as well as hacking OA, shaking up research assessment and how different parts of the open knowledge ecosystem interacts.

View the recordings

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