Open Access
Open Access Week
Help us to celebrate Open Access during this annual international event
What is Open Access Week?
International Open Access Week is an annual event celebrating the benefits of Open Access, where the outcomes of research are made freely available online for others to reuse. You can find more information about Open Access in our guide on the basics of Open Access.
Open Access Week started with the first "Open Access Day" held in 2007, organised by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) in the USA. Since then, it has grown to be an entire week that is celebrated across the world. You can find more information on the history and purpose of Open Access Week on the SPARC website or on the Open Access Week event website.
What are we doing this year?
Each year, SPARC set an overall theme for Open Access Week, which invites people to think about a specific aspect of Open Access. For 2020 Open Access Week is happening between the 19th and 25th October, and the theme is "Open with purpose: taking action to build structural equity and inclusion". This theme invites us to reflect on steps that can be taken to improve equitability of open access - both for those who publish open access and for those who access open access resources.
In 2020, we have unfortunately been limited by the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic and challenges of home working, so we are celebrating Open Access Week with a blog post that highlights various resources that you might find useful and interesting to explore. You can access the blog post on both the Library Matters and Research Matters blogs.