Kicking off the new term, appointed and returning members of the Open Science & Scholarship Advisory Committee met in October and shared plans for celebrating Open Access Week 2025. This year’s theme, “Who Owns Our Knowledge?” comes at a time when libraries are strong advocates for rights retention and secondary publishing right, ensuring that those who create research and knowledge retain ownership and control over how it is used. This is particularly important as new technologies such as generative AI continue to disrupt norms around accurate citation and reuse of research work, and the role of tech companies is under scrutiny. In this context, the role of libraries in providing quality information, skills, and infrastructure is critical – for those that create knowledge, and those that consume it. Information literacy skills are more essential than ever. Repositories, persistent identifiers play a particularly important function in supporting provenance of information, and decentralised, interoperable open infrastructures.

Among the many events shared by members to be celebrated during Open Access Week in 2025 are –

Leading up to OA week, Fiona Bradley, Chair of OSSAC will deliver a plenary talk on libraries, open infrastructures, and open science monitoring at International Data Week in Brisbane, Australia. Madiareni Sulaiman, OSSAC member will also participate in the conference and associated events. OSSAC will be represented by Mahmoud Khalifa at events organised by Arab Community for Open Access and in Egypt on Open Science in November.

The following events are open for registration to all:

Open Access Australasia will host three webinars, open to all with a focus on political developments, community, and ownership

Ireland will hold a National Open Research Festival during the month of November

IFLA will be represented both online and in person at the UN Library’s 4th Open Science Conference in Tokyo, Japan