Open Access Week

Open Access Week is an annual scholarly communication event focusing on open access and related topics. It takes place globally during the last full week of October in a multitude of locations both on- and offline. Typical activities include talks, seminars, symposia, or the announcement of open access mandates or other milestones in open access. For instance, the Royal Society chose Open Access Week 2011 to announce that they would release the digitized backfiles of their archives, dating from 1665 to 1941.

Open Access Week has its roots in the National Day of Action for Open Access on February 15, 2007, organized across the United States by Students for Free Culture and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. In 2008, October 14 was designated Open Access Day, and the event became global. In 2009, the event was expanded to a week, from October 19–23. In 2010, it took place from October 18–24. From 2011 onwards, it is taking place at the last full week of October each year.

In the early years, organisations celebrating Open Access Week set their own themes. Since 2012, an 'official' theme was established and received special attention at the corresponding kick-off events held at the World Bank.

• 2012: "Set the default to open access"
• 2013: "Redefining impact"
• 2014: "Generation Open"
• 2015: "Open for Collaboration"
• 2016: "Open in Action"
• 2017: "Open In Order To"
• 2018: "Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge"
• 2019: "Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge"
• 2020: "Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion"
• 2021: “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity”
• 2022: "Open for Climate Justice"
• 2023: "Community over Commercialisation"
• 2024: "Community over Commercialisation"

Each year's Open Access Week events are recorded in the Open Access Directory and the Open Access Week website.

• Science festival

• openaccessweek.org, a dedicated online platform for Open Access Week, sponsored by SPARC
• Peter Suber (ed.). "(OA Week)". Open Access Tracking Project. Harvard University. OCLC 1040261573. News and comment from the worldwide movement for open access to research
• International Open Access Week at the University of Porto (Presence at the OA International Site)
• Open Access Week in France
• Open Access Week 2013 at the University of Cape Town