This year’s theme of Community over Commercialisation for Open Access Week 2023 helped bring together an amazing collection of experts from all gamuts of the of scholarly publishing ecosystem to learn from each other and share their insights. The community focus of our events programme created a diverse landscape with advocates and specialists from around the Pacific, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, South East Asia as well as Central America and the Netherlands. We were thrilled with the calibre of the panel discussions and engagement by our OA community in making the week’s festivities such a success.
Our programme began on Tuesday with a panel session looking at the ways communities openly share their knowledge and how they keep control of their knowledge while opening it up to the world. We moved into the Open Books space for our Wednesday session, hearing how academic communities are improving our access to knowledge and culture. We then shone the light on Diamond journals, with our special satellite meeting of the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access which was being held in Mexico with cOAlition S Executive Director Johan Rooryck among our panellists. Our final event on Friday was a two-part session focusing on publishing avenues for Indigenous-led research and engagement with indigenous knowledge.
Our sincere thanks to our wonderful guest panellists. We appreciate all of these special people who gave us not only their time, but generously shared their knowledge including: Welby Ings (Rainbow Collective, Auckland University of Technology), Margaret Warren (State Library Qld), Ngapera Riley (Figures.nz), John Willinsky (Stanford University, Public Knowledge Project), Emma Juniper (Informit), Sigi Jottkandt (UNSW, Open Humanities Press), Michael Cop (University of Otago), Nathan Hollier (ANU Press), Tom Rennie (Bridget Williams Books), Sean Ulm (ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous & Environmental Histories), Johan Rooryck (cOAlition S), Arianna Becerril-Garcia (Redalyc, Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, UAEM, AmeliCA), Donna Coventry (Auckland University of Technology), Katelyn Barney (The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, University of Qld), (Shelley Hoani (Te Wānanga o Aotearoa), Vini Olsen-Reeder (MAI Journal), Manaaki Whenua (Landcare Research), Taputu Raea (Digital Pasifik), Rose Barrowcliffe Butchulla (Macquarie University).
Over the week we had more than 1000 registrations. The Open Access Australasia website, including our OA Week 2023 event page, had more than 2.4k page views for the week, with more than 1.2k individual users.
Our sessions would not run as smoothly as they did without the support of the organisers and the session chairs: Fiona Bradley (UNSW), Ginny Barbour (Open Access Australasia), David Groenewegen (La Trobe University), Michelle Blake (University of Waikato), Dimity Flanagan (University of Melbourne) & Kim Tairi (Auckland University of Technology) who ran each panel with enthusiasm & gusto.
Thanks also to our break out room facilitators: David Nichols (University of Waikato), Tracey Creagh (QUT), Helen Chan (UTS).
The recordings of each of our events are now available here on our website.
Open Access Australasia OA Week 2023 Committee
This year’s fantastic organising committee was very ably led by Richard White (University of Otago). They were: Lyndall Holstein (Massey University), Garth Smith (Waikato University), Marissa Cassin, (Waikato University), Donna Coventry (Auckland University of Technology), Zachary Kendal who was also our star graphics designer (University of Melbourne), Janet Catterall (Open Access Australasia, James Cook University), Arthur Smith (Council of Australian University Librarians), Ginny Barbour (Open Access Australasia), & Sandra Fry (Open Access Australasia).
We are also so please to report that many institutions around Australia & Aotearoa New Zealand also held their own events to celebrate and advocate for open access in the spirit of community.