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Open Access organisations and developments – National and international
Sandra Fry
The concept of having Open Access (OA) to research outputs has been a part of the scholarly publishing landscape for more than two decades. From its inception as a movement – supporting researchers who wanted to use the internet to make their work open for others to see – it has, through the organisations below, and many more individual advocates, spread around the world.
Through the creation of OA repositories, OA journals, preprint archives, OA policies & initiatives, and International Open Access Week in October, the organisations below are supporting open research and championing the OA cause in both Australia and beyond.
Getting Started
AustralAsIAN Organisations
Open Access Australasia
Open Access Australasia is the region’s peak advocacy body for Open Access. It began as the Australian Open Access support group in 2013 then joined with New Zealand advocates to become the the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group in 2015. It became Open Access Australasia in 2021. It supports all models of open access, and the principles of the F.A.I.R. Access Policy Statement and aims for all Australian and New Zealand research to be part of the global research ecosystem. It is committed to advocating for and raising awareness of open access through collaboration regionally and internationally and to building capacity and expertise within this region.
The group holds regular community of practice meetings with research professionals from across the region, as well as hosting webinars, creating resources and training workshops for practitioners, assisting with policy creation, and organising activities for International Open Access Week in the region. It is also active in contributing to the public discourse on access to knowledge and research in Australia & New Zealand.
Exercise: Look through the list of events on the Open Access Australasia webpage and attend an event or join a community of practice.
To understand more about what OA organisations are advocating for, watch this video created by the Knowledge Network for College Libraries
This is where the term Open Access became synonymous with the global movement for unrestricted, free access to publicly funded scholarly research, starting with the 2002 BOAI declaration. Recommendations at that meeting were developed by champions of the movement who had spent the preceding years working towards a common goal to make research free and available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. With a goal of open access to peer-reviewed journal literature through self archiving and a new generation of open access journals, the group issued new guidelines that could usher in huge advances in the sciences, medicine, and health. More recommendations were made at in 2012 at the BOAI10 meeting, and at BOAI15 Jean-Cla