All of you are aware of the International Open Access Week event, organised each year by SPARC, in collaboration with the Open Access Week Advisory Committee. This activation is a part of the ongoing effort to promote Open Access, as well as an opportunity for increased visibility for members of the academic and research community, for the sharing of new insights and for spreading the message and benefits of Open Access far and wide.

The event is celebrated by individuals, institutions and organizations around the world and all members of the Open Science ecosystem are encouraged to participate and promote their own activities during the timeframe of the event itself (this year’s dates were 21 - 27 October), as well as host discussions, organise trainings/ events or take any action they deem relevant throughout the year.

This year, apart from organising 3 online events for OA Week 2024, we additionally collected all the events where members of our network and/or partners were participating in, as an effort to promote increased visibility, by sharing them through our own channels and inviting all our members and associates to participate.

OpenAIRE's Involvement

Our contribution to the International Open Access Week schedule consisted of 2 webinars and 1 podcast, the content of which was attuned with this year’s official theme of “Community over Commercialisation”.  This important conversation carried over from last year’s event, where a lot of critical insights came up, with the central one being the overarching need to prioritize open scholarship in ways that serve the best interests of the public and the academic community. 

Following the organising committee's encouragement to adapt the general theme based on local context, we chose to present a webinar on the OpenAIRE Graph (“An open infrastructure for and by the community”), that presented and outlined the Graph’s community-centric aspect, from governance to its participatory approach, with the help of our CTO, Paolo Manghi, as well as a webinar on the topic of open infrastructure sustainability (“Sustainable Growth in Open Infrastructures: Balancing Commercialization, Community Governance, and Funding”) with Natalia Manola (OpenAIRE CEO) and Androniki Pavlidou (OpenAIRE Services Portfolio Manager), where they explored the inherent need to ensure that open infrastructures can sustain themselves independently of public/ private funding, in order to ensure their longevity and consequently, the continued promotion of Open Access/ Open Science. Additionally, for those not-in-the-know, we also created a specialised episode in our OpenAIRE Podcast series about the Graph, where Giulia Malaguarnera (OpenAIRE Outreach & Engagement Officer) and Alane Brunschweiger (OpenAIRE Branding & Communications Officer), discussed on the importance of the open science community in shaping the OpenAIRE Graph and how the service is perpetually evolving, according to community input, to better serve and support open infrastructures.

You can find the “An Open Infrastructure for and by the community” webinar here , the “Sustainable Growth in Open Infrastructures: Balancing Commercialization, Community Governance, and Funding” webinar here and you can listen to the podcast episode “The OpenAIRE Graph: Shaped by Community” following the links found here.