OASPA 2025 Conference Programme

Embracing the Complexity – how do we get to 100% OA?

The OASPA 2025 annual conference will take place at Irish College Leuven, Belgium from 22 – 24 September 2025.

Register here

Programme

The OASPA2025 programme includes keynote talks, panel discussions, poster lightning talks, an interactive session as well as plenty of time for networking during breaks, lunches and two evening receptions.

Monday September 22

12 – 12.55pm  Registration

1 – 1.25pm  Conference Opening and Welcome

• OASPA & Demmy Verbeke (KU Leuven)




1.30 – 2.45pm  Keynote panel: Who owns open knowledge? Who has the power and responsibility?

• Chair: Heather Joseph (SPARC)
• Stefano Bertuzzi (American Society for Microbiology)
• Ulrich Herb (Saarland University & Freelance Consultant)
• Demmy Verbeke (KU Leuven)
• Megs Wacha (UN Library, United Nations)




2.50 – 3.25pm  Poster Lightning Talks

• Enhancing Open Science: SCOAP3’s New Evaluation Mechanism for Publishers– Anne Gentil-Beccot (CERN)
• Unlocking Open Science: India’s OA Monitor for Smarter Scholarly Publishing – Hiteshkumar Solanki (INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar)
• Assessing the Impact of US Policy Changes on OA Uptake – Heather Staines (Delta Think)
• Adopting RRS at EMBL: A Case Study – Katie Hughes (European Molecular Biology Laboratory)
• Read & Publish as a Route for OA Book Articles – Anke de Looper, Marten Stavenga (John Benjamins Publishing Company)
• Supporting the Transition to Open Access: Platform Development, Content Dissemination, and AI Tools – Szilvia Maróthy (L’Harmattan Open Access)




3.30 – 3.55pm  Coffee Break

 

4 – 5pm  Panel:  Complexity and impacts of transitioning from hybrid to 100% open access

• Moderator: Cameron Neylon (Co-founder, Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative)
• Mandy Hill (Cambridge University Press)
• Penelope Lewis (American Institute of Physics (AIP))
• Kathryn Sharples (Wiley)




5.05 – 6.05pm  Parallel Panel:  Hello from the other side: What’s the story from fully open access book publishers?

• Moderator: Niels Stern (OAPEN)
• Beth Bouloukos (Amherst College Press)
• Fulvio Guatelli (Firenze University Press)
• Lara Speicher (UCL Press)
• Wikus Van Zyl (University of Johannesburg Press)




5.05 – 6.05pm  Parallel Panel:  Hello from the other side: views from fully open access journals using APCs

• Moderator: Catriona MacCallum (Wiley)
• Roheena Anand (PLOS)
• Cecile de Villiers (AOSIS)
• Fiona Hutton (eLife)
• Stephan Kuster (Frontiers)
• Stefan Tochev (MDPI)




6.15 – 8.15pm  Reception at Irish College

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Tuesday September 23

8.30 – 9am  Welcome Coffee

 

9.05 – 10.05am  Panel: Depressurising publishing – what can we do about researcher incentives and integrity breakdowns on the journey to 100% OA?

• Moderator: James Parry, (Independent research integrity and research culture consultant; former Chief Executive of the UK Research Integrity Office – UKRIO)
• Hans de Jonge (CoARA & NWO Dutch Research Council)
• Yensi Flores Bueso (University College Cork & Global Young Academy)
• Bernd Pulverer (European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO & DORA)
• Liying Yang (National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences)




10.10 -10.50am  Keynote: Enabling 100% open access in times of uncertainty: who has the power and responsibility? 

• Hannah Hope (Wellcome)




10.55 – 11.25am  Coffee Break

 


11.30am – 12.45pm  Panel: Policy in progress around the world: the role of funder mandates on a 100% OA future

• Moderator: Rob Johnson (Research Consulting)
• Kazuhiro Hayashi  (National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP))
• Dagmar Meyer (European Research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA))
• Kunhua Zhao (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
• Kathryn Funk (Becker Library, Washington University School of Medicine)




12.50 – 1.15pm  OASPA Members and Supporters Meeting




1.15 – 2.30pm  Lunch




2.35 -3.35pm  Panel: Scaling inclusive open access models

• Moderator: Kamran Naim  (CERN & EOSC)
• Juan Pablo Alperin (Public Knowledge Project)
• Caroline Edwards  (Open Library of Humanities & Open Journals Collective)
• Lauren Kane (BioOne)
• Kate McCready (Big Ten Academic Alliance & JSTOR Path to Open)




3.40 – 4.15pm  Poster Lightning Talks

• Financing Open Access at KU Leuven – Laura Mesotten (KU Leuven)
• From Mandate to Movement: How Funders Can Support Equitable Open Access in the Global South – Vrushali Dandawate (AISSMS College of Engineering and DOAJ)
• Reimagining Research Equity: A Purchasing Power-Based Pricing Model Supporting Researchers in Latin America – Melanie Lehnert-Bechle (Wiley)
• Mapping the Arab Region’s open access landscape – Emily Choynowski (Knowledge E)
• Supporting Pioneering of Open Access in ZULC – Blessing Chiparausha (Africa University)
• Sustainability and Fair Pricing in Open Access – Scott Delman (Association for Computing Machinery)




4.20 – 4.55pm  Coffee Break




5 – 6pm  Interactive Feedback Session

• Moderator: Malavika Legge, OASPA




6.30 – 8.30pm  Reception |  KU Leuven Library

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Wednesday September 24

8.30 – 9am  Welcome Coffee

 

9.05 – 9.45am  Keynote: Enabling 100% open access globally: who has the power and responsibility?

• Professor Wei Yang (Zhejiang University; National Natural Science Foundation of China, NSFC; China Association of Science and Technology, CAST & Chinese Academy of Sciences, CAS)




9.50 – 10.25am  Poster Lightning Talks

• Exploring new initiatives for an Open world – Steve Lodge (Emerald Publishing)
• Building a Stronger OA Book Ecosystem: Insights from an OPERAS Special Interest Group – Niels Stern (OAPEN)
• Training Material and Trainings to Increase the Uptake of Technical Publication Standards – Jorina Fenner (TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology)
• Ensuring Financial Sustainability for Diamond Open Access Journal Publishers: The DIAMAS Project’s Sustainability Toolsuite – Anna Hughes (Jisc)
• Scoping Review of Transformative Agreement Research – Allison Langham-Putrow; Amy Riegelman (University of Minnesota Libraries)
• Equitable Open Access Partnership: A Scalable Model for Small Publishers – Michael Donaldson (Canadian Science Publishing)




10.30 – 11am  Coffee Break




11.05 – 12.20pm  Panel: Open Access: of what, for what, and why?

• Moderator: Charles Watkinson (University of Michigan Press)
• Antia Wiersma (Royal Netherlands Historical Society)
• John Wilkin (Lyrasis)
• Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri (Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1)
• Sam Moore (Radical Open Access)




12.25 – 1.25pm  Lunch




1.30 – 2.45pm  Panel: The library at the heart of the open access transition

• Moderator: Ros Pyne (Bloomsbury)
• Anne Houston (Swarthmore College Libraries & Lever Press)
• Danny Kingsley (Deakin University)
• Madhan Muthukumaraswamy  (Jindal Global University)
• Arjan Schalken (UKB)




2.45 – 3pm   Closing Remarks and reflections from OASPA 

• Executive Director and Incoming and Outgoing Board Chairs 
  
  

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  General Information

  General information about the conference can be found at our conference page.

  Any enquiries regarding the conference should be directed to conference@oaspa.org.

   

  Sponsorship Opportunities 

  We welcome expressions of interest in sponsorship. Sponsorship is crucial for us to be able to hold the event. See sponsorship opportunities here or email bernie.folan@oaspa.org for information.

   

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