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.

Registration is now open! – please register here.

Preliminary Programme

The programme will include 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.

Topics to be explored include:

• Who owns open knowledge? Who has the power and responsibility?
• Depressurising publishing – what can we do about researcher incentives and integrity breakdowns on the journey to 100% OA?
• What’s the story from fully open access book publishers?
• Views from fully open access journals using APCs
• (Are you) on the fence about open access?
• Enabling 100% open access in times of political uncertainty: who has the power and responsibility?”
• Policy in progress around the world: the role of funder mandates on a 100% OA future
• Open access models for inclusion and scale
• The most important unsolved problems: sparks to re-ignite and illuminate the future of open access
• The library at the heart of the open access transition
• Complexity and impacts of transitioning to 100% open access

Speakers are being confirmed currently and include:

• Beth Bouloukos (Amherst College Press)
• Caroline Edwards (Open Library of Humanities & Open Journal Collective)
• Fiona Hutton (eLife)
• Lauren Kane (BioOne)
• Stephan Kuster (Frontiers)
• Rob Johnson (Research Consulting)
• Heather Joseph (SPARC)
• Catriona MacCallum (Wiley)
• Kate McCready (Big Ten Academic Alliance & JSTOR Path to Open Committee)
• Nokuthula Mchunu (National Research Foundation (NRF))
• Madhan Muthukumaraswamy (Jindal Global University)
• Kamran Naim (CERN & EOSC)
• Ros Pyne (Bloomsbury)
• Arjan Schalken (UKB)
• Niels Stern (OAPEN)
• Stefan Tochev (MDPI)
• Demmy Verbeke (University of Leuven)
• Wikus Van Zyl (University of Johannesburg Press)

The programme will be updated with abstracts and all speakers over the coming weeks.

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.

Keep Up to Date

You can sign up for conference updates by registering on our mailing list and choosing to hear about conference news.