International Open Access Week 2025
Memorial University Libraries is celebrating International Open Access (OA) Week from Oct. 20–26, 2025. Open Access is a global movement to make scholarly research more easily discoverable and accessible by removing subscription and login barriers. This year’s theme asks "Who owns our knowledge?"
How does Memorial University Libraries support OA?
Memorial University Libraries has a number of OA initiatives designed to enhance visibility, discovery, and the impact of faculty and student research at Memorial University:
- Discovery and infrastructure – Developing a robust open scholarly network requires funding, and the library continues to invest in the global OA community. Over the past decade, the library has supported the development of key OA tools, organizations, and resources to increase the visibility of work produced by MUN researchers.
- For example, SCOAP³ (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) is a partnership of 3,000 libraries, funding agencies, research institutions, and intergovernmental organizations worldwide that converts key journals in High-Energy Physics to open access.
- Another example is DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books), a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books and helps users find trusted OA book publishers.
- Open Journal Systems (OJS) – Memorial University Libraries support faculty and student journal publishing through electronic journal hosting.
- Memorial’s Research Repository – An OA platform to showcase and preserve Memorial’s creative and intellectual output. More information about our research repository.
- Open Educational Resources (OER) – Teaching and learning resources that exist in the public domain or carry open licenses (e.g., Creative Commons). OERs provide students with no-cost access to course texts and allow instructors to use, adapt, and redistribute materials with few or no restrictions. Newfoundland and Labrador is collaborating with other Atlantic provinces on a 3-year pilot program to fund the creation, adoption, and adaptation of OERs at publicly funded post-secondary institutions across Atlantic Canada. More information about OERs.
- Open Research Data Management – Libraries provide key opportunities and expertise to advance research through workflow support, data management tools, and technical infrastructure for research data curation. More information about Borealis.
- Investment in Canadian Diamond OA Journals – These journals do not charge fees to authors or readers. The library also continues to pursue agreements with publishers for discounted article processing charges and free publishing opportunities. Many such agreements are already in place.
Visit our OA library guide for more information.