The Department of Library Services at the University of Pretoria (UPDLS), in partnership with the University of South Africa (UNISA), Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), and Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU), will hold an Open Access hybrid event on 23 October 2025 at UNISA's Kgorong Functional Hall. The event will centre around the theme: "Who Owns Our Knowledge?"

There are limited physical seats available for this event, with a maximum capacity of 160. An unlimited number of seats are available for the online session.

Leading up to the main event on 23 October, the partner institutions will host the following online lunch hour sessions from 11:30-12:30:
20 October 2025 – Aligning Research Data Management with Open Access Mandates (hosted by UP)
21 October 2025 – Exploring how transformative agreements can eliminate article processing charges (APCs) for authors (hosted by SMU)
22 October 2025 – The use of Open Access repositories to increase research visibility (hosted by TUT)
23 October 2025 Hybrid session – Who Owns our Knowledge? (hosted by UNISA)

Please direct enquiries to Mr Tlou Mathiba on tlou.mathiba@up.ac.za.

Be sure to join us to hear from a range of experts discussing topics related to Open Science practices, including Open-Access publishing, institutional repositories and research data management.