October 20 - 26, 2025
Who Owns Our Knowledge?
Open Access Week 2025
This year’s theme asks a pointed question about the present moment and how, in a time of disruption, communities can reassert control over the knowledge they produce.
Changing the world is possible.
Openness can create pathways to more equitable knowledge sharing and serve as a means to address the inequities that shape societies and our response to them.
Photo Credits: Hanne Pearce (left | CC BY 4.0), Marios Zervas (right | CC BY 4.0).
This year’s theme is an invitation to collaborate.
Open Access Week’s theme seeks to encourage a candid conversation about which approaches to open scholarship prioritize the best interests of the public and the academic community—and which do not.
Organizing an event?
Participating in Open Access Week can be as simple or involved as you like. It can also be a chance to let your imagination have full rein and come up with something ambitious and engaging.
Our joint call today is principled, lifesaving and urgent. Worldwide people need States, international bodies, science and medical institutions and practitioners to ensure the broadest possible sharing of scientific knowledge, and the broadest possible access to the benefits of scientific knowledge. This is key to any effective public health policy. It is essential to the combat against climate change.
Michelle Bachelet,
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
A Joint Appeal for Open Science by CERN, OHCHR, UNESCO and WHO