Celebrate Open Access Week with the Libraries!
Events
Published October 14, 2025
October 20-26, 2025
Open Access Week is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.
Open Access to information—the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need—has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.
The theme of 2025 Open Access Week is “Who Owns Our Knowledge?” 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.
This week, and every week, the Libraries celebrate and welcome Open Access at Smith College through a number of ways:
Smith ScholarWorks
Smith ScholarWorks is an institutional repository that provides permanent online access to advanced scholarship. The collection encourages the growth of scholarly communities through open access, quick discovery, and wide dissemination of scholarly and creative content by Smith College faculty, students, and staff. Content may include: faculty, student, and staff scholarship; online journals, newsletters, and podcasts; presentations and posters; student theses and dissertations; and more.
To date, more than 4 million items have been downloaded from ScholarWorks worldwide. Each month, Scholarly Communications Librarian Jessican Ryan writes “What am I Reading in ScholarWorks?” as a way to shed light on one particular resource available for download in the repository.
Read the latest “What am I Reading in ScholarWorks?”
Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) Support
ORCID is a free, unique, persistent identifier (PID) for individuals to use as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities.
As part of Open Access Week, the Libraries invite faculty to meet with them to set up their unique ORCID ID and learn how to connect their iD to their work and use their iD in grants, publications, and datasets. Please contact Jessica Ryan for assistance, jryan@smith.edu .
Open Educational Resources (OERs)
OERs are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.
With 43% of Smith students reporting experiencing financial hardship, and 74% of those experiencing financial hardship having difficulty purchasing books and course materials, OERs speak to the college’s commitment to equity and accessibility in education.
Learn more about OERs in action at Smith and how to get involved.
Hear From Our Faculty
Smith College chemistry professor Kevin Shea discusses his experience using and creating OERs, and encourages other Smith faculty to consider the benefits of OERs in their classrooms.
Online Resources
The Libraries have a wealth of information pertaining to Open Access and Open Educational Resources — Explore the website for more in-depth information.
Contact
Jessica Ryan, Scholarly Communications Librarian: jryan@smith.edu