Access Lab 2025 program announced!

Register for OpenAthens’ leading industry conference to discuss global challenges and opportunities in access to resources.

We are thrilled to announce our online Access Lab 2025 program, taking place 24 – 27 February 2025. As OpenAthens turns 30 this year, the Access Lab program celebrates our partnerships and customers’ success around the world.

Access Lab brings together industry leaders, innovators, and thought leaders for an insightful and engaging program. Our online event will run over several days and in multiple time zones and languages so that as many of our global audience can join.

Whether you are a publisher, provider, library or IT professional, Access Lab provides the opportunity to join our global community to share knowledge, challenges and updates from across the industry.

Access Lab 2025 program

As part of our 30th anniversary, Heidi Fraser-Krauss, CEO of our parent company Jisc, will recount our key achievements in empowering and supporting our customers and celebrate their success.

Opening keynote

Chief Information Officer for STM Solutions, Hylke Koers, will give the opening keynote ‘The future of trust, access and identity in scholarly communications’. Hylke’s presentation will draw on some of the key findings from a recent STM draft report ‘Trusted Identity in Academic Publishing’.

Hylke Koers, CIO of STM Solutions, emphasizes the importance of balance:

“In a world where scientific integrity is paramount and content becomes increasingly easy to fabricate, we need to develop new ways to establish the veracity of scholarly contributions. Identity verification can provide important safeguards provided that it is implemented in such a way that it does not exclude legitimate contributions and respects researchers’ right for privacy and does not impose undue barriers.”

Range of session topics

Other sessions include:

• Misinformation, disinformation, and trust in scholarly communication: Challenges and Strategies
• Piracy websites and research integrity concerns
• Customer case study: Extending the reach of OpenAthens - leveraging library technology for non-traditional applications
• Community case study: How OpenAthens supports lifelong learning and empowers communities
• Generative AI in Research Discovery: a Web of Science case
• Workshop: AI literacy for librarians. The future skill of research support

Access Lab provides a safe space to explore, discuss and learn from your peers. This year’s program includes a number of topic-based discussion groups. These range from security, user privacy, artificial intelligence, library data analytics to the impact of library budgets and user experience and accessibility. Some sessions and discussion groups will be region and language specific.

You can also expect to hear customer case studies and take part in OpenAthens related discussion groups to get you thinking about improvements you could make in your own organization.

Our program advisory group of customers and partners helped shape this year's program.

Senior marketing manager and program lead, Jane Charlton commented:

“We want to thank all the customer volunteers who helped to develop this year’s Access Lab program and lead topic-based discussion groups. Your session ideas and continued support are essential for making this a true community event.”

UX Awards 2025

A highlight of the event is the UX Awards which are now in their sixth year. Our awards celebrate vendors that demonstrate strength in innovation, and their investment and organization-wide approach to UX. We'll announce the 2025 award winner on Thursday 27 February at 10:00 EST/ 15:00 GMT.

Take a look at the Access Lab 2025 program for more information and to register.

How to register

Registration for Access Lab is now open. Simply register for the conference to attend live or watch sessions on demand after the conference.

Please contact Laura Bloomfield Hall, senior events manager with any questions or to sponsor the event.