Call for proposals: 2025 Open Access Week Virtual Summit

1. Theme: Who owns the knowledge?

The 18th edition of the international Open Access Week will be observed from 20th – 26th October, 2025, with the theme, ‘Who owns our knowledge?’ The African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) is making the 2025 Open Access Week more participatory and community-driven by holding a virtual summit on Tuesday, 21^st and Wednesday, 22^nd October 2025. AfLIA hereby invites all libraries and allied institutions’ professionals to be a part of the 2025 Open Access Week celebration.

2. Four presentation tracks

The virtual summit will address the global theme ‘Who owns our knowledge?’ under these four tracks:

Who owns our knowledge? Persistent Identifiers and Metadata for Open Access Best Practices
Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Ownership
Visibility, Ownership, and Access: Indigenous Knowledge and Citizen Science
Digital infrastructure, structural inequities and open access

The 2025 Open Access Week Virtual Summit is for:

LIS practitioners in all Library types
LIS educators
LIS policymakers
Organizations and professionals working in partnership with African libraries

Expected Outcomes

It is expected that by the end of the Virtual Summit, participants will:

Gain a better understanding of persistent identifiers and best practices for metadata as a pathway for answering the question, ‘Who owns the knowledge?’
Be conversant with the possibilities, challenges and protocols for Open Access and knowledge ownership in the AI era
Realize the role of library professionals in ensuring visibility, accessibility and ownership of African indigenous knowledge, including Citizen science in documentary, art and/or audio formats within the Open Access ecosystem
Expand their understanding about how Open Access addresses existing structural and digital inequities within the knowledge landscape

Important Dates (Deadlines)

Proposal and Presentation Slides

Submission of Proposals for presentations – 31^st August 2025
Notification of Acceptance/Rejection – 8^th September 2025
Submission of full presentation slides – 12^th October 2025

Registration and fees

No fees would be charged for the virtual summit. However, all intending presenters and participants are expected to register here.

REGISTER

Structure

Presenters are required to submit only proposals (that are longer than normal abstracts) and if they are accepted, will be required to submit ONLY their full presentation slides on or before 15^th October, by 23.59 GMT.
Only 12 presentation slots are available for the virtual summit. Proposals submitted after 31^st August would not be considered.
Failure to submit presentation slides within the stipulated period will be regarded as non-interest in presenting at the virtual summit. The speaking slot would be filled from the waiting list.
Accepted proposals and their presentation slides would receive a DOI as they are uploaded to the AfLIA/Figshare repository.
The virtual summit will be held for two days with two sessions (representing two Tracks) taking place on each day (morning and afternoon).
Each session will last for 1hour, 55mins with a fun-filled and informative breaks.

Guidelines for Submission of Proposal and Presentation Slides

Kindly note the following guidelines to ensure that quality presentations are made at the 2025 Open Access Week Virtual Summit.

Submission Guidelines
Plagiarism Check

Acknowledgement of other people’s intellectual work is a cardinal rule of research. It is a criminal offence to take credit for another person’s work. AfLIA expects all library professionals and presenters to duly acknowledge all sources quoted and images used in their presentations. Plagiarized works will not be accepted and may incur penalties. Ethical use of AI is advised. Authors are encouraged to declare and duly reference AI generated content.

Proposals

Proposals must fall within the ambit of the theme and the stipulated four (4) tracks and could be written in English, French or Portuguese.

Identify the area(s) of interest in the theme and four (4) tracks. Develop a clear understanding of the chosen area(s). Think and search coherently with the appropriate keywords for knowledge and information on the area(s).
The proposal should be a minimum of 800 words and must not exceed 1000 words.
The proposal can make references to other works. The citations of references (APA) within a proposal should be added to the end under a References section and would not count in the 800-1000-word limit of the proposal.
The proposal should not have been part of a presentation in any other conference or previously published online or offline, or under consideration for acceptance as a presentation or publication in any other place.
It is recommended for the proposal to have the following components: objectives/scope; methods and procedures/process of investigation/research, where applicable; results; observations; conclusions; and recommendations.
The inclusion of at least four keywords is mandatory.

Technical details

Proposals should be in Word format. Papers in other formats will be returned to the author.
Times New Roman font, 12pt is the standard
Maintain 1.5 line spacing within paragraphs and 2.0 spacing in between paragraphs.
Please do not insert headers or footers in your proposals.

Presentation slides

PowerPoint or Google Slides should have key talking points with appropriate visuals, clips and video and should not be overly crowded with words.
Each presentation is expected to have 12 -15 slides.
If you use pictures or images in your slides, please ensure there is proper acknowledgement of the source in small print underneath the image or picture.

3. Submission of proposals

Please email your proposal(s) and all other enquiries to programofficer@aflia.net and copy secretariat@aflia.net

4. Changes, Cancellations and Withdrawals

AfLIA views the submission of proposals for presentations as a commitment to register and join others for the present at the 2025 Open Access Week Virtual Summit. Nevertheless, if a presentation is accepted and there are situations that prevent the author(s) from submitting the presentation slides, it is incumbent on such person(s) to communicate such in writing to the AfLIA Secretariat: secretariat@aflia.net; with a copy to programofficer@aflia.net at least by 30^th September, 2025.