The purpose of this year's theme is to shed light on approaches to open scholarship that serve the best interests of the public and the academic community. At the National Library of Sweden (Kungliga biblioteket, KB), we work with open access and other aspects of open science every day, year round. Among other things, we are tasked with promoting and coordinating the national work towards open access to scholarly publications. The ultimate goal is for research results to be free and accessible for everyone to engage with, reuse, and build upon.

The National Library engages in OA Week:

• On Monday, 21 October, we will publish a post about several journal editors’ experiences managing an academic journal on the open publishing platform Publicera. You can read more about Publicera in the summary below.
  Read the post (published Monday 21 October) External link.
• On Tuesday, 22 October, Erik Stattin, head of the Research Collaboration Unit at KB, will participate in the LundOnline conference to talk about the national guidelines for open science that KB has developed. You can read more about the national guidelines below and in a recent interview with Erik Stattin on Mälardalen University's library websiteLänk till annan webbplats. External link..
  View the LundOnline programLänk till annan webbplats. External link.
• On Thursday, 24 October, there will be a digital launch event for Open Science in Practice – a course on the Digiteket learning platform, developed in collaboration with KB (in Swedish).
  Read about the course and launch event (in Swedish) External link.
• On Thursday, 24 October, the webinar "The transition to open science at universities – a progress report" will also be broadcast (in Swedish), with Anna Lundén, head of the Department for Collaboration at KB, participating alongside representatives from the Swedish Research Council and the Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions (SUHF). Among other things, they will discuss how best to advance the development towards open access to publications.
  Read more and register for the webinar (in Swedish) External link.

Here is a brief summary of some of the areas we work with:

• Open Access
  Every year, KB publishes a report External link. that provides a comprehensive overview, analysis, and assessment of the national work on open access to scholarly publications. KB regularly compiles statistics showing the development of open access to scholarly articles in Sweden. The latest report, for 2023, shows that 77 per cent of Swedish peer-reviewed scholarly articles were published with immediate open access, an increase of two percentage points compared to the previous year.
  KB is also responsible for reporting the total costs for scholarly publishing External link. at Swedish higher education institutions. For 2023, the costs amounted to SEK 799 million, an increase of 8.2 percent from the previous year.
  
• National Guidelines for Open Science
  KB was tasked by the government with developing national guidelines for open science External link. in Sweden. The guidelines were presented in January 2024. Six areas are identified as particularly important to develop in Sweden: open access to scholarly publications, open access to research data, open research methods, open educational resources, public engagement in science and infrastructures supporting open science.
  
• Publicera
  PubliceraLänk till annan webbplats. External link. is the national platform for Swedish scholarly open access journals, which KB manages and develops. Since the platform’s launch three years ago, the number of journals on Publicera has steadily grown, and there are now 35 affiliated journals, with another five to be launched shortly.
  
• Swepub
  SwepubLänk till annan webbplats. External link. collects metadata on research publications from Swedish higher education institutions. As part of the open research infrastructure, Swepub provides freely available data and code. Through the DatastatusLänk till annan webbplats. External link. service (in Swedish), you can monitor the proportion of publications in Swepub that are open access.
• Bibsam Consortium
  Since 1996, KB has negotiated licence agreements for electronic information resources on behalf of Swedish universities, university colleges, public agencies and research institutes. Bibsam's action plan External link. aims to accelerate the development of an open publishing system, through supporting and promoting new paths to open publishing, developing alternative business models and not signing agreements for reading and publishing in hybrid journals.