Berit Anderson is the Open Access Toolkit Project Lead. Berit works at Ngā Ratonga Manaaki Rangahau | Research Services, Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland. Berit’s blog post on the Open Access Toolkit has been republished with permission. It was originally published by IFLA on January 24 here.

Globally, openly accessible research is growing exponentially. However, Aotearoa New Zealand’s open access rate has increased slower than the world’s. In 2023, Te Pōkai Tara (Universities New Zealand) released the Pan-University Statement on Open Access, committing to drive and support open access across the university sector. Their goal is to elevate the national percentage of open research to 70% by 2025.

To support this initiative, the Council of Aotearoa New Zealand University Librarians (CONZUL) sponsored a project to create a resource that guides New Zealand’s researchers through the open-access publishing process. To ensure nationwide relevance, ten librarians from Aotearoa New Zealand’s eight universities formed a project team to develop the Open Access Toolkit for Aotearoa New Zealand Researchers. The toolkit is organised into five stages of publishing, which are familiar to all researchers:

• Planning your research
• Selecting a journal
• Submitting your manuscript
• On acceptance
• After publication

The project team worked collaboratively and remotely to co-design and produce the OA Toolkit from March 2023 until its official launch in February 2024. The toolkit is hosted by Open Access Australasia and is reviewed twice a year for accuracy. It comprises two key resources:

1. A ready-to-use, institution-neutral version (PDF) that any researcher can download and share, along with an accessible alternative in Word format and
2. We offer Free Canva and Word templates that any institution can adapt and modify to promote its specific policies, resources, and support teams.

Originally designed in a New Zealand context, this free Canva template is easily customisable and adaptable to other countries’ unique academic environments publishing.

For excellent examples of how others have modified the original template, please refer to the OA Toolkits from Charles Sturt University and Waikato University. The toolkit is available for free and open reuse under a CC BY-SA licence. We hope you find this resource relevant and valuable—adapt!