Date: October 25–29, 2026
Location: Auditorium between Buildings 2 and 3 and online
The University Library’s Open Access Week 2026 brings student and expert panels, three international webinars and the TKS Business Competition to campus under the theme The Cost of Knowledge.
Who pays for knowledge, and who gets to use it? This year’s Open Access Week at KAUST takes up that question through the theme The Cost of Knowledge, shared with Open Access Week observances worldwide.
From 25 to 29 October, the University Library invites students, faculty and staff to look at how knowledge is created, accessed, funded and shared, from the instrument in the lab to the published paper. The week combines in-person discussions with online sessions led by international experts in research data management.
What’s on
Sunday, 25 October
TKS Business Competition: Blueprint to Publishing
1:30–4:00 p.m. | Auditorium between Buildings 2 and 3
Monday, 26 October
Student Discussion Panel: The Cost of Knowledge (Lunch and Learn)
12:00–1:00 p.m. | University Library, SeaView Area
Panelists: Farah Gomawi (Statistics), Murthaza Irfan Ayiranam Veedu (Mechanical Engineering), Mihailo Mirkovic (Chemical Engineering), Michael Oyinloye (Chemical Engineering) and Fareena Rafique (Plant Science)
Webinar: Bridging the Gap: Integrating Electronic Lab Notebooks and Automated Data Acquisition
3:30–4:30 p.m. | Online
Speaker: Dr. Michael Krieger, Chair of Applied Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
Register: kaust.libcal.com/event/17677508
Tuesday, 27 October
Webinar: Tools for Data Management and Sharing: From Instruments to FAIR Repositories: A Browser-Based Workflow for Scientific Data Processing and Knowledge Extraction
3:00–4:00 p.m. | Online
Speaker: Dr. Luc Patiny, EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) and Zakodium Sarl, Switzerland
Register: kaust.libcal.com/event/17634806
Thursday, 29 October
Webinar: Inspirational Data Story: Towards the Digital Analytical Sciences: From FAIR Data Ecosystems to Artificial Intelligence
11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. | Online
Speaker: Prof. Thomas Bocklitz, Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology and Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
Register: kaust.libcal.com/event/17635330
Expert Discussion Panel: The Cost of Knowledge: What will it take to enter the new era of knowledge construction and sharing? (Lunch and Learn)
12:00–1:00 p.m. | University Library, SeaView Area
Panelists: Prof. Sami Al-Ghamdi (Professor, Environmental Science; Associate Dean, BESE), Prof. Brande Wulff (Associate Professor, Plant Science, BESE), Dr. Silvio Giancola (Research Scientist, Generative AI Center of Excellence, CEMSE) and Dr. Vincent Guillerm (Senior Research Scientist, Advanced Membranes and Porous Materials Platform, PSE)
How to take part
Register for the webinars through the links above. For questions, please contact the University Library at library.admin@kaust.edu.sa.
