Discussion forums

This list is part of the Open Access Directory.


 * This is a list of discussion forums (mailing lists, listservs, etc.) centered on OA issues or where OA discussions are frequent and welcome. It also includes OA-related networking groups with discussion components. The list does not include Twitter feeds.
 * When possible, indicate whether the forum is moderated and, if so, by whom. If the list is not primarily in English, please indicate the primary language.
 * Alphabetical order.


 * Related lists in OAD: (1) Discontinued discussion forums, (2) Blogs about OA, and (3) Social media sites about OA.

A

 * A2K (Access to Knowledge). Moderated by Manon Ress of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI).


 * Accès ouvert. Moderated by Christine Berthaud, Jean-Christophe Peyssard, Jean-François Lutz, Marin Dacos, Pierre Mounier. In french.


 * Altmetrics. A Google Group moderated by Jason Priem.

B

 * BOAI Forum. The forum associated with the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Moderated by Iryna Kuchma.

C

 * California Electronic Theses and Dissertations (CAETD) Interest Group. Its listserv is by invitation only.


 * CARPET Forum. From the CARPET (Community for Academic Reviewing, Publishing and Editorial Technology) project.


 * Commons Research.


 * CopyrightandA2Kinfo. From Denise Nicholson.

D

 * Digital Humanities Questions & Answers. From the Association For Computers And The Humanities.
 * Also see the discussion threads tagged with "open access".


 * Digital Repository Federation ML. from Digital Repository Federation, a federation, which aims to promote Open Access and Institutional Repository in Japan.


 * Discuss Info Page. Run by FreeCulture.


 * Directory of Open Access Books. From Coventry University, UK.


 * DPLA-Discussion. From the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

E

 * Economics of Open Access. Moderated by Alastair Dryburgh.


 * eIFL - Open Access program announcement and discussion list. Moderated by Iryna Kuchma, from eIFL.


 * Eprints Community. The forum associated with the eprints archiving software.

F

 * fcforum. The Free Culture Forum (FCF) from the Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to knowledge.


 * FoRC. A Google Group from Force11.

G

 * Global Open Access List (GOAL). Moderated by Richard Poynder.
 * This list is the successor to the American Scientist Open Access Forum, which ran from 1998 until 2011, and was moderated by Stevan Harnad.

I

 * IP-OA Forum. "Expertenforum für die von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft geförderte Informationsplattform Open Access."  In German.


 * IRtalk. "To discuss, communicate, share information on all open access and institutional repositories related issues in Africa and South Africa."

J

 * JISC-REPOSITORIES. "For general, cross domain issues" about repositories.

L

 * Lista Latinoamericana sobre Acceso Abierto y Repositorios. Google group. In Spanish.

M

 * Maastricht-Science. Moderated by the Open Knowledge Foundation.


 * MERLOT-Africa. On OA and OERs in Africa.

N

 * National Information Standards Organization: oa-indicators-info Mailing List Home.
 * NZ AU Open Research. Google group in connection to New Zealand-Australia Open Research (NZAU Open Research). Posting limited to group moderators.

O

 * OAC-General. Google Group.


 * OAI-Announce list and OAI-Eprints list from the Open Archives Initiative.


 * OaPN @ CUNY. From the Open Access Publishing Network @ CUNY.


 * OData Mailing List. From the Open Data Protocol.


 * OpenAIRE-ga. From the OpenAIRE General Assembly.


 * Open Access. One of the groups in the WSIS Community of Platforms.  By invitation only.


 * OpenAccess-be Discussion List. Moderated by François Renaville, Gwen Franck, and Inge Van Nieuwerburgh in connection to Open Access Belgium.


 * Open Access Digital Libraries. Yahoo Group. Moderated.


 * Open Access India. Google group, launched in July 2011.


 * OpenAccess Mailing List - Wikimedia. Moderated by Andrea Zanni, Lane Rasberry, and Pete Forsyth.


 * Open Access Publishing - The Research Cooperative. Established by Peter J. Matthews. Moderated.


 * open-contentmining. Moderated by Jenny Molloy, Katelyn Rogers, and Peter Murray-Rust.


 * opencon-forum. Google group in connection to OpenCon conference. Unmoderated.


 * Open Data Commons Discuss List. Connected to Open Knowledge Foundation project Open Data Commons, moderated by Jordan S. Hatcher.


 * Open Data Ireland. Google Group.


 * WSIS Knowledge Communities: Open Educational Resources (OER). Moderated by Abel Caine and Lydia Liu.


 * Open Journal System interessenetværk. On OJS and OCS, from the Nordic OxS User Group.  Mostly in Danish, with some Swedish, Norwegian, and English.


 * Open Knowledge Foundation Lists. The Open Knowledge Foundation runs several discussion lists related to open access. See in particular:
 * ok-berlin - local list for Berlin, DE
 * ok-cambridge - local list for Cambridge, UK
 * ok-oxford - local list for Oxford, UK
 * okfn-discuss - for discussion of open knowledge related activities, projects, etc.
 * okfn-fr - local list for France. In French.
 * open-access - "A list to discuss issues surrounding true open access"
 * open-archaeology - a list for those interested in open data in archaeology
 * open-glam - a list for people interested in open data and open content in the cultural heritage sector.
 * open-legislation - a list for people interested in tracking legislation in a transparent fashion.
 * open-literature - discussion of the Open Shakespeare project and "open literature" in general
 * open-philosophy - a list for those interested in open philosophy texts
 * open-science - general discussion list for open science.
 * open-science-ox - a list for open science in Oxford
 * ok-scotland - open knowledge and data in Scotland.
 * open-sustainability - a list for open sustainability
 * open-transport - A list for those interested in open data about transport
 * openbiblio-dev - open bibliographic tools and data developer list
 * opendesign - the open design and hardware discussion list
 * pd-calculators - for discussion of public domain calculators project


 * Open Policy Network. Google group associated with the Open Policy Network. Unmoderated.


 * Open-Repositories. Google group. From Open Repositories Conference.


 * OS-Repositorios is a forum on institutional repositories in Spain and OA issues, in general. Administered by Reme Melero. To subscribe the list send an email to     with the message 'Subscribe OS-Repositorios Name Surname' in the body of the message.


 * Open-science-nl. Moderated by Graham Steel and Egon Willighagen.


 * Open Science Framework. Google Group. From Open Science Framework.


 * Open Up: Opening Up the Natural History Heritage for Europeana. From EUROPEANA.


 * OUseful.Info (RSS feed). "Trying to find useful things to do with emerging technologies in open education."  From Tony Hirst.


 * Ozeprints. On OA archiving developments in Australia. Moderated by Belinda Weaver. To subscribe, send an e-mail to  with the message 'subscribe ozeprints' in the body of the message.

P

 * PLoS Community Boards from the Public Library of Science.


 * Peer to Peer Foundation Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices

R

 * REPOMAN-L. A list for repository managers.
 * /r/BestOfPublicDomain. Subreddit. Moderated by whatswiththesefrogs et al.
 * /r/creativecommons. Subreddit. Moderated by nuotone, elliotharmon, mindspillage, and robmyers.
 * /r/csbooks. Subreddit. Moderated by roger_. "...computer science textbooks that have been released online for free by their authors/publishers."
 * /r/econbooks. Subreddit. Moderated by roger_. "...economics textbooks that have been released online for free by their authors/publishers."
 * /r/eebooks. Subreddit. Moderated by roger_, DownloadableCheese, and Basuhball. "...electrical/computer engineering textbooks that have been released online for free by their authors/publishers...".
 * /r/Foamed. Subreddit. Moderated by Henipah et al.
 * /r/FOANed. Subreddit. Moderated by granolapher.
 * /r/JScholarPublishers. Subreddit. Moderated by JScholarJournals.
 * /r/mathbooks. Subreddit. Moderated by roger_. "...mathematics textbooks that have been released online for free by their authors/publishers."
 * /r/mooc. Subreddit. Moderated by idontlikebacon.
 * /r/moocs. Subreddit. Moderated by onebit.
 * /r/OpenAccess. Subreddit. Moderated by cambrian44.
 * /r/openaccesspapers. Subreddit. Moderated by derjames.
 * /r/openanthro. Subreddit. Moderated by kerimfriedman.
 * /r/openculture. Subreddit. Moderated by SolidLiquid2.
 * /r/opendata. Subreddit. Moderated by mcantelon and RA_Fisher.
 * /r/opendata_pt. Subreddit (in Portuguese). Moderated by keynesiano, hgg, psenough, and luluganeta.
 * /r/Open_Science. Subreddit. Moderated by ScienceOpen, protohedgehog, colditzjb, and jmdugan.
 * /r/OpenScience. Subreddit. Moderated by jbphysreddit, thecandle, jmdugan, and MrGunn.
 * /r/physicsbooks. Subreddit. Moderated by roger_. "...physics textbooks that have been released online for free by their authors/publishers."
 * /r/Public_Domain. Subreddit. Moderated by pddepot.
 * /r/publicdomain. Subreddit. Moderated by epicRelic et al.
 * /r/reviewpapers. Subreddit. Moderated by gfursin.
 * /r/utsepress. Subreddit. Moderated by utsepress.

S

 * Scholastica: The Conversation. From Scholastica.


 * ScholComm from the Association of College and Research Libraries. On scholarly communication.


 * SciTech -- Tech Implementations for Open Science. Moderated by Victoria Stodden and Sheila Miguez.


 * Shared Knowledge. From Citizendium but the discussion is not limited to Citizendium.


 * SPARC Author Rights Forum. From SPARC.  Moderated by Kevin Smith.


 * SPARC Institutional Repositories. From SPARC.


 * SPARC Open Access Forum (SOAF) from SPARC. On OA developments broadly construed. Moderated by Stacie Lemick.


 * SPARC Open Data. From SPARC. Moderated by Peter Murray-Rust.


 * SPARC Subject Repositories Forum. From SPARC.  Moderated by Jessica Adamick, Julie Kelly, and Rebecca Reznik-Zellen.


 * SSP-L from the Society for Scholarly Publishing.


 * Stockholm Open Science. Google group. Unmoderated.

V

 * Verbesserung des Zugangs zu wissenschaftlichen Informationen. In German.

W

 * WSIS Follow-up: C3 - Access to Information and Knowledge. From UNESCO.


 * WSIS OA Knowledge Community. From UNESCO.