OAC 2025 Professional

Applied judgement in open access and open science work. Questions typically describe a situation - a licence conflict, a metadata gap, a policy dispute - and ask for the most defensible course of action. Knowing definitions is necessary but not sufficient; you need to reason about trade-offs between funder requirements, publisher practice, and researcher interests.

It is a multiple-choice examination. The certifying body publishes the current delivery method, sitting arrangements, and any proctoring requirements on its own website; check there before booking, since logistics can change between exam cycles.

The official body publishes the current question count and time limit. Do not rely on figures quoted in forums or study guides, which go out of date. Consult the certifying organisation's site for the authoritative numbers, then practise pacing yourself against them with timed mock sets.

Candidates with day-to-day open access experience usually find the concepts familiar but the scenario questions demanding, because several options are defensible and one is best. People new to the field typically need more time on licensing and repository metadata. Difficulty is less about obscure facts than about precision in applying policy.

Retake rules, waiting periods, and any fees are set by the certifying body and published on its site. Check the current policy before you sit, and note whether a waiting period applies so you can plan a resit date without losing momentum.

Start with foundations and governance so later policy questions have context. Then take the three heavily weighted domains - publishing models, rights and licensing, repositories and RDM - in that order, since licensing decisions depend on understanding business models. Finish with infrastructure, assessment, compliance, advocacy, and equity, which are lighter and easier to absorb once the core is solid.

Three patterns recur: treating Creative Commons licences as interchangeable, especially conflating non-commercial and no-derivatives terms; ignoring funder policy where it is stricter than the journal's default; and choosing the answer that is ethically appealing but operationally impossible. Read each scenario for who is bound by what before selecting.

It helps considerably. Questions about repository deposits, persistent identifiers, and rights retention are much easier if you have handled them. Without that background, substitute structured reading of real policies and repository documentation, and work through worked examples rather than only summaries.

There is no official figure. Most candidates benefit from several weeks of spaced study rather than cramming, weighted toward the three largest domains. Build in time for timed practice and for reviewing every wrong answer to understand why the alternative was better.

Only from the certifying organisation's official website. This page is an independent study resource and is not affiliated with the body that awards the credential, so it deliberately does not restate figures that change between cycles.