4-6 May 2026, Institute for Advanced Studies, Technical University of Munich
Conference URL with preliminary information and submission guidelines: https://opensciencestudies.eu/for-2026-conference/
The future of open research is uncertain. On the one hand, decades of activism and institutional support have placed the value and significance of intelligent strategies and formats for open research (and its dissemination) beyond doubt. Openness is central to the development of trustworthy, accountable, collaborative and socially engaged knowledge. On the other hand, open research measures need to be tailored to diverse research conditions around the globe and across domains, which in turn requires substantial investment, local engagement, responsiveness to the ethical and social dimensions of inquiry, and attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
While the implementation of open science principles is certainly facilitated by ever more accessible digital technologies and training programmes, for many researchers around the world acquiring the expertise and skills to engage in open research practices remains elusive. Exposure to open research initiatives often happens as an end-user rather than as an active contributor. This is because well-resourced environments produce the tools, set the research goals, define the standards and methods, which leads to them benefitting disproportionally from the opportunities. This makes even the best-intentioned projects into opportunities for the best resourced environments (which are often in charge of producing open science tools) to impose their own understanding of research goals, standards and methods on everybody else. Therefore, without domain- and location-specific input, the risk is that open research amplifies existing inequities and discrimination in the production, use and evaluation of knowledge, thereby inflicting damage to the research system instead of the promised improvements. And this is not to mention the ongoing debates over how politically unpalatable open science may be, the extent to which open research has been appropriated by commercial entities such as large publishing companies and digital platforms, the fraught intersection between open science and artificial intelligence, and the ongoing difficulties in supporting and maintaining open research activities and tools in the long term.
This conference brings together scholars, activists and policymakers to consider this challenging landscape and discuss the future of open research. Our goal is to facilitate the development of open research practices explicitly geared to serve the public interest, which involves interrogating what may constitute that ‘public interest’ to different audiences and in different locations around the world. A central element for our discussions will be the development of a Munich Manifesto for Equitable Open Research, detailing ways to utilise open research to foster reliable, responsible, and equitable forms of inquiry. A draft text of the manifesto will be circulated two weeks before the conference to all participants, and one session of the conference will be dedicated to discussing and finalising the declaration and its possible signatories.
We call for contributions by researchers across all fields of knowledge including the arts and humanities, policy-makers interested in research and development, representatives of scholarly and commercial institutions involved in research, and civil society associations engaged in knowledge production. Themes may include, but not be limited to:
- Historical, philosophical and social studies of open research and its implementation
- Ethics and research integrity in the context of open research
- Bibliometric and other data-intensive investigations of open research
- The use of AI in support of socially responsive and responsible forms of open research
- Legal perspectives on open research implementations across different settings
- Training and capacity building for responsive and responsible open research
- Infrastructures and tools supporting responsive and responsible open research
- Policy-making initiatives and recommendations for equitable open research
- Contributions from the arts and humanities to represent open research in alternative formats
Contributions formats
Contributions may consist of abstracts for individual papers (including by large groups of co-authors where appropriate) and posters. The conference will be single stream so we will not have the opportunity to welcome panel proposals; we ask research groups and projects to please bring together their perspective and experiences within one talk, delivered jointly by a maximum of three individuals.Abstracts for both papers and posters are expected to be a maximum of 500 wordsand should be accompanied by a description of the authors’ background ofmaximum 500 words length. When submitting your proposal, you can choose whether you wish to be considered for a talk, a poster or both. The conference language is English. Session presenters of accepted proposals are expected to register for the conference (in-person attendance). Presentations will be recorded for posting online after the conference.
Submission
We use OxfordAbstracts as a submission system. Please submit your contributions through the link provided on the conference website by 30 September 2025 (https://opensciencestudies.eu/for-2026-conference/)
Important dates
- Abstract submission deadline: September 30, 2025
- Notification of acceptance/rejection: October 31, 2025
- Deadline for early bird registration fees: 31 January 2026
- Conference date: May 4-6, 2026, Munich, Germany
Accessibility of materials
It is expected that authors publish materials such as posters and presentation slides as well as session outcomes at least licensed as CC-BY 4.0 or CC-BY-SA 4.0 on Zenodo (you may reserve a DOI before) and make it available to the Future of Open Research Community (coming soon!).