OpenCon is more than a conference - it’s also a platform to catalyze action toward a more equitable, open system for sharing the world’s information.  OpenCon, especially around our application period, is often a way for new people to start to learn, get involved and join the open community. We think this is critical to the mainstreaming and acceleration of the movement - so we've been asking people to get the word out about OpenCon.

Last week, we received an e-mail from Louvier Kindo detailing how he had spent the day spreading the word about OpenCon on his campus at the University of Douala.  We wanted to thank Louvier for his efforts in growing our community, as well as share what he had to say about his experience:

I was out today on campus at the University of Douala, one of the biggest universities in Douala, and one of the biggest in the country.

My day started with the printing of OpenCon posters and producing OpenCon fliers and leaflets.  Then, I entered the school campus where I posted the poster on almost all the notice boards of the different faculties of the university.

I equally thought it wise to talk to some students about the conference and its opportunities.  After each talk, I handed out the fliers to them and also directed and encouraged them to visit the website on it. Some were happy, while others said they will visit the site to have other clarifications and guarantee which I thought was also a good idea.

I left the campus happy to have reached a good number of students and convinced that with the posters up, many will get to know about. Unfortunately, today was a Saturday and most of the libraries were closed. On the other hand, I have posted the posters and other post on social media and shared it over in some relevant groups and tagged #OpenCon.

It was really fun as you suggested, and I loved it.

We’d love if you could also spread the word about OpenCon to your colleagues and networks! We have a collection of posters, graphics, and sample blurbs for you to use here.  

Feel free to let us know if you’ve helped out!  We’ll be sure to make a note of the work you’ve done helping build the OpenCon community.

The application period for OpenCon 2016 on November 12-14 in Washington, DC is now open! The application is available at http://www.opencon2016.org/apply and includes the opportunity to apply for a travel scholarship. Applications will close on July 11th at 11:59pm U.S. Pacific Time.

OpenCon seeks to bring together effective, engaged students and early career academic professionals from around the world to advance Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data—regardless of their ability to pay for travel costs. In OpenCon’s first two years, most attendees received full or partial scholarships to attend the conference. For this reason, attendance at OpenCon is by application only.

Apply Now

The benefits of applying for OpenCon 2016 extend far beyond attending the Washington, DC meeting. It’s an opportunity to find new collaborators, get connected with scholarships to attend related conferences, and be recognized by the community for the work you do to promote openness in research and education! Applications are reviewed by alumni from the OpenCon community, and those applicants whom community members identify as doing key work to advance Open Access, Open Education, or Open Data will receive public recognition.

Students and early career academic professionals of all experience levels are encouraged to apply. We want to support those who have ideas for new projects and initiatives in addition to those who are already leading them. The most important criteria is an interest in advancing Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data and a commitment to taking action.

Speakers at previous OpenCon conferences have included Jimmy Wales (Co-founder of Wikipedia), Amy Rosenbaum (Director of Legislative Affairs to the President of the United States), Mike Eisen and Pat Brown (Co-founders of PLOS), Julia Reda (Member of the European Parliament), and Phil Bourne (Associate Director for Data Science of the U.S. National Institutes of Health), and more than 15 students and early career academic professionals leading successful initiatives.

While attendance at the main conference in Washington, DC is by application only, everyone is invited to participate freely in the interactive webcast, OpenCon Live. OpenCon is also looking for partners to host local satellite events that combine some of the programming from the main conference with local presentations to advance the conversation around opening up research and education in your community. To express your interest in hosting a satellite event and get more information, visit http://www.opencon2016.org/satellite.

The meeting in Washington, DC serves as the centerpiece of a much larger network to foster initiatives and collaboration among the next generation across OpenCon’s issue areas. Become an active part of the community by joining our discussion list, tuning in for our monthly community calls and webcasts, or hosting an OpenCon satellite event in your community.

Finally, we would appreciate your help in spreading the word about this year's OpenCon application process! You can find a suite of resources to share the call for applications (including template emails, graphics, posters, and more) at http://www.opencon2016.org/sharing_resources.

Apply now, and join the OpenCon community today!

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OpenCon is the conference for students and early career academic professionals interested in advancing Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data. OpenCon is hosted by SPARC and the Right to Research Coalition.

SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is a global coalition committed to making Open the default for research and education. SPARC empowers people to solve big problems and make new discoveries through the adoption of policies and practices that advance Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education. Learn more at sparcopen.org.

The Right to Research Coalition is an international alliance of graduate and undergraduate student organizations, which collectively represent nearly 7 million students in over 100 countries around the world, that advocate for and educate students about open methods of scholarly publishing.  The Right to Research Coalition is a project of SPARC.

Today, SPARC and the Right to Research Coalition are excited to announce OpenCon 2016 will be returning to Washington, DC on November 12-14, 2016, where it will be hosted at the American University Washington College of Law.

OpenCon is more than a conference. It’s a platform for the next generation to learn about Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data, develop critical skills, and catalyze action toward a more open system for sharing the world’s information—from scholarly and scientific research, to educational materials, to digital research data. OpenCon 2016 is at the center of a growing community with thousands of students and early career academic professionals from across the world.

Applications to attend OpenCon 2016 in Washington, DC will open on June 6th. For more information about the conference and to sign up for updates, visit www.opencon2016.org/updates.

Organized by the Right to Research Coalition and SPARC, OpenCon 2016 builds on the success of the first two OpenCon conferences held in Washington, DC and Brussels, which collectively convened approximately 300 participants from more than 40 countries. OpenCon’s 41 satellite events have reached approximately 2,000 attendees across 25 countries, and throughout the year, hundreds are engaged with monthly community calls and webcasts along with an active community discussion list.

OpenCon seeks to bring together the most energetic, engaged students and early career academic professionals—regardless of their ability to cover travel costs. Because of this, attendance at OpenCon is by application only, and the majority of past participants have received travel scholarships.

OpenCon has made significant progress in its mission to catalyze and support collaboration and projects led by the next generation. Initiatives that have been founded by OpenCon alumni with support from the community include the Open Access Button, Open Access Nepal, Open Access Nigeria, the OOOCanada Research Network, Open Access Sudan, WhyOpenResearch?, the Open Access Academy, Dissem.in, the Open Research Glossary, and many more.

OpenCon 2016’s three day program will begin with two days of keynotes, panels, and interactive workshops, drawing on both the knowledge of leading experts and the experience of participants who lead successful projects. The third day will provide a half-day of advocacy training followed by the opportunity for in-person meetings with relevant policy makers, ranging from the US Congress and federal agencies to embassies and key NGOs.

Speakers at the first two OpenCon conferences have included Jimmy Wales (Co-founder of Wikipedia), Amy Rosenbaum (Director of Legislative Affairs to the President of the United States), Mike Eisen and Pat Brown (Co-founders of PLOS), Julia Reda (Member of the European Parliament), and Phil Bourne (Associate Director for Data Science of the U.S. National Institutes of Health), and more than 15 students and early career academic professionals leading successful initiatives.

The OpenCon conference and community are only possible with the support of leading organizations with a strong commitment to support student and early career academic professional involvement across Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data. We deeply appreciate the support of our past sponsors, including the Max Planck Society, PLOS, eLife, BioMed Central, SpringerOpen, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Overleaf, Microsoft Research, Figshare, Creative Commons USA, and the more than 30 universities and organizations that have sponsored individual scholarships. If your organization is interested in supporting OpenCon, you can find more information and a variety of sponsorship opportunities at www.opencon2016.org/sponsor.

Satellite events will continue to be central to the success of OpenCon in allowing the community to scale. OpenCon satellite events are independently hosted meetings that mix content from the main conference with live presenters to localize the discussion and bring the energy of an in-person OpenCon event to a larger audience. These events are an excellent way to discover those interested in Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data within your community, build support, and catalyze action. If you or your organization are interested in hosting a satellite event, more information is available at www.opencon2016.org/satellite.

If your organization is interested in helping to promote OpenCon and find students and early career academic professionals in your community interested in these issues, consider becoming an OpenCon Partner.

Applications to attend OpenCon 2016 open June 6th. For more information about the conference and to sign up for updates, visit www.opencon2016.org/updates. You can follow OpenCon on Twitter at @Open_Con or #opencon,and on Facebook.

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SPARC®, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is a global coalition committed to making Open the default for research and education. SPARC empowers people to solve big problems and make new discoveries through the adoption of policies and practices that advance Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education. Learn more at sparcopen.org.

The Right to Research Coalition is an international alliance of graduate and undergraduate student organizations, which collectively represent nearly 7 million students in over 100 countries around the world, that advocate for and educate students about open methods of scholarly publishing.  The Right to Research Coalition is a project of SPARC.

Tuesday, April 5th was the first OpenCon Community Call for Early Career Librarians--and it was a success! The call’s intention was to bring together early career librarians working with, or learning about, all things Open--and give folks an opportunity to connect with each other to better their work and librarianship.

Like all OpenCon Community Calls, you can find the meeting’s agenda, and all of the Community Call agendas, here: http://bit.ly/OpenConCommunityCalls.

We are looking to grow our Early Career Librarian call, so please--join in! Work in new directions in librarianship can often feel isolating, but know you are not alone--there is a fantastic community waiting to hear your ideas and encourage your enthusiasm. Details for our next call can be found here:  http://bit.ly/OpenConCommunityCalls. Until then, please join our Community Discussion group: http://www.opencon2016.org/community_discussion

If you are an MLIS/MLS student, join! If you a new librarian, join! If you find yourself working with Open for the first time, join! 

Next Early Career Librarian Call: Tuesday, May 10th @ 6pm CET, 5pm GMT, 12 EDT, 9am PST

Arabic speaking members of the OpenCon Community had their first Arabic language webcast a couple of weeks ago to discuss the status of Open Data and Open Access in the Arab World. This was the first non-English OpenCon Community Call, and organizer Riyadh Al Balushi has provided a summary of the discussion. 

Arabic speaking members of the OpenCon Community had their first Arabic language webcast a couple of weeks ago to discuss the status of Open Data and Open Access in the Arab World. This was the first non-English OpenCon Community Call, and as OpenCon is open to replicating this experiment with other languages, I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the things we discussed in this webcast in a blog post so that other members of the community have an idea of what is happening in our region.

The webcast I moderated featured a number of OpenCon alumni from different Arab countries as well as a couple of Arab Open Data experts. The panel consisted of Aisha Gharaibeh - Jordanian Alumni of OpenCon 2014 and medical intern doctor in King Abdullah University Hospital, Osman Aldirdiri - Sudanese Alumni of OpenCon 2014 and founder of Open Sudan, Mohamed Hegazy - Egyptian Alumni of OpenCon 2015 and co-founder of Transport for Cairo, Sadeek Hasna - lawyer from Syria and Open Data advocate, and Yousuf Al-Busaidi - lawyer from Oman and co-founder of Qanoon.om. The webcast was only a few days after the Open Data Day and took place during the Open Education Week. We decided to focus on Open Data in the Arab World, but also touched upon Open Access and Open education.

The first panelist to speak was Aisha who shared with us the difficulties that the Open Access movement in Jordan faces. We learnt from Aisha that academics in Jordan are under the same pressure facing academics in universities all around the world to publish in traditional high profile journals to improve their chances of getting promoted. Institutional repositories are also unheard of in Jordan, and even though many Jordanian universities have electronic system for managing their educational resources, such systems are not available to other universities or the public in general. On the bright side, there  are a number of promising educational initiatives in Jordan, such as the Jordan Education Initiative - an initiative for providing schools with integrat educational systems and e-resources, and Edraak - an Arabic language MOOC portal. Even though such initiatives are not “Open” in technical sense, they signal the existence of efforts in Jordan to share knowledge and improve education using technology.

Osman spoke to us about Open Sudan, a student initiative that he founded to raise awareness of Open Data, Open Access, and Open Educational Resources in Sudan. Open Sudan has a number of projects that currently focus on medical Data and medical research. The first of these projects is a database for collecting research data from medical student research results. This database is already available to the public and is used in developing programs for combating diseases in Sudan. Another project by Open Sudan is a public database concerned more with educational materials that provides Open Access to the research output of medical students and academics across Sudan. The project currently focuses on research in medicine, but there are plans to eventually make it available for other disciplines outside medicine.

I recently worked with Sadeek on a report about Open Data in the Arab World and he gave us an overview of the status of government Open Data across the Arab World. Sadeek highlighted some of the recent good examples of Open Data in the Arab world such as the websites for the Emirati National Budget Data, the Qatar and Omani Legislation Data, the Egyptian Elections Data, and the Bahraini Company Data. Sadeek explained that these success stories are strangely not part of the official government Open Data projects in these countries, but are independent run by organisations not directly concerned with Open Data. On the other hand, official government Open Data portals in the Arab World appear to be not user friendly, and the data published on them is usually out of data. Sadeek also pointed out that this problem probably arises out of the lack of understanding of the principles of Open Data by government employees in these countries, and that the principle of technically openness and legal openness must be seriously considered for government Open Data in the Arab World to achieve its potential.

Hegazy shared with us his experience working on Transport for Cairo, a project that aims to create a map for all the means of public transportation in Cairo. Hegazy shared with how ‘scale’ is the biggest problem for achieving such a project, and how his team saw the ‘Open Data’ approach as a key element for the success of Transport for Cairo, especially because having the data open can help members of the public develop applications around Transport for Cairo, can provide researchers with analytical data, and provide entrepreneurs in Egypt with new business opportunities. Hegazy’s team has been working on this project for six months now and already have a database that covers the metro details such as the map and train timing using the GTFS open standard.  

Yousuf told us about his experience as a co-founder of Qanoon.om, a website for making Omani legislation data available the public. The website is the only resource that publishes all primary Omani legislation text for free on the internet. Even though the Omani government attempts to make this data available to the public, it is lacking in several areas. Yousuf noted that what makes Qanoon.om possible is the fact that the government has a legal obligation to release this data periodically and that the data is exempt from copyright protection, hence the data can be provided on Qanoon.om easily and systematically. The website is already used by thousands of people in Oman such as lawyers, civil servants, researchers and members of the public.inset 

It was great to learn about the developments of “Openness” in the Arab World and to learn about the different Open Data projects in the Arab World. Like the rest of the world, members of the public in the Arab World are data-hungry and are looking forward to see their governments put more effort in this regard.

Watch the Community Call

Rachel Obbard, Assistant Professor of Engineering at Thayer School of engineering at Dartmouth, attended OpenCon 2015 and shared her experience in a two part blog post. Check out her posts on Darmouth College Library's blog: Making Opportunities for Scholarship More Open: Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education (part 1) and OpenCon: Early Career Researchers Pave the Way (part 2). 

If you weren’t able to join us for OpenCon 2015 (or even if you were!), you can enjoy the inspiring, enlightening, and provocative talks from the conference through our high quality video recordings. Nearly every session was recorded, and most are complete with slides, photos, and notes.

Checkout all the materials, share them with your friends, and let us know what you think by tweeting with the hashtag #opencon!