Media Resources

OpenCon is a unique conference series and community that aims to empower the next generation to advance Open Access, Open Education and Open Data. Once a year, OpenCon brings together leading students and early career academic professionals from across the world to learn about the issues, develop critical skills, and return home ready to catalyze action toward a more open system for sharing the world’s information — from scholarly and scientific research, to educational materials, to digital data.

“I think I will look back on my career in 10, 20, 30 years and see this conference as a game changing moment. “ - OpenCon 2014 Participant

In partnership with the main conference, which changes location each year, many satellites events are arranged annually. 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.

With the annual events at the core, OpenCon supports a dynamic, growing community that works year round to advance Open Access, Open Education and Open Data. This community is supported through an active email discussion list, monthly calls and webcasts. For more information and to join the community, go to opencon2017.org/community/.

“OpenCon was more than just the best conference I have ever attended, it was the beginning of a community - people that I will keep in touch with and collaborate with and be inspired by for the rest of my career. ” - OpenCon 2014 Participant

OpenCon was convened in response to incredible desire from the next generation to advance these issues. In 2016, OpenCon was received more than 10,000 applications to attend from 176 countries. OpenCon is only possible through the generous support of leading organizations throughout the open research and education community.

OpenCon is organized by the Right to Research Coalition, SPARC, and an Organizing Committee of students and early career researchers from around the world.

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.

SPARC®, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system. Developed by the Association of Research Libraries, SPARC has become a catalyst for change. Its pragmatic focus is to stimulate the emergence of new scholarly communication models that expand the dissemination of scholarly research and reduce financial pressures on libraries. More information can be found at www.sparcopen.org and on Twitter @SPARC_NA.