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About OpenCon: conference, satellites & communityOpenCon 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.. |
Organized by the Right to Research Coalition & SPARC
OpenCon is organized by SPARC, the Right to Research Coalition, and a Organizing Committee of students and early career academic professionals from around the world. You can support OpenCon by .
We’re working to make online research & educational materials free to read, share, and modify for all.
Research Papers
We believe in Open Access—the free, immediate, online availability of research articles—to ensure that anyone with an Internet connection can read, use, and build upon research findings.
Research Data
We advocate for Open Research Data so that anyone can freely download, copy, analyze and re-process data. We believe Open Data encourages transparency and collaboration among researchers, accelerates discovery, and allows the public to engage with publicly funded data.
Education
We believe in Open Education to maximize the power of the Internet to make educational materials more affordable, more accessible and more effective for learners. We advocate for Open Education so that teachers can share, adapt, and build off existing materials.
What the community is saying about OpenCon
OpenCon 2014 was the best conference I have ever been to. The presentations, speeches, and workshops as well as all the connections I made at OpenCon educated me about the exciting developments occurring not only in Open Educational Resources, but Open Access and Open Data as well. I left informed and inspired to continue on as an open advocate. Full of word class attendees, organizers, and presenters, OpenCon was a once in a life time opportunity that I will never forget.
Chardaye Bueckert, President of the Simon Fraser Student Society
OpenCon was the most energetic and intellectually stimulating conference I have attended. Meeting people so immersed in Open Access, Open Data and Open Education was inspiring and has since motivated myself and Martin Bentley to start Open Access South Africa: A Student Network. I am honoured to be a part of a community so fully committed to access to education and research across the world.
Uvania Naidoo, Open Access South Africa Co-founder, MA Candidate (UCT)
Blog and News
Upcoming Events
August 2018 Librarian Community Call
This call brings together all librarians working with, or learning about, all things Open--and gives folks an opportunity to connect with each other to better their work and librarianship.
This year's Open Access Week theme is "Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge" (http://www.openaccessweek.org/). Do you have a plan? Are you looking for ideas? Join us for an Open Access Week brainstorming session on August 14 and make the most of the remaining 68 planning days! This brainstorming session will be in a different format from our usual calls. To get the most out of this call you will need access to a computer and the call notes (linked here). The objective of the call is to answer this question: How might we as scholcomm librarians change behavior around diversity, equity and inclusion in our communities during Open Access Week? With a series of brainstorming questions and moderated recapping.
Call Agenda
You can find all the proposed agendas and minutes from the Librarian community calls in one place, right here.
Joining details
To join the conference call from your computer, go to https://www.uberconference.com/SPARCconference.
To join the conference by phone within the US, dial 855 277 1599. To join the conference by phone outside of the US, see https://www.uberconference.com/international. This page provides local dial-in numbers for 50 countries. If available, you can dial into the local number for your country then enter our conference line information when prompted (phone number: 855 277 1599). If a local dial-in number isn’t available for your country, we suggest you either login from your computer using the instructions above or dial the US number using Skype.
What to expect
Community calls are always friendly, and we love new faces. The more you participate, the more you'll get out of it! No doubt there will be a lot of this too.
OpenCon 2018 OGUN
This is a local meeting about Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education: the free availability of scholarly articles, data, and educational resources online. Satellite events are held in partnership with a global annual OpenCon meeting, which will be held in Washington, DC this November 2018.
Our event in Ogun will bring together students, researchers, members of the public, and our esteemed guests who are interested and or into learning more about accessibility of information in research and education.
There will be talks by local speakers and panel sessions to discuss Open Issues and solutions. We believe this event will be relevant to faculty members, lecturers, librarians, professionals and students who are interested in getting involved, or are already involved, with Open initiatives at their institution/organizations.
OpenCon Boulder
Register for free today! bit.ly/OpenConBoulder18 Registration will close August 31.
Are you a student wanting more affordable textbooks? A librarian seeking more information on Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data? Are you a professor curious about open research and interested in supporting more affordable textbooks for your students? Then OpenCon Boulder is for you!
This full day event will start with a keynote from Dr. Bethany Wiggin, co-founder of DataRefuge and the Founding Director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities. Her scholarship explores histories of migration, ecology, language and cultural translation since the Columbian exchange on both sides of the Atlantic world. She aims to engage audiences beyond the academy to participate in making knowledge to connect the arts and sciences.
The keynote will be followed by a panel on “Building Towards an Open Access Future.” Panelists for this event will include a variety of Colorado stakeholders in higher education:
Shelly Miller, Professor, Mechanical Engineering, CU Boulder
Mike Palmquist, Associate Provost for Instructional Innovation, Colorado State University
Shea Swauger, Researcher Support Services, Department Head, Auraria Library
Laura Michaelson, Postdoctoral Researcher, Psychology and Neuroscience, CU Boulder
Following lunch, we will take a deep dive into Open Educational Resources (OER) for a full afternoon advocacy workshop, and an update about local initiatives and legislation. Each attendee will leave with their own engagement plan to apply workshop lessons to their own context and goals.
Join us on September 7 at University of Colorado Boulder to learn, advocate, and lead for open research and more affordable textbooks!
**This is a satellite event of the OpenCon community and does not provide travel scholarships. The main OpenCon conference, which will be held November 1-2 in Toronto, closed applications in early July.**