Call for Proposals

 

Shaping change with responsibility

Submission and Deadlines

All contributions must be submitted via ConfTool, including the authors and their affiliations.

Please include a short bibliographical note (max. 300 words) for all contributors.

Deadline for presentations (sessions) and workshops: April 19, 2026
Deadline for posters and the tool marketplace: June 14, 2026

You can find the ConfTool submission page here: https://www.conftool.org/oat2026/ 

We kindly ask all presenters to create an account and to pay the participation fees upon registration.

Scientific publishing is subject to continuous change, challenging the entire publication system as well as the organisations and stakeholders involved. Open access is a central driver of this transformation; at the same time, technological, geopolitical, and financial changes repeatedly confront us with new challenges and questions.

In recent years, the supposedly stable environment for academic publishing has come under increasing pressure. The long-term reliability of infrastructures, access to knowledge, and the availability of services can no longer be taken for granted. As a result, questions of responsibility, accountability, and the sustainable design of scientific publishing are becoming ever more urgent.

In light of these developments, the Open Access Days 2026 in Linz will address the assumption and distribution of responsibility. What do these changes mean for publication formats, infrastructures, concepts of authorship, business models, or collaborations? How does this transformation affect publishing cultures, organisations, responsibilities, and professional profiles? What solutions are available to address the wide range of challenges involved in further establishing open access under a shared responsibility model?

We particularly welcome contributions on the following topics:

  • Publishing in transition: What defines an open access publication? Journal articles are typically the main focus of attention. However, the diversity of publications (e.g., digital editions, data publications, enhanced publications) in the academic disciplines goes far beyond this. How can we support and shape the different publishing cultures and the emerging publication formats?
  • Ethical and legal frameworks: How can policies and principles be designed to sustainably advance open access? Legal challenges extend beyond issues of copyright and licensing. Specific questions also include topics such as publishing agreements, retaining authors’ rights, journal title rights, and governance models.
  • Open infrastructures: Open, scholar-owned infrastructures already support scientific publishing today. How can these systems be further developed and operated collaboratively to ensure stability, sustainability, and needs-based development? And in the face of various challenges, how can we secure long-term access to research results and data?

The programme committee of the Open Access Days 2026 warmly invites submissions that address these questions, analyse existing challenges, present solutions, and open up new perspectives. Academic presentations, experience reports, and practice-oriented workshops on all aspects of open access are also welcome.

To enable exchange and discussion among participants, we encourage the submission of interactive formats such as workshops in particular.

The Open Access Days are the central annual conference on open access in the German-speaking region. They are aimed at everyone who is closely engaged with the opportunities, conditions, and perspectives of scholarly publishing. This includes researchers as well as staff from libraries and other research infrastructure institutions, as well as members of research administration and publishers.

 

The Open Access Days 2026 will take placefrom September 28 to September 30, 2026.

We kindly ask all speakers to register regularly and to pay the participation fees upon registration..

Submissions can be made for the following formats: presentations, workshops, posters, and a tool marketplace.

The conference language of the Open Access Days 2026 is German. Contributions in English are also welcome.

Presentations

Presentations with a maximum duration of 15 minutes may be submitted. The programme committee will, where possible, group selected submissions into thematically aligned, moderated sessions. Each session lasts 90 minutes and includes no more than three presentations to allow sufficient time for discussion. 

Please submit an abstract with of no more than 300 words. Up to two speakers may be specified per presentation. Additional contributors can be acknowledged in the abstract and/or in the presentation. If your submission is related to others or if you would like it to be considered for inclusion in a joint session, please indicate this at the time of submission.

We aim to record as many presentations as possible and make them available after the conference, as well as to publish all presentation slides on Zenodo under an open access licence (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, CC BY 4.0

Workshops

Practice-oriented 90-minute workshops may be submitted. The focus of the workshops is on the collaborative and structured development of outcomes. Please submit an abstract of up to 300 words describing the topic and its relevance to the theme of the Open Access Days. In addition, please provide the following information:

  • What is the intended target audience?
  • What are the learning objectives for participants, and what outcomes do you aim to achieve?
  • How is the workshop structured?
  • Which methods will be used and which tools would you like to employ?
  • What is the maximum number of participants?  

Please note that workshops are not presentation panels. An interactive format is expected in the selection of workshops. Up to five organisers may be specified per workshop.

Poster

Posters are full conference contributions and may present current research results or projects related to open access. All selected posters will be presented by the authors during a poster session at the conference and discussed with participants.

All submissions received by the deadline will be reviewed by the poster jury of the programme committee. In addition to the content, the presentation of the posters will also be taken into account (clear structure, significance, readability, comprehensibility, visualisation, and innovative design). Submitted posters must be final versions (sketches or conceptual drafts cannot be considered). The poster jury may make acceptance conditional upon revisions.

In the event of final acceptance, authors are required to publish their poster independently in the Zenodo community of the 2026 Open Access Days. Posters must be published under an open access licence (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, CC BY 4.0). Please indicate the licence on the poster in accordance with Creative Commons guidelines (correct title and link to the licence text). Any necessary rights clearances must be obtained in advance. Where possible, please also include the ORCID iD of all contributing submitters on the poster.

As posters should also be brought in printed form, it is recommended to prepare them in A0 portrait format. Posters from previous years may serve as a useful reference.

Please upload your final poster as a PDF file along with an abstract to ConfTool.

Tool marketplace

The tool marketplace is a demo session for non-commercial software applications (preferably open source) related to open access. Contributors are expected to briefly present their tools via a live demonstration and then engage with participants to discuss possible applications and gather feedback.

Submissions for the tool marketplace session must include the following information:

  • Description of the tool
  • Where possible, a link to a working version of the application
  • Information on the software licence
  • Details of the relationship between the contributors and the software presented
  • Information on any specific technical requirements for the presentation

Please submit an abstract of up to 300 words. The abstract must include a link to the tool and/or the associated project.

Moderation

As in previous years, we are once again looking to recruit particularly committed and communicative participants of the Open Access Days as moderators. If you have experience in moderating presentations, workshops, or discussion events, we would welcome an expression of interest in serving as a moderator for the Open Access Days 2026. Responsibilities include introducing speakers, ensuring effective time management, and moderating discussions.

Moderators are selected by the programme committee and will receive moderation guidelines in advance, they will also be invited to take part in a briefing via videoconference. The role of moderator requires your presence on site at the conference venue.