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Open registrations
Institute of Open Science Practices
Institute of Open Science Practices
An event, a community, and a coordinating institute for the people building, using, and advancing the infrastructure open science depends on.
“Build the infrastructure that makes open easy to practice.”
IOSP 2026 — Edition 02Oct 12–15, 2026
Institute of Open Science Practices
IOSP 2026
12 → 15
October 2026
Venue
Poortgebouw, University of Leiden, and GO FAIR host us on Oct 12, 13, and 15. On Oct 14 we field-trip to the National Open Science Festival in Delft, then reconvene for the final day.
Production-driven
10%
Talks + panels
15%
Tooling showcase
75%
Co-design + build
Less talking. More collaboration. More building.
IOSP is built on a single working principle: the people who depend on open science infrastructure and the people building it should be in the same room, working on the same problems, long enough to make real progress.
Researchers bring the domain knowledge and challenges that shape what's worth building; tool-builders bring the systems and expertise to build it.
Goals
Meet people you couldn't meet elsewhere
Researchers and builders shoulder-to-shoulder for four days in a facilitated environment. The people building open science infrastructure side-by-side with those who depend on it.
IOSP 2025
Ronen Tamari
Renaissance Philanthropy BiTS Fellow
“Great discussions and valuable connections that would be really hard to have in traditional academic conferences.”
Gain a working knowledge of new tools and infrastructure
Discover novel infrastructure being built across the open science ecosystem. Leave with the high-level concepts, the technical details, and a path to put them to work.
IOSP 2025
Doug Schuster
NSF NCAR
“I was exposed to novel technologically based efforts to support open science needs that I was not previously aware of.”
Form a clearer picture of what researchers actually need built
Four days alongside the researchers who depend on what's being built. Leave with sharper requirements, validated user-stories, and a list of dead-ends to stop pursuing.
IOSP 2025
Martin Karlsson
Coordination Network
“Expert opinion on challenges research libraries face when sharing data, and useful guidelines for rolling out new research technologies.”
Start work that lives beyond the event
Projects and collaborations started, sharpened, and stress-tested at IOSP seed work that continues after. MIRA, CAIROS, and PRSM all grew out of work begun at IOSP.
IOSP 2025
Matthew Akamatsu
University of Washington
“This put us in a better position to build the next system for science and publishing.”
Structure
IOSP 2026 Themes
Parallel tracks
Programme
Workshops
Hands-on
Programme in active planning · Check back for updates
Action
Get involved
Open calls
Identify · Converge · Support
IOSP is a continuous, year-long operation. The annual gathering is the checkpoint where we identify challenges and test solutions built by the open community throughout the year.
Ongoing
Identify
Through direct connections, workshops, and continuous engagement with the open science community, we identify critical gaps in infrastructure and the people and tools working to fill them.
Annual gathering
Converge
Once a year we bring together the identified players — researchers, technologists, and infrastructure builders — to showcase progress, define priorities, and align efforts around shared challenges.
Year-round
Support
Year-round, we provide resources, facilitate connections, and help collaborative progress move forward — turning event momentum into lasting infrastructure.
Repeat
Every gathering identifies bottlenecks and next steps. Every collaboration produces working code. Every year turns the key a little further.
Science should be
Community-ownedCollaborativeAuditable
It's time to build the digital-native substrate.
A system of science is a complete configuration of five protocols — inference, quality, engagement, coordination, and preservation — enabled by the technical substrate of an era. Value, incentive, and governance processes guide the configuration of each protocol within a system. Today, three systems of science operate side by side — institutional, benefactor, and corporate — each operating on the same technical substrate, and each with their own sets of values, incentives, and governance processes. No one designed any of these systems. They emerged through a series of events, accidents, and actions intended to fulfill immediate needs.
The technical substrate of science has moved through five distinct eras over hundreds of years, each opening new primitives for the systems built on top. Scientific societies and the first journals emerged from letterpress, postal networks, and the telegraph to define the Organized Era of science. Research universities, professionalization, and formalized peer review took shape as the Professional Era embraced typewriters, telephone networks, and microfilm. Mainframes, photocopiers, and citation indexes led to federal funding, peer review, tenure, grant cycles, and the citation-based credit of the Institutional Era we still inhabit. Today we've wrapped the Institutional Era's processes in digital tools: PDFs as journals, h-indexes as memory, citation databases as card catalogs — though the primitives of these tools enable so much more.
The technical substrate of the next era will be digital-native, built by the global research community and designed intentionally from the ground up. From this substrate, a pluralistic era of scientific systems that amplify each other's strengths, make up for one another's failures, and grow stronger under stress will thrive.
The next era of science is antifragile.
| 1665 — 1876Organized | 1876 — 1950Professional | 1950 — 2000Institutional | 2000 — PresentDigitized | Building NowDigital-native | |
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| InferenceGenerate · analyze · experiment |
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| QualityVerify · replicate · trust |
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| EngagementConnect · share · discover |
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| CoordinationCredit · fund · collaborate |
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| PreservationStore · access · archive |
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→Engage with our complete theory of change
An interactive expression. In development.
A thousand coordinated people, collaborating on small, achievable outputs, can raise cities.
Between 1855 and 1872, Chicago raised the entire grade of its downtown — buildings and streets — by up to fourteen feet. Hundreds of jackscrews, each operated by a few people, lifted whole hotels and city blocks while business carried on inside. The Raising of Chicago →
Independent teams.
One substrate.
Across the ecosystem, independent teams are building components of a shared technical substrate for science. Science needs them to work together.
IOSP 2025
Storage & Preservation
Persistent, FAIR-compliant storage with content addressing (CIDs) · distributed archives · automated metadata · long-term preservation protocols.
IOSP 2025
Compute & Execution
Reproducible computational environments · container specs · execution manifests · distributed compute coordination · data visitation.
IOSP 2025
Validation & Trust
Automated testing · continuous replication · cryptographic proofs of correctness · provenance tracking · trust scoring · attestation models · open algorithms.
Knowledge Graphs & Semantics
Semantic registries · knowledge graphs · composable research objects · cross-platform data schemas.
IOSP 2025
Discovery & Communication
Federated search · semantic discovery · publishing APIs · event streams · collaborative review platforms · micropublishing.
Attribution & Credit
Contribution graphs · portable reputation · micro-attribution · transparent governance records.
IOSP 2025
Identity & Authentication
Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) · key management · authentication protocols · agent registries.
Funding Innovation
Alternative funding models · retroactive public goods · quadratic funding · granular funding.
IOSP 2025
Collaboration Infrastructure
Real-time coordination · federated workflows · cross-institutional projects · team science tools · shared workspaces.
IOSP 2025 — Denver, February 23–25
The inaugural gathering, at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Three days. Four hundred and twenty-five registrations for an eighty-person room. Numbers below; recap underneath.
80
Curated invitations
5
Countries represented
24
Speakers & workshop leaders
95%
Would attend again
93%
Would recommend
87%
Cited facilitated networking as highly valued
80%
Continuing collaborations from IOSP
Format
- Day 1Knowledge dissemination — talks, panels, framing
- Day 2Workshops — hands-on production across themes
- Day 3Coworking space in RiNo — work continued in small groups
Beyond the survey, the gathering kicked off post-event collaborations — work begun in workshops continued through the year as a basis for projects like MIRA, CAIROS, and PRSM.
Infrastructure stack used in production
- DeSci PublishSubmission & peer-review
- SilkIdentity & credentials
- IPFSContent-addressed storage
- CeramicData interoperability
- CODEXPersistent identifiers (dPIDs)
- Coordination NetworkAI synthesis
The gathering itself ran on the same infrastructure participants were stress-testing — submissions, reviews, identity, archival, all in production.
Speakers & workshop leaders
Kathryn KnightORNL
Beth DucklesOrganizational Mycology
Sandra GesingUS RSE + SGX3
Juliane SchneiderPNNL
Jonathan StarrNumFOCUS & SciOS
Gideon NaveUniversity of Pennsylvania
Erik SchultesGO FAIR Foundation
Isabel AbedrapoRemolino
Daniela SaderiPREreview
Ellie DeSotaSciOS
Doug SchusterNSF NCAR
Cornelius IhleGipp Lab
Laure HaakMighty Red Barn
Philipp KoellingerVrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Franck MarchisSETI Institute
Filipp KramerAlchemy Bio, Astera Fellow
Dion WhiteheadMetapage, Astera Fellow
Edvard HübinetteDeSci Labs
Martin KarlssonCoordination Network
Saif HaobshFylo, Astera Fellow
Ronen TamariCosmik, Astera Fellow
Matthew AkamatsuUW, Discourse Graphs
Paul WeidnerTechnologist
Edilson DamasioUniv. Estadual de Maringá
Planning committee
Jonathan StarrNumFOCUS & SciOS
Ellie DeSotaSciOS
Franck MarchisSETI Institute
Erik SchultesGO FAIR Foundation
Chris ErdmannSciLifeLabs
Shady El DamatyOpSci & Holonym
In their own words
What participants said after IOSP 2025.
It felt like we started a movement! This event incorporated stakeholders and put us in a better position to build the next system for science and publishing that deliberately incorporates their needs and our values.
Matthew Akamatsu
UW Discourse GraphsGot out of my house and met people; great conversations; lots of creative spitballing; met with some potential funders; made new friends; made some progress on some ideas; had the opportunity to make first pitch for new project.
Laure Haak
Mighty Red BarnGreat discussions and valuable connections that would be really hard to have in traditional academic conferences.
Ronen Tamari
Cosmik · Astera FellowI gained exposure to future technologies, while meeting people who want to change the world of science.
Franck Marchis
SETI InstituteAmazing intro to science / research world as someone not deeply in this space. Learned high-level concepts and low-level technical frameworks. As a contractor working in open source, decentralized technologies, there is simply nothing more valuable than a conference like this.
Paul Weidner
TechnologistI was exposed to novel technologically based efforts to support open science needs that I was not previously aware of. It was thought provoking and a great networking opportunity.
Doug Schuster
NSF NCARContact with developers and representatives of OS projects. A lot of learning about the tools, projects developed and under development. Possibility to participate in new initiatives. Debates about challenges and the future.
Edilson Damasio
Univ. Estadual de MaringáI had the chance to meet and connect with interesting people and learn about exciting initiatives.
Isabel Abedrapo
RemolinoExpert opinion across a range of relevant topics including challenges research libraries face when sharing data and very useful guidelines to keep in mind when rolling out new research technologies.
Martin Karlsson
Coordination NetworkI met some great people with whom I hope to collaborate in the future.
Daniela Saderi
PREreviewThe connections to others and the chance to have conversations were great.
Beth Duckles
Organizational Mycology
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