From 15–17 September 2025, the 5th Open Science Fair (OSFair) will gather at CERN to tackle the big questions shaping the future of research. More than a showcase of projects, OSFair is where the Open Science community comes together to debate the challenges, tensions, and opportunities at the heart of today’s transformation.
Explore the full programme and start planning your OSFair journey. Here are the key debates that make this year’s OSFair unmissable:
1. The Politics and Policies of Openness
Open Science isn’t just a technical shift, it’s political. With the European Council, UNESCO, and national governments rolling out Open Science policies, the question is no longer whether but how openness will be implemented. The debates at OSFair on policy landscapes and publishing equity are timely because they tackle questions of sovereignty, inclusivity, and sustainability; who gets to shape the rules, and who benefits from them? The opening sessions on the policy landscape and publishing equity promise to set the tone for a conference that asks tough questions about power, governance, and inclusivity in science.
2. Reforming Scholarly Publishing
With commercial publishing still dominating and APC-driven models raising concerns about equity, alternatives like Diamond Open Access and platforms like Open Research Europe are gaining traction. These sessions address the urgent question: How can we make publishing truly equitable and sustainable for researchers everywhere, not just in well-funded institutions?
3. Measuring What Matters: Impact and Assessment
Research assessment reform has become one of the hottest debates in academia, from CoARA to national initiatives. Traditional metrics are being challenged, yet there’s no consensus on what to use instead. OSFair’s focus on monitoring, dashboards, and responsible metrics goes straight to the heart of this tension: how to track progress without reducing openness to crude numbers, and how to design indicators that reward collaboration, quality, and transparency.
4. Building the Digital Backbone
Infrastructures (repositories, data platforms, interoperability frameworks) are the invisible backbone of Open Science. They’re also under strain: how to make them sustainable, how to align them internationally, and how to ensure they serve communities instead of duplicating efforts. The “Digital Backbone” track explores how technical systems can evolve into collaborative, global ecosystems rather than silos, an issue that will shape the next decade of Open Science.
5. Skills, Communities, and Participation
Open Science requires more than just policy and infrastructure: it must be embraced and practiced by researchers and communities. Training, capacity building, citizen science, and inclusion are central themes of OSFair 2025. OSFair’s focus on capacity and community building reflects a growing recognition that without investing in people and participation, infrastructures and policies will fail to deliver.
6. Openness vs. Security in a Turbulent World
As geopolitical tensions rise, the ideals of openness are colliding with concerns about security, sovereignty, and misuse of technologies. OSFair 2025 squarely addresses this tension: can we keep science open while protecting sensitive data and ensuring responsible use? This debate is particularly timely as governments worldwide reassess how scientific openness fits within broader security agendas.
7. AI and the Future of Open Science
AI cuts across several debates, from responsible use of data to ethics in publishing to transforming research workflows. AI promises smarter discovery, reproducibility checks, and new ways of curating knowledge. But it also raises difficult questions about bias, scientific integrity, and the concentration of power in proprietary systems. At OSFair, sessions on AI and ethics will explore how the Open Science movement can harness these tools while safeguarding transparency and trust.
Looking Ahead
Together, these debates show that Open Science has moved beyond advocacy into a phase of implementation and reflection. OSFair 2025 is the arena where the community asks: not just how do we open science, but how do we open it well, equitably, securely, and sustainably
We invite you to join the conversation and contribute your voice to the conversation. For those not able to join us in Geneva, you can still follow the sessions (Auditorium A) streamed online and engage with the community in real time. Don’t forget to follow the hashtags (#OSFair2025) to stay connected and be part of shaping the future of Open Science.
