OpenFest 2025

Co-delivered by the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, OpenFest is our flagship celebration and exploration of open research.

This year’s OpenFest will take place online during 2nd-5th September 2025. The theme for 2025’s event is Open Research and Equity, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (OR+EEDI).

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers, 10-minute lightning talks, panel discussions, online workshops, and creative proposals outside the usual paper/panel formats (e.g. videos, animations, zines and accompanying talks/discussions, creative outputs).

We welcome proposals from PGR and MRes students as well as more experienced researchers, research-related professionals, and those based outside academia. 

Contributions may address, but are not restricted to, the following sub-themes:

Openness for who, and how?

• How can we ensure that everyone benefits from, and can participate in, open research?
• Openness, engagement and impact - opening research to non-academic publics; perspectives on open research from outside academia
• Ways to embed and optimise initiatives to acknowledge all contributors to research - for example, through work with the CREDIT contributor roles.
• EEDI implications, either positive or negative, of innovation in open peer review.
• AI- and ML-informed practices and their implications for EEDI in (open) research.
• Towards more inclusive discourses around open research (for example, versus ‘bropen science’).

Openness and diversity

• How can we best foster plural visions of openness that accommodate diverse research methods, approaches and output types, including in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences?
• How open publishing initiatives and infrastructure can work to support bibliodiversity; open publishing practices across the disciplines.
• Applying the CARE principles to ensure data from minoritised communities is treated with appropriate respect and recognition.
• Open research and the global south.

Openness, culture and positive change

• (Open) research and culture change in times of financial or political crisis.
• Open research in the context of attacks on science, academia, truth, and research addressing experiences of minoritised communities.
• Open research and the purpose of the university.
• Debates about the value of the new (UK) REF People, Culture and Environment indicators in driving open research ambitions.
• Evaluating the success of ‘Research culture’ interventions; embedding and recognising culture change.
• The role of networks and communities in catalysing the movement towards open research.

Please submit your proposal using this form by midnight on 30th May 2025.