8 - 10 October 2025
Continuing the successful conference series from the past 6 years, the #ossym25 Open Search Symposium brings together the European and international Open Search community for the seventh time. The hybrid conference provides a forum to discuss and further develop the ideas and concepts of open web search and related topics in various formats including scientific talks, panels, workshops, demonstrations, student challenges and informal discussion spaces. Participants include researchers, data centres, libraries, policy makers, legal and ethical experts, and society.
Important Dates
Submission deadline of full papers and extended abstracts
1 March 2025
Information about contribution acceptance
1 June 2025
Registration for the #ossym25
• Will open 15 June 2025
• Registration fee: 200,00 Euro *
* A reduced fee will be available (currently subject of definition).
International Open Search Symposium #ossym25
8-10 October 2025
Online publication of proceedings
Autum 2025
Call for Papers - Call for Demos
Call for Papers
We are calling for your contribution with scientific papers, sharing of practical experiences or by introducing concepts and positions in relevant fields, such as computer science, legal, economics and ethics. Full papers and abstracts presented at the #ossym25 will be published open access in online proceedings (including DOIs and ISBN) following the event.
Please submit your contribution: for research contributions we accept full papers (4-6 pages) and for any other contribution (concepts, best practices or practitioners’ experiences) an extended abstract (1 page).
All abstracts and papers have to be submitted using the templates specified. The acceptance of all full papers and extended abstracts is subject of a peer-review process.
Call for Demos
We invite young researchers and students to showcase their innovative work using the Open Web Index of the OpenWebSearch.eu project. This call is an excellent opportunity for participants to develop and present innovative search and web analytics solutions to advance to a more open search ecosystem and show them to the open search community. We are particularly interested in demonstrations that combine the Open Web Index with technologies such as Large Language Models, Knowledge Graphs, or that offer new search paradigms (e.g. Argumentation Search, Conversational Search), interesting frontends, and domain-specific search solutions. In addition, we are also looking for contributions towards web-scale, robust semantic enrichment techniques that can advance search solutions for different domains. Examples could be information quality assessments, entity extraction or Knowledge Graph alignment.
All demos have to be submitted using the templates specified. The acceptance of all demos is subject of a peer-review process.
In case you want to organize a thematic session or workshop, please contact us with a one page proposal at ossym@opensearchfoundation.org .
Note: CERN Guest Account
In order to submit your papers and demos for OSSYM 2025 you will need to login with a CERN Guest Account. To create an account, please go to the [CERN Single Sign-On page](https://indico.cern.ch/login/?next=/event/1477549/abstracts/) and click on "External email - Guest access" and then "Register"). Alternatively you can sign-in with your CERN Account, eduGAIN or an external social account (GitHub, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook).
Main Topics
Discuss interdisciplinary aspects of Open Search
technical • ethical • legal • educational • economic • applications
Topics of #ossym25 include but are not limited to
- Open search architectures and platforms
- Open Web Index and application domains
- Federated search and cross-domain search
- Web Data Analytics and Web Mining
- Natural language and multi-media processing for search
- Large Language Models, Machine learning and generative AI
- AI-based search and Retrieval Augmented Generation
- Personalization and recommendation in search
- Conversational Retrieval Experiences
- Georeferencing of web content and geospatial search and analysis
- Evaluation of open search systems
- Applications of open search in domains such as science, e-commerce, health, and education
- Search bias and trust
- Economic dimensions of open search
- Search engine advertising and business models in an open search world
- Green computing and sustainability
- Societal and ethical challenges and solutions
- Ethical and value aspects of search
- Politics and governance
- Legal aspects
Conference format
- Conference venue: IT Center for Science - CSC in Helsinki, Finland, and Online.
Conference Chairs
Prof. Dr. Michael Granitzer | University Passau, Germany
Prof. Dr. Christian Guetl | Graz University of Technology, Austria
Dr. Megi Sharikadze | Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, Munich, Germany
Dr. Stefan Voigt | Open Search Foundation, Starnberg, Germany
Dr. Andreas Wagner | CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
Local Chairs and Organization
Per Öster, PhD | CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland
Publication Chairs
Sebastian Guertl | Graz University of Technology, Austria
Elias Sandner | CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
Andreas Wagner | CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
Poster Session Chairs
Iiris Liinamaa | CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland
Heidi Laine | CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland
