7 - 9 October 2026
Continuing the successful conference series from the past 7 years, the #ossym26 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.
Call for papers
The Submission Deadline for Abstracts/Papers/Demos has been extended to 15 March 23:59 (CET).
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 #ossym2026 will be published open access in online proceedings (including DOIs and ISBN) following the event. Authors from selected scientific papers will be invited to submit an extended version for a journal publication
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 (1-2 page).
All abstracts and papers have to be submitted in PDF format (A4) using the available document templates. The acceptance of all full papers and extended abstracts is subject of a peer-review process.
Submit your Papers/Abtracts here
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 cutting-edge 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.
Please prepare your proposal using the available document templates. The acceptance of all demos is subject of a peer-review process.
Submit your Demo proposal here
Important Dates
Will be announced in due time.
International Open Search Symposium #ossym2026
7 - 9 October 2026
Online publication of proceedings
Autum 2026
Conference format
- Conference location: Berlin, Germany, 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
Stefan Voigt | DLR, Berlin, Germany
Publication Chairs
Sebastian Guertl | Graz University of Technology, Austria
Elias Sandner | CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
Andreas Wagner | CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
Poster Session Chairs
To be announced shortly
Programme Committee
Prof. Emmanuel Cartier | European Commission JRC
Prof. Dr. Alexander Decker | Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt, Germany
Prof. Dr. Arjen P. de Vries | Radboud University, Netherlands
Prof. Dr. Stefan Dietze | Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and GESIS, Germany
Msc. Roxanne ElBaff | German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Germany
Prof. Dr. Kai Erenli | University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna, Austria
Dipl. Inf. Fabio Fracassi | Code.Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany
Diana Francisco de Sousa | Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy
Dr. Maik Fröbe | Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena, Germany
Prof. Dr. Fabian Geier | Code.Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany
Priv.-Doz Dr. Christian Geminn | University Kassel, Germany
Prof. Dr. Michael Granitzer | University Passau, Germany
Prof. Dr. Christian Guetl | Graz University of Technology, Austria
Prof. Dr. Matthias Hagen | Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena, Germany
Dr. Tobias Hecking | German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Germany
Prof. Dr. Denis Helic | Graz University of Technology, Austria
Msc. Gijs Hendriksen | Radboud University, Netherlands
Prof. Dr. Andreas Henrich | University Bamberg, Germany
Prof. Djoerd Hiemstra | University of Twente, Radboud University, Netherlands
Msc. Phil Höfer | SUMA e.V., Germany
Prof. Dr. Robert Jäschke | Humboldt University Berlin & L3S, Hannover, Germany
Dr. Igor Jakovljevic | CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
Dr. Jens Kersten | German Aerospace Centre, Jena, Germany
Prof. Dr. Mohammed Kaicer | Faculty of Sciences Kenitra, Morocco
Dr. Jelena Mitrovic | University of Passau, Germany
Prof. Dr. Engelbert Niehaus | University Koblenz-Landau, Landau, Germany
Prof. Dr. Monica Palmirani | Università di Bologna, Italy
Prof. Dr. Melanie Platz | Saarland University, Germany
Prof. Dr. Martin Potthast | Kassel University, Germany
Prof. Dr. Mirko Presser | Aarhus University, Denmark
Prof. Dr. Georg Rehm | German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Berlin, Germany
Dr. Renée Ridgway | Aarhus University, Denmark
Prof. Dr. Adam Roe | Code.Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany
Dr. Tim Smith | CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
Prof. Dr. Benno Stein | Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany
Dr. Nicola Tonellotto | University of Pisa, Italy
Eng. Marco Verile | European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy
Dr. Stefan Voigt | Open Search Foundation, Germany
Dr. Andreas Wagner | CERN, Geneva, Switzerland