OSSYM 2026 - 8th International Open Search Symposium "Boosting Digital Sovereignity"

from Wednesday, 7 October 2026 (08:30) to Friday, 9 October 2026 (17:20)
CODE University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany

        : Sessions
    /     : Talks
        : Breaks
7 Oct 2026
8 Oct 2026
9 Oct 2026
AM
08:30 --- Opening of Registration ---
09:15
Conference Opening (until 10:30)
09:15 Conference Opening: Welcome & Keynote  
09:16 Welcome - CODE University of Applied Sciences  
09:30 Opening Keynote - tba  
10:30 --- Coffee Break ---
11:00
Science Track (until 12:00)
11:00 Science Track: Retrieval - Session Chair: tbd  
11:01 OURS & YOARS: Open Platforms for Sovereign Web Retrieval and Agentic Information Access - Michael Granitzer; Mohammed Al-Maamari; Laura Caspari; Michael Dinzinger; Kanishka Ghosh Dastidar; Dang Dang Hai Dong; Jelena Mitrovic; Saber Zerhoudi (University of Passau); David Ciz (IT4Innovations)  
11:20 Adaptive Unsupervised Topic Modeling for Domain Focused Web Search - Hema Pandey (DLR)  
11:40 An Open-Source Retrieval Layer for Institutional RAG: From Authenticated Crawl to Searchable Index - Noor Afshan Fathima; Juan Manuel Guijarro, Andreas Wagner (CERN); Alexander Nussbaumer (Graz University of Technology)  
09:00
Keynote - Stefan Mesken (Chief Scientist, DeepL) (until 09:45)
09:45 --- Coffee Break ---
10:15
Legal Session - Session chair: tbd (until 11:35)
10:15 Legal Session: Legal aspects of Open Web Search and AI training - Session chair: tbd  
10:16 Design Conflicts in Open Search Infrastructures: A Design Pattern-Based Approach to Integrating Legal and User Requirements - Sophia Meywirth, Paul Johannes, Christian Geminn, Matthias Söllner (University of Kassel); Charlotte Werther, Stefan Voigt (OSF)  
10:35 Quo Vadis Digital Regulation? An Overview of the Digital Regulatory Landscape in Europe and what it means for the European Web Data Infrastructure - Charlotte Werther (OSF)  
10:55 Data protection responsibility of online platforms for user-generated content – recognising sensitive data, preventing scraping and identifying users in light of the ECJ’s ‘Russmedia’ judgement - Paul Johannes (University of Kassel)  
11:15 Public Digital Infrastructure As Regulatory Stabilizer In A Recalibrated AI Landscape: Strategic Legal Navigation Under The EU Digital Omnibus On AI - Kai Erenli (FH BFI Vienna)  
11:35 --- Lunch Break ---
09:00
Keynote - tba (until 09:45)
09:45
Social science session - Session chair: tbd (until 10:45)
09:45 Social science session: Ethics+Society - Session chair: tbd  
09:46 An Ethics-by-Design Approach for the Open Web Index - Alexander Nussbaumer (TU Graz)  
10:05 Co-Creating Inclusive AI Search Frontends: Findings from the KIsu-Project with children, young people, and older adults - Melanie Platz; Kristin Altmeyer; Stephanie Heel; Sarah Malone; Kerstin Reese; Lisa Schick; Verena Wolf (Saarland University); Tanja Gottsmann; Maria Wiesner (fragFINN e.V.); Julius Gabelmann (DFKI); Ursula Gmelch; Christine Plote (OSF); Alessandra Rodrigues Eismann (Centigrade GmbH)  
10:25 Open, to What End? A Capability-Theoretic Perspective on Open Search - Nicola Neophytou; Bhaskar Mitra (Independent Researcher)  
10:45 --- Coffee break ---
11:15
Applications Track - Session Chair: tbd (until 12:15)
11:15 Applications track: AI in Science - Session Chair: tbd  
11:16 AI-Assisted Search String Creation Module for NeutrinoReview - Luca Fontana; Christian Gütl (Graz University of Technology); Andre Henriques (CERN); Igor Jakovljevic (CERN); Sebastian Pack; Elias Sandner (Graz University of Technology (AT)); Alice Simniceanu (WHO); Andreas Wagner (CERN)  
11:35 TraceableAI: An Open-Source Agentic Framework For Prisma-Compliant Literature Synthesis - Philip Lau (Aarhus University)  
11:55 NeutrinoReview: Usability Analysis - Luca Fontana, Christian Gütl, Elias Sandner (Graz University of Technology); Andre Henriques, Igor Jakovljevic, Andreas Wagner (CERN); Sebastian Pack; Alice Simniceanu (WHO)  
PM
12:00 --- Lunch Break ---
13:30
Keynote - Julian Kunkel (Professor for High-Performance Computing at University of Göttingen) (until 14:15)
13:30 Keynote: (title tba) - Julian Kunkel (Professor for High-Performance Computing at University of Göttingen)  
14:15
Social science session - Session Chair: tbd (until 15:15)
14:15 Social science session: User behavior and preferences in search and AI - Session Chair: tbd  
14:16 Privacy-Enhancing Digital Infrastructures – Understanding User Preferences Regarding Internet Search And Their Inclusion Into Systems Design - Sarah Götz (University of Kassel)  
14:35 Hybrid Search Ecosystems: An Empirical Analysis of Online Search Behavior of Generation Z and Alpha in Germany - Alexander Decker; Marie Einsiedler (Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt, Germany)  
14:55 Renegotiating the open web: Emerging AI Preferences standards - Stefan Baack (Independent researcher)  
15:15 --- Coffee Break ---
15:45
Applications Track - Session Chair: tbd (until 16:45)
15:45 Applications Track: Web data driven applications - Session Chair: tbd  
15:46 eMarketShield: Enhancing Consumer Protection in E-Commerce through Digital Innovation and Regulatory Oversight - Christoph Rinner (Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety)  
16:05 SOURCE (title tba) - tba  
16:25 Designing A Power Bi Dashboard For Data-Driven Supplier Comparison In Manufacturing Procurement - Beulah Devathasan; Emolin Indran Rajanbabu (Aarhus University)  
16:45 --- Closing of Day 1 ---
17:30 --- Ice breaker / reception ---
13:00
Keynote - Hannes Taubenböck (Head of Department “Georisks & Civil Security” at DLR Professor for Global Urbanization and Remote Sensing at University of Würzburg) (until 13:45)
13:45
Science Track - Session chair: tbd (until 14:45)
13:45 Science track: Spatial modeling - Session chair: tbd  
13:46 Extraction Of Geospatial Disaster Related Information From Web News And Text Data - Vanessa Rittlinger (DLR)  
14:05 Proposed Methodology for Open Search Infrastructure leveraging federated RAG-systems and open source Speech Intelligence for cross-domain collaboration featuring Disaster Management, Traffic Flow Prediction and Literature Studies - Prof. Dr. Engelbert Niehaus, Jonah Schuster, Maximilian Stoffel, Walter Kühn, Jörg Rapp (RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau)  
14:25 A Spatially Enabled Search System For Hydrological Publications: A Demonstration - Xuke Hu; Jens Kersten; Friederike Klan (DLR); Lina Stein (RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau)  
14:45 --- Coffee Break ---
15:15
Parallel workshops (until 16:45)
15:15 Workshop 1: Evaluating Design Patterns for Legally Compliant Open Web Index and Search Engine Systems - Organisers: Sophia Meywirth, Paul Johannes (University of Kassel); Charlotte Werther (OSF)  
15:15 Workshop 2: SOURCE workshop - Organisers: tba  
16:00 Workshop 3: Joint session of Open Web Data Working Group of EuroHPC and Open Web Search Community - Organisers: Megi Sharikadze (LRZ); Heidi Laine, Per Öster (CSC)  
16:00 Workshop 4: Student project session / Index access tutorial (tbd) - Organisers: CODE (tbd)  
16:45 --- Closing of Day 2 ---
19:00 Panel discussion (in German) „Souveränität im Netz – Wie eine europäische Webdateninfrastruktur Freiheit, Wirtschaft und Demokratie stärkt“  
12:15
Science Track - Session Chair: tbd (until 13:15)
12:15 Science Track: Crawling - Session Chair: tbd  
12:16 Estimating Absolute Web Crawl Coverage From Longitudinal Set Intersections - Michael Paris (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin); Fabian Baumann (University of Pennsylvania); Grigori Paris (Independent Researcher)  
12:35 A Focused Crawling Strategy to Enhance Geoscience Data Retrieval - Tobias Hecking (DLR), Raphael Frühwirth; Christian Gütl; Alexander Nussbaumer (TU Graz)  
12:55 Measuring Crawler Lock-in: Translating Scheduling Preferences Into Language Coverage For Common Crawl - Michael Paris (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin); Sebastian Nagel (Common Crawl Foundation)  
13:15 --- Closing of #ossym26 & Wrap-Up & announcing #ossym27 ---
13:30 --- End of Symposium ---