Budapest (On-site)
On 15.10.2026 between 9:30 – 16.00
Focus on Open Science
Budapest
Chapter XLVIII
This year’s theme is The Future of Library Collections.
For our 2026 edition, we are returning to a foundational topic for libraries and the scientific knowledge ecosystems – the future of library collections. In an era shaped by AI, data-intensive research, transformative agreements, and new modes of content creation, research libraries remain the institutional stewards of curated knowledge.
We aim to discuss how libraries define, build, and refine collections (across journals, books, data, and software) while aligning these decisions with institutional strategy and research integrity. We will also address the role of libraries as trusted intermediaries in a complex ecosystem, safeguarding provenance and transparency to reinforce public trust in science.
SPONSORS
About the event
Open Science describes the current transition in how research is undertaken, how the outputs are stored and disseminated, how researchers collaborate, how success is measured and how researchers are rewarded for more transparent and collaborative approaches. Open Science has the potential to transform the research landscape. This potential has been successfully tested – if only that – during pandemic times.
Open Science started as a vision, aiming to address matters like research reproducibility and access to the results of publicly-funded research. The vision was generally welcome by academic and research institutions and benefited from a great advocacy movement. It’s high time now to build on practice and effective management.
It is generally accepted in Europe that research should be as open as possible and as close as necessary. Finding the borderline between the two is one of the most important tasks for practitioners, whether they belong to funders, research organisations, their partners or researchers themselves.
Yet, this borderline is not sufficiently explored. Guidelines based on feedback and learning from practice should be created, rather sooner than later.
This innovative approach to research has further potential: to address existing inequalities and matters like inclusivity, ethics, better assessment or the missing links between science and society or to re-shape public-private partnerships.
This Open Science event is organised by: SKS Knowledge Services and Electronic Information Service National Programme / Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Emphasizing research practices, we will discuss the role of research organisations to support this transition, both acting local and internationally.
The results of the workshops will be captured in a formal report. The report is intended to be used by all involved partners, to advance the implementation of Open Science in their communities and their own institutions.
The language of this event is English.
The Workshop format offers both on-the-spot interactions and follow-up opportunities.
Please feel welcomed to participate to the sessions and to extend your professional network at the international level.
We look forward to seeing you in October, in what promise to be a stimulating event!
Agenda
9:30
Registration and Coffee Break
10:00
Opening Remarks by Tiberius Ignat, Director at SKS Knowledge Services
10:05
Welcome Notes by István Monok, Director General of the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
10:10
Collections as Data: A Paradigm Shift for Libraries. Wouter Schallier, Strategic Heritage Plan and Business Continuity Manager at United Nations Library and Archives, Geneva
10:35
How to Reorganise Library Services to Integrate Digital Humanities Services. David Tréfás, Head of Modern Collections, Basel University Library
11:00
Open Metadata in a Complex Research Landscape. Martyn Rittman, Program Lead at Crossref
11:25
Research Support at the Heart of Open Science: The Importance of the Digital Collection. Erika Bilicsi, Head of the Department of Library Systems and Technology, Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
11:50
Trusted Evidence in the Age of AI: How Libraries Can Support the Full Evidence Lifecycle. Maurice Clementi, Customer Success Manager at Ovid.
12:15
Lunch Break
13:30
Digital Cultural Heritage Collections: A Bridge to Universal Openness. Andy Corrigan, Digital Library Co-ordinator at University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives
13:55
Unlocking the Potential of Open Science Together. Eniko Toth Szasz, Director of Customer Success Consulting at Clarivate.
14:20
Bibliographic Data Science: A Model for Collaboration between Researchers and the Library. Péter Király, Software Developer & Researcher at GWDG
14:45
Open Is Not Enough: Connecting Scholarly Books to the Research Infrastructure. Péter Váradi, Editor-in-chief, L’Harmattan
15:10
Panel Discussion
15:55
Closing Remarks by Tiberius Ignat, Director at SKS Knowledge Services
Speakers and Abstracts
István Monok
István Monok is the Director General of the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and President of the Book History Working Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is co-president of the International Association of Hungarian Studies. Previously he was appointed Director General of the National Széchényi Library in Budapest and served in this capacity between 1999 and 2009. During his directorship he promoted the international contacts and co-operations of the Library and the digitization of its holdings in the Hungarian Electronic Library. He was also involved in the creation of EUROPEANA as board member of The European Library and he is member of the advisory board of several major European libraries including the Vatican Library. Beside being a lecturer at Szeged University, EszterházyKároly University he taught as guest professor in Paris at the École pratiques des hautesétudes and the École nationale des chartres (Sorbonne), as well as at the universities of Bologna, Jyväskylä, Cluj-Napoca and Erlangen. Currently he is also the head of Comenius Institute Department of Cultural Heritage Studies at Tokaj University, leading the Speculum research group of the University and also the leader of the “From treasury to library: studies on the library and patronage of Palatin Pál Eszterházy” research group funded by the National Scientific Research Fund Programme.
Wouter Schallier
Wouter Schallier is Strategic Heritage Plan and Business Continuity Manager at United Nations Library and Archives, Geneva, where he leads the move out and renovation of the historic Library and Archives building. Wouter is the former Chief of Library and Web Services at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN ECLAC), in Santiago de Chile (2012-2025). In that capacity, he launched the Digital Repository providing access to all digital assets of the Regional Commission, from 1948 until now. He also led the Latin American and Caribbean work packages of the LEARN project on Research Data Management and initiated a series of monthly webinars on Open Science, including citizen science. Between 2008 and 2012, Wouter was Executive Director of the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER), in The Hague, The Netherlands. He secured funding for several pan European projects in the areas of open access, digital preservation, and open data. He started his professional career at K.U.Leuven University, Belgium, as coordinator of several innovation projects and Director of the Medical Library. Wouter publishes and regularly presents talks on Open Access, Open Science and innovation in scholarly communication.
Abstract:
Collections as Data: A Paradigm Shift for Libraries
Libraries are no longer simply warehouses of physical and digital books, journals, and databases. As research becomes increasingly computational and AI-mediated, libraries must support not only human reading but also machine-actionable reuse. This talk argues for treating collections as data: structured, well-documented resources that can be discovered, verified, computed on, reused, cited, and preserved.
Shifting the goal from digitisation to datafication changes what “access” means. It requires scalable discovery, interoperable metadata and identifiers, clear rights for text and data mining, and transparent provenance, versioning, and quality elements so that trust remains inspectable.
Libraries need to ensure human oversight and accountability while enabling research and innovation at scale, through digitisation that respects physical objects, governance that makes rights and responsibilities explicit, and interfaces that make digital collections available, re-usable and verifiable.
Martyn Rittman
Martyn Rittman is a program lead at Crossref. He heads the Contributing to the Research Nexus program, which aims to build a complete and connected database of open scholarly metadata. He is passionate about building tools for the community that are accessible by all. He has previously worked in open access publishing and conducted research in Germany the UK.
Abstract:
Open metadata in a complex research landscape
Crossref is a non-profit membership organisation that collects metadata about published works, as well as being a DOI registration agency. Our mission commits us to being a sustainable source of complete, open, and global scholarly metadata and relationships. The research landscape is becoming ever more complex, with increased availability of different research outputs and identifiers for people, organisations, projects, and so on. We are working with our community to make metadata about research outputs available, and to identify and share relationships between the components of research. In doing so, we provide support for visibility and findability of research, as well as efforts to safeguard research integrity. We continue to evolve the metadata we collect and the relationships we make available to meet current challenges faced by the research community.
Péter Király
Péter Király is a software developer and researcher at GWDG, the data, computing and IT research center at Göttingen, Germany. He received MA in history and PhD in General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies. He maintains GRO.data research data repository. His main research interests are quality assessment of cultural heritage metadata and data analysis of these metadata as historical sources. He is an editor of Code4Lib Journal, member of different library and digital humanities related groups, maker and supporter of open source and open data projects. He is collaborating with the British Library, Belgian National Library, Europeana, Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Harvard University and other research and cultural heritage organizations worldwide.
Abstract:
Bibliographic data science: a model for collaboration between researchers and the library
Bibliographic data science is an interdisciplinary method that applies data science technologies on bibliographic data in order to reveal patterns that are relevant to Humanities or social science domains such as history, literature, translation studies, sociology of culture, library and information science. Big data might shed light to phenomena that were previously unknown or supported only by anecdotal evidence. The bibliographic data science’s research questions include examples like how did the format and language of books change over time in different regions? what are the patterns of translations from a given language, how have they changed, and which languages were super-central, central, and peripheral in a given era? how many historical works or publications could have been destroyed without any trace? In order to answer these questions the bibliographic data should be not only accessible but also suitable for computational use. As cultural heritage organisations, and in the first place libraries are who are the main collectors and creators of bibliographic data, it is their role to ensure accessibility. This new role involves new knowledge and skills, and organisational changes. Libraries should also prepare for the “data roundtrip”, to handle improvements and enhancements made by the researchers, and build them into the catalogue.
Andy Corrigan
Andy has a particular interest in exploring and bridging intersections in the matrix of technology, collections, and experience. He is a Digital Library Co-ordinator at University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives, taking a lead on digital content analysis and engagement, and has been involved with a number of CDH projects and initiatives. He has also worked on the Darwin Correspondence Project, and has a background in archaeology, specialising in historic building survey and graphics, with a focus on the application of photography.
Andy has a passion for enriching the digital landscape through the application of practice-based research and crowdsourcing methods. He has initiated a crowdsourcing project to transcribe the notebooks of Oliver Rackham, and taken a lead role in the UKRI-funded ‘Walking with Constable’ project, which is developing innovative methods of engagement with digital content. In 2023, he was awarded an AHRC-RLUK Professional Practice Fellowship. His research project, ‘Encountering Digital Collections’ has continued this development, advancing practical approaches to using digital collections in research and pedagogy, and showcasing the role of libraries as a nexus for research and teaching. Through a recent collaboration between The Heritage Lab and Wikimedia UK, Andy is also a recipient of an Open Knowledge Fellowship 2025. His research aims to bring a fresh perspective to underrepresented histories and cultural collections, as well as more deeply consider the application of the FAIR and CARE principles to digitised content.
Abstract:
Digital cultural heritage collections: A bridge to universal openness
Modelling the hierarchical relationship between data, information, knowledge and wisdom is inherent to library and information science. But should we also be asking where the experience is that we lose in collecting? Open Science has revolutionised the role of libraries, transforming them from passive repositories into active agents in the knowledge production process. Beyond the boundaries of STEM disciplines, cultural heritage collections pose challenges to the paradigms that Open Science has established. A growing body of research from the arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS) is consolidating a resistance to some of its core tenets. The practices and outputs from AHSS are often incongruous with the objective infrastructures that enable open access; and while Open Science strives for reproducibility, it’s not always desirable or possible to reproduce the subjective experiences valued in AHSS. This talk explores the tension between concepts of ‘cutting-edge’ and ‘cultural heritage’, flipping our perspective to ask what we can learn from our past as we shape the future of library collections.
Findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable data principles are universal, in no small part due to the nature of our digital landscape; did the sciences get more than it bargained for when it adopted the FAIR Principles? The are many parallels and intersections between cultural heritage and the sciences, and as a nexus of data, can library collections leverage these to better bridge and connect? We know our present is complex, and our future likely more so – can we approach it by thinking about library collections more as having a role in a cybernetic system? If so, then libraries of the future need to be more than stewards of curated knowledge, they need first-hand experience of it as active partners in the research process to better understand their collections.
Erika Bilicsi
Erika Bilicsi is the head of department of the Department of Library Systems & Technology of the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The department is responsible for the digitization, the REAL repository and operation of Alma catalogue. She has previously coordinated the DOI Office, the Open Journal Systems service and submission of bibliographic records by Hungarian publishers to the Hungarian Scientific Bibliographic Database.
Abstract:
Research support at the heart of Open Science: The importance of the digital collection
Researchers have always published their results but in the age of the internet sharing has seemingly become very simple. Because of this it is a common misconception that nowdays everything is available on the internet and libraries are not needed anymore. But sharing the scientific results has always had organized, quality-controlled way. Just imagine the scientific journals without peer-review or proofreading. Is it sure that only online published scientific articles will be available in the 22th century without archiving in a library’s digital collection? And how is it possible to collect all scientific publications and research data and make them accessible with fulltext on one platform? Is it enough to trust in the cooperation of researchers and publishers or does Open Science needs an organizer, a supporter to achieve its goals? Libraries are ready to provide this support: librarians are experienced working with print, manuscript, digital and electronic documents, scanning books, building repositories and supporting research with professional information, diamond open access publishing platforms or PIDs. Moreover they have a superpower: unified, standardized bibliographic cataloguing with authority control. This may seem very oldschool, but Open Science really needs this because without organizing the lot of publications and data won’t be findable, usable and available in long term. This is how the modern library becomes from a passive preserving institution of documents to an active supporter of research, just as the researcher transforms from a passive user of the literature collected in libraries to an active participant in preservation.
Eniko Toth Szasz
Eniko Toth Szasz is Director of Customer Success Consulting at Clarivate, where she partners with universities, research institutions, government agencies, and research consortia across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. She works closely with research leaders, research offices, and libraries to help strengthen research performance, funding success, open research strategies, and institutional reputation through the effective use of research intelligence and analytics.
With extensive experience in bibliometrics, research evaluation, and research strategy, Eniko helps institutions leverage Web of Science data Web of Science Research Intelligence analytics to benchmark performance, identify emerging research opportunities, analyze collaboration networks, and demonstrate both scholarly and societal impact. Her particular focus is on enabling evidence-based decision-making.
Abstract:
Unlocking the potential of open science together
Open Science is reshaping the research ecosystem, creating new opportunities to increase the transparency, accessibility and societal value of research. For more than a decade, Clarivate has actively supported Open Science initiatives, helping research institutions, funders and policymakers navigate an increasingly open and interconnected research landscape.
We will explore how Clarivate contributes to the advancement of Open Science through trusted data, research intelligence and analytics. We will highlight initiatives supporting Open Access, research discoverability, transparency, research integrity and responsible research assessment, and discuss how institutions can use these resources to better understand and navigate the evolving scholarly communications landscape.
The session will also examine how the impact of open research can be assessed beyond traditional citation metrics. As expectations grow for research to demonstrate value beyond academia, institutions need robust approaches for understanding how research influences policy, innovation and society. We will explore methods for identifying and evaluating evidence of broader research impact, including policy citations, societal impact indicators and other signals that demonstrate how research contributes to decision-making and real-world outcomes.
David Tréfás
David loves to connect people and ideas. He started as a historian with a PhD dissertation about Hungarian and Swiss relations in the early phase of the Cold War. He worked in archives in his hometown Basel and continued writing monographs about local history. His latest book was about the history of newspapers in Basel. He co-lead a project on European identity and public sphere at the University of Zurich in close collaboration with various European universities. He gave courses in history and media studies in various universities, and curated several exhibitions. Since 2009, he’s been working as a subject librarian for history at the University Library of Basel, the oldest and one of the biggest libraries of the country. He took on several management roles and is now head of modern collections. He connects his role with engagement in various organisations: He’s president of the commission for the public library in Basel, president of the committee for international affairs of the Swiss library association, chair of the Acquisition and Collection Development section at IFLA, co-founder of the diamond Open Access journal 027.7 and co-editor for 13 years, as well as member of the editorial board of the California based library magazine “Katina”. He is member of the Executive Board of LIBER and there responsible for state of the art services, including Data Science, and Research Data Management.
Abstract:
How to reorganise library services to integrate digital humanities services
Collections form the backbone of every academic library. For centuries, libraries put an emphasis on collecting and on producing metadata in order to retrieve every book. As the world moved towards electronic material, this understanding became increasingly stale and was replaced by a dynamic movement for digital access and Open Science. The emphasis now was more on research methods instead of research material. Digital Humanities are not just a subject but also a way of thinking which connects these two different worlds, a connection that does not come naturally to most institutions. As a result, integrating Digital Humanities into libraries with both significant collections and close connections to research, requires effort and strategic commitment. Along several examples mostly from Swiss academic libraries, I suggest that the implementation of Digital Humanities into a library can only be successful if the organization is able to transform itself, and the leadership is open for change.
Maurice Clementi
Maurice Clementi is an experienced member of the Customer Success Team at Ovid, responsible for driving customer success and product adoption across the EMEA region. He delivers presentations, training programs, and interactive workshops that empower researchers, clinicians, librarians, and students to make the most of Ovid’s evidence-based research solutions. Combining deep product expertise with a customer-centric approach, he provides strategic guidance and ongoing support to help institutions maximize the impact of their investments and achieve better research and learning outcomes.
Abstract:
Trusted Evidence in the Age of AI: How Libraries Can Support the Full Evidence Lifecycle
As research libraries rethink collection strategies in response to Open Science, artificial intelligence, and growing expectations around research integrity, healthcare institutions face increasing demand for trusted, actionable evidence. Collections are evolving beyond traditional journals and books to include tools that support knowledge creation, evidence synthesis, implementation, and measurable impact. This presentation explores how the JBI evidence-based practice ecosystem addresses these emerging needs. The JBI Best Practice Database provides rigorously appraised evidence summaries and recommendations for healthcare professionals, while JBI SUMARI enables transparent and reproducible systematic review workflows. JBI PACES extends the value of collections by supporting evidence implementation, clinical audit, and continuous quality improvement. Together, these resources support the entire evidence lifecycle, from discovering and generating evidence to embedding best practice and evaluating outcomes. The session will discuss how libraries can leverage integrated evidence infrastructures to strengthen trust, demonstrate institutional value, support Open Science objectives, and position themselves as strategic partners in improving healthcare quality and research excellence.
Péter Váradi
He is closely involved in the development of L’Harmattan Open Access and the openaccess.pub platform, which aims to create an internationally connected publishing environment for scholarly books. The initiative focuses on multilingual scholarly communication, rich metadata, international dissemination and archiving, and AI-assisted tools that improve the discovery of longform research across languages. Its broader ambition is to strengthen the international visibility of Central European Humanities and Social Sciences research.
Péter is particularly interested in sustainable institutional models for Open Access book publishing and in developing closer cooperation between publishers, libraries and research-performing organizations. A central concern of his work is how digital publishing infrastructures can preserve multilingualism and the scholarly monograph as a major research output while connecting locally produced research more effectively to the international scholarly communication system.
Abstract:
Open Is Not Enough: Connecting Scholarly Books to the Research Infrastructure
A longform publication may be technically open and still remain largely invisible. To become truly visible, it needs to be connected to the infrastructures through which research is discovered, identified, preserved and reused. For scholarly books, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, open access therefore requires more than placing a PDF on a website or in a repository.
The presentation introduces the model developed around L’Harmattan Open Access and openaccess.pub, which approaches OA book publishing as a shared scholarly infrastructure. We are building a publishing layer that connects the academic governance of research institutions, the infrastructures and expertise of libraries, the production capacity of a publisher, and the emerging European knowledge infrastructure.
The presentation will show how libraries can participate throughout the publication workflow through metadata management, persistent identifiers, repositories, preservation, discovery and research support, without having to assume the role of publisher themselves. Existing collaborations with institutions including Babeș–Bolyai University, Eszterházy Károly Catholic University and Líceum Press, the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), and the Károli University of the Reformed Church in Hungary demonstrate different forms of this model in practice.
A particular focus will be placed on international dissemination and interoperability. Through Crossref, Thoth Open Metadata, OAPEN, DOAB, WorldCat and other research and library infrastructures, books published in Central Europe – including Hungarian-language monographs – can become discoverable through hundreds of library catalogues worldwide.
Finally, our participation in the GRAPHIA Industry Hub illustrates the next step: moving from interoperable metadata towards structured references, enriched metadata and knowledge graphs that can connect scholarly books more deeply to emerging European research infrastructures.
Tiberius Ignat
Dr Tiberius Ignat is the Director of SKS Knowledge Services, a mission-driven company operating in the quaternary sector of the economy to make Research a popular culture. His company runs a successful series of workshops – Focus on Open Science, now in its 11th year.
He developed and launched BESPOC (Broad Engagement in Science, Point of Contact), a model for science-society engagement that several European universities have implemented.
Tiberius is an EU Expert and occasionally assesses research proposals under EU funding schemes.
He is one of the founders of the LIBER Citizen Science Working Group, which he chaired until February 2025. He co-founded and served as the vice-chair of the Working Group “Citizen Science at University” at the European Citizen Science Association, and he is a member of the Association for Advancing Participatory Sciences (US). Tiberius is a member of the Scientific Committee for OAI, the CERN – Geneva University Workshop on open science and a member of the core group at EARMA’s Open Science Thematic Group (The European Association of Research Managers and Administrators).
Tiberius Ignat has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a PhD in information science from the University of Bucharest and is an active researcher in research management, participatory science, and research security.
