> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://openscholarship.gitbook.io/open-and-engaged-2026/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://openscholarship.gitbook.io/open-and-engaged-2026/programme.md).
# Programme
British Library's Open and Engaged 2026 Conference, as part of the International Open Access Week.
### **10:30- 10:40** **Welcome remarks**
### **10:40 - 12:00** **Presentations: Responsible Openness.**
Chaired by **Ilkay Holt, Scholarly Communications Lead at the British Library.**
How can open access challenge, rather than enable, the commercial extraction of knowledge, data and cultural collections? This session will consider the reuse of openly available content, asking how openness can be designed around meaningful consent, attribution, accountability and benefit for creators, communities and collection custodians.
{% hint style="info" %}
Click the arrow next to each speaker’s name to view the talk abstract.
{% endhint %}
Paul Keller, Director of Policy at Open Future. Responsible Openness: between governance and infrastructure.
Generative AI has exposed the limits of treating openness as a licensing question. Open collections are harvested at industrial scale, the costs fall on the institutions that hold them, and the value goes to a few well-resourced actors. Drawing on the European Books Data Commons, this talk argues that responsible openness requires public control over infrastructure.
Julia Claire Priess Buchheit, Professor at Kiel University, Center for Constructive Educational Science (ZKE-Zentrum für Konstruktive Erziehungswissenschaft). Responsible Openness in the Age of Generative AI: Sustaining Trust in Open Science.
As generative AI becomes increasingly embedded in research and scholarly communication, Open Science faces new opportunities as well as new challenges for trust, reliability and inclusion. This presentation explores these developments from a European perspective and considers how responsible openness can help ensure that scientific exchange remains transparent, trustworthy and equitable in an AI-enabled research environment.
Steven Claeyssens, Curator of Digital Collections at KB, National Library of the Netherlands. From Access to Informed Reuse: Datasheets for Digital Cultural Heritage.
Meaningful reuse requires more than access alone. This presentation introduces Datasheets for Digital Cultural Heritage, a practical framework for documenting the provenance, composition, limitations and conditions of use of digital collections, together with Sidedoc, a lightweight tool for creating datasheets and supporting informed reuse.
### **12:00 - 13:00** **Lunch break**
### **13:00 - 14:30** **Panel: Sustainable Repositories and Services.**
Chaired by **William Nixon, Deputy Executive Director of Research Libraries UK (RLUK)**.
What does it take to keep repositories and their supporting services sustainable? This session will explore resilient funding and service models, external service dependencies, technical and organisational debt, and the capacity and environmental costs involved in maintaining such services, customised or legacy systems.
Katherine E Skinner, Director of Programs at Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI)
Matt Buys, Executive Director at DataCite
Maja Dolinar, Vice-Chair of the Core Trust Seal Board and Head of the Slovenian Social Science Data Archives (ADP) at University of Ljubljana
Matthew Dovey, Head of EU Programmes at Jisc
### **14:30 - 15:00** **Break**
### **15:00 - 16:20** **Presentations: Tracing Collection Reuse.**
Chaired by **Sally Chambers, Head of Research Infrastructure Services at the British Library**
How can we bring greater transparency to the use of GLAM collections in research? This session will explore how persistent identifiers, registries and linked data can make relationships between collections, researchers and research outputs more visible and traceable.
{% hint style="info" %}
Click the arrow next to each speaker’s name to view the talk abstract.
{% endhint %}
Robert Cubey, Biodiversity Data & Collections Care Manager at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Unlocking Biodiversity Knowledge: The Role of Linked Open Data in Natural History Collections.
Natural history collections hold billions of specimens documenting the diversity of life across space and time. Yet the full value of these collections is often constrained by data silos, inconsistent identifiers, and limited interoperability between institutions and information systems. Linked Open Data (LOD) offers a powerful approach to overcoming these challenges by connecting specimens, people, places, publications, and datasets through persistent, globally resolvable identifiers.
This presentation explores practical applications of Linked Open Data within natural history collections, drawing on examples from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and the wider biodiversity informatics community. It will demonstrate how persistent specimen identifiers, such as those assigned to digitised herbarium specimens, provide stable references that enable collections data to be linked, cited, and reused across multiple platforms. The talk will also examine the growing importance of persistent identifiers for people, including collectors, determiners, and researchers, using Wikidata as a hub for connecting biographical information with collection records.
By linking specimen identifiers with person identifiers, new opportunities emerge for discovery and research. Examples will include the integration of collection data with external knowledge systems such as Bionomia, enabling users to explore collecting networks, specimen histories, and biodiversity knowledge in ways that would be difficult within a single database. The presentation will further discuss the role of dataset-level identifiers, including those generated through GBIF occurrence downloads, in supporting reproducible research, transparent data citation, and the tracking of data reuse.
Through these real-world examples, the talk will show how Linked Open Data transforms collections from isolated records into components of a global biodiversity knowledge graph. It will highlight the benefits of persistent identifiers for data integration, attribution, research reproducibility, and enhanced discovery, while also considering the practical challenges of implementation. Ultimately, Linked Open Data provides a foundation for unlocking the scientific and societal value of natural history collections in an increasingly connected digital landscape.
Joseph Padfield, Principal Scientist at the National Gallery. Introducing the Heritage Samples Registry: Old samples, new questions: making heritage samples findable, citable and traceable.
Small physical samples taken from heritage objects (such as paintings, books and archaeological material) are central to understanding how our cultural heritage was made and how it changes over time. They are also reused far more than most people realise: a sample taken twenty years ago can answer new questions today as analytical and examination techniques improve. Yet samples are usually recorded with local numbers in spreadsheets, notebooks and reports, so they are hard to find across institutions and their contribution to later research is less visible. The Heritage Samples Registry, developed through several initiatives, including the HSDS and ECHOES projects, is working to give heritage samples globally unique, citable identifiers (IGSNs, a type of DOI). Each identifier links a sample to the object or source it came from, the institution that holds it and wherever further information is published. This talk introduces the Registry from a user’s perspective: why it is needed, how it will help people find samples and explore their potential for reuse, what a recent international survey revealed about demand, and how sample identifiers could make the reuse of heritage collections traceable.
Javier Pereda, International Co-Lead of the N-RICH Prototype at the Towards a National Collection (TaNC). Collections after Digitisation: Perspectives on Research Infrastructure and Reuse.
Tracing collection reuse means understanding how collections become part of new knowledge, including the decisions, interpretations and contributions that shape their use. This begins with choices about what to digitise, for whom, and what is needed to support future research.\
Drawing on international perspectives on cultural heritage infrastructure, this talk explores how research environments influence what can be discovered, connected and understood. It considers how digital methods shape research, and how infrastructures can make these choices and their consequences visible as collections move between institutions, communities and research settings.
A decolonial perspective asks whose knowledge informs these processes, whose labour is recognised, and how inherited categories and assumptions are reproduced or challenged through reuse. Accountability involves enabling people to examine, question and reinterpret how research outcomes are produced.
The talk proposes an expanded understanding of collection reuse that connects research outputs to the human contributions and conditions that underlie them. It considers how this understanding can inform digitisation priorities, while recognising that limited recorded use may reflect historical exclusion or barriers to access. Together, these perspectives ask how infrastructures can support more transparent and equitable knowledge production.
### **16:20 - 16:30** **Closing remarks**