This conference aims to mobilize knowledge, research, and professional experience around the benefits and challenges of developing and maintaining open scholarship in the current age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital platforms, as well as how best to coordinate open scholarship policies in ways that connect with related activities across Canada, Australia, and global partners. It also continues our tradition of celebrating and reflecting on the important, ongoing work of the open scholarship community.

Open scholarship emphasizes the social nature of knowledge, along with community-driven initiatives, outreach, and partnerships that aim to close gaps between academic theory, research, and communities beyond academic specialists. Even though many researchers now have unprecedented opportunities to share and collaborate with each other and the public, much scholarship still remains inaccessible to wider audiences. In contrast to this reality, open scholarship asserts that research publications, datasets, educational resources, and other output should be accessible to all.

Rapid advancements in AI, coupled with the expansion of open access research and digital infrastructures, are transforming open social research, public discourse, and creative practice. These shifts—spanning environmental, communal, social, creative, epistemic, and economic structures—demand urgent critical inquiry into the future of knowledge itself. Along with other disciplines, creative practice—itself a form of knowledge production in the academy and the wider world—is experiencing these shifts acutely. Moreover, the ‘data deluge’ in all disciplines presents both new possibilities and pressing challenges for digital researchers and engaged publics alike. Yet, while these issues are widely acknowledged across various fields, too often discussions remain siloed.