Frequently Asked Questions

EVENT DETAILS

  • The Open Education Conference is an annual in-person and virtual convening where educators and open education advocates gather to collaborate, support, and drive strategies for education that are accessible, affordable, and reflective of the learners they serve. Read more on the conference About page.

  • The 2026 Open Education Conference will be held over three days on October 27-29, 2026 as a fully virtual event with participation welcomed from across the globe.

    The conference will be set in Eastern Daylight Time (GMT-4:00), but will include varied programming time slots for global attendees.

  • The conference grows each year, with last year’s event welcoming over 1600 participants from across the globe! Attendees include faculty, librarians, instructional designers, students, administrators, and many more involved in open education practice and advocacy.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

  • Registration for this year’s event will open in April. Stay tuned!

  • Yes! The Open Education Conference offers scholarships for virtual conference attendance. Scholarships are approved based on demonstrated need and applications will open alongside registration.

  • Registration rates for OpenEd26 will be shared when registration opens.

CONTRIBUTED PAPERS (NEW!)

  • This year, the Open Education Conference is introducing contributed papers as a new submission format for OpenEd26 in collaboration with the Journal for Open Educational Resources in Higher Education (JOERHE). This exciting opportunity provides the conference community with a formal, open peer-reviewed publication channel. Contributed Papers may report the results of completed research, describe research in progress, or present a position or theory on a compelling problem or issue relevant to one or more of the conference themes. The contributed papers will be published as conference proceedings and will focus on research, theory, and scholarly work in open education. 

  • Contributed paper proposals are submitted through the general conference Call for Proposals  (deadline: April 3, 2026) as an addition to a conference session proposal. While completing the proposal form, you will have the option to select “yes” to have your conference session also be considered as a contributed paper. You will then be prompted to provide a 2,400 to 3,250 character contributed paper abstract (in addition to the required 1000 character session description for the conference program). 

    Acceptance decisions will be delivered in two stages. First, proposals will receive a general decision on whether the session is accepted for the conference program by May 15, 2026. Then, accepted proposals that requested consideration as a contributed paper will be notified of acceptance as a contributed paper by early June. Only conference proposals that are selected for the general conference program will be considered as a contributed paper. Accepted session proposals remain accepted for the program regardless of the decision on the contributed paper. 

    If accepted as a contributed paper, pre-publication manuscripts will be due October 1, 2026 (about 2500-4000 words) and must be submitted using JORHE’s template, which will be provided in the contributed papers acceptance notification. Accepted papers will go through an open peer review process and will be published as conference proceedings through JOERHE in early March, 2027 (in line with Open Education Week). 

    All submissions are subject to and must adhere to JOERHE’s Artificial Intelligence & Automated Tools Policy. Additional conditions will be described at the time of acceptance.

  • Proposals are evaluated in two stages. First your session proposal will go through the general review process to determine acceptance for the conference program. If your proposal is accepted for the program, then your contributed paper abstract will be evaluated. Abstracts must be scholarly, well-organized, and meet the Review Criteria outlined in the Call for Proposals. 

    If accepted, finished papers will be subject to peer review before final publication in March 2027. JOERHE operates an open peer-review process (for more information, see JOERHE’s Peer Review Policy). Open peer review is meant to be a kind and encouraging process for all and to foster a supportive and collaborative environment.

  • Item descriptionWorks published in Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education will be distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0). By publishing under a CC-BY license authors give explicit permission for others to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the work, as long as the original source and author(s) are properly cited.  Please see JOERHE’s Copyright Policy for more details. 

    • April 3, 2026: Call For Proposals submission deadline

    • May 15, 2026: General proposal acceptance notification

    • Early June, 2026: Contributed paper acceptance notification

    • October 1, 2026: Pre-publication manuscripts due

    • October, 2026: Articles undergo open peer review

    • October 27-29, 2026: Open Education Conference

    • November - December, 2026: Revisions and resubmission

    • March, 2027: Journal publication (in line with Open Education Week)

REGISTRATION

  • Registration for this year’s event will open in April. Stay tuned!

  • Registration rates for OpenEd26 will be shared when registration opens.

  • Yes! The Open Education Conference offers scholarships for virtual conference attendance. Scholarships are approved based on demonstrated need and applications will open alongside registration.

  • Yes! If you have a group of more than 10 registrations and prefer to be invoiced, you may contact us to request one at contact@openeducationconference.org.

ATTENDANCE

  • Paid registrants will be able to access the conference program through Sched. Closer to the event, an Attendee Guide will be distributed to registrants that provides helpful tips for accessing all conference programming.

  • Live sessions will be held in Zoom similar to previous years. Zoom links to join sessions will be available through the program in your Sched account during the week of the conference. Pre-recorded sessions will be available as embedded videos in the conference platform.

  • All presentations and plenaries are recorded (with a few exceptions). These recordings are typically posted by the next day. Speakers will also be encouraged to post their slides to the conference platform for the benefit of all attendees.

Have a question about something not addressed here? Reach out to us at contact@openeducationconference.org.

This page will be updated regularly, so be sure to check back often!