The 2nd Canadian Open Science Conference (COSC 2026) brings together Canada’s open science and metascience communities for three days of dialogue, discovery, and collaboration. Hosted by the University of Ottawa under the leadership of Dr. Kelly Cobey and Dr. Stefanie Haustein, COSC 2026 builds on the success of the inaugural conference at Concordia in 2025.

Open science, also sometimes called open research or open scholarship, is an international movement aimed at enhancing the transparency, accessibility, and equity of the research process across all disciplines. It addresses longstanding challenges within the scientific ecosystem, including publication bias, insufficient reporting, limited data accessibility, and concerns related to research reproducibility and trust. 

The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (2021) provides a widely endorsed framework emphasizing openness as a means to strengthen research quality and integrity, accelerate knowledge sharing, and increase equity in participation and access. As a UNESCO Member State, Canada is called upon to implement these recommendations through concrete national actions — and COSC 2026 provides a timely platform to align Canadian efforts across institutions and funders.

This year’s conference features a metaresearch focus, exploring the science of science itself.