With the end of October marking the first year of the OPEN COST Action, we’d like to share some of the achievements and milestones we’ve reached together with our members. 

In December 2023, we launched the OPEN website. Serving as a central dissemination tool, the website provides up-to-date information on the network’s goals, activities, and results.

In the future the website will also include a Digital Resource Repository containing a syllabus bank of relevant courses taught by members and teaching and training materials and the collection and dissemination of network outputs.

In April this year, the University of Aveiro hosted our first Annual Conference, a key milestone for the OPEN COST Action. The event brought together leading scholars from over 40 countries to address the pressures facing academic freedom in Europe.

Kicking off with a peer-to-peer research colloquium for early career scholars, the conference featured diverse discussions, international networking, and keynote presentations from the Action Chair, Katja Brøgger, Vice-chair, Hannah Moscovitz and invited distinguished scholars including Meng-Hsuan Chou, Peter Maassen and Ole Wæver.

In the first year, the OPEN Action has prioritized launching initiatives that support Early Career Scholarship. In May, we opened a call for applications for ITC conference grants and Short-Term Scientific Mission (STSM) grants. These initiatives support the mobility of young researchers, including PhD students, allowing them to attend conferences or conduct studies aligned with OPEN's goals. In 2024 alone the OPEN COST Action funded seven STSMs.

The OPEN blog, launched in August on the OPEN website, shares testimonials and insights from STSM participants, highlighting the impact of these research missions.

As the last major milestone of 2024, we launched The OPEN Online Mentorship Program in October. The purpose of the program is to actively support early career scholarship by strengthening the ties between established academics and early career scholars within the OPEN network.

Facilitated through the Online Mentorship Platform, the program enables international mentorship connections and fosters relationships that will support researchers well beyond the project's duration.

As we look back on this first year, we are grateful for our member’s willingness to share knowledge and actively participate in examining current conditions for academic freedom and openness in European higher education. We look forward to building on these accomplishments in the year ahead.