OSM Science 2025 - Call for Abstracts

 

OSM Science 2025

OSM Science 2025 (also known as the Academic Track of State of the Map) is an annual international meeting focused on the scientific study of OpenStreetMap (OSM). The 8th edition of OSM Science will be part of the State of the Map 2025 conference, taking place on October 3-5 in Manila (Philippines), where a full day of sessions will be dedicated to scientific research about, and with, OpenStreetMap (see the 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018 editions). The goal of OSM Science 2025 is to showcase the research and innovation of scientific investigations into OpenStreetMap, while at the same time providing a bridge to connect members of the OpenStreetMap community and the scientific community through an open platform to exchange ideas and opportunities for increased collaboration. We expect empirical, methodological, conceptual, or literature-review-based contributions addressing any scientific aspect related to OpenStreetMap, in particular, but not limited to: data collection, integration and quality analysis in OpenStreetMap; contribution patterns and the human/social dimensions of the project; integration of Artificial Intelligence techniques and other applications in which OpenStreetMap plays a central role. The contribution of OpenStreetMap data to domain-specific and/or policy-relevant studies is also welcome.

Submission Guidelines

Authors are invited to submit extended abstracts using the OSM Science 2025 Pretalx submission system. Deadline for submission is 18 May 2025.

Abstracts should be between 800 and 1200 words.

Abstracts must be scientifically rigorous, and the content should be logically structured as follows (without the need to include subsections): introduction/background, where the problem addressed is introduced; main aim or purpose of the study; brief description of the methodology and findings achieved; final discussion highlighting the scientific contribution of the study and its practical benefits/implications. Contributions describing applications or usage of OSM data with no scientific novelty/innovation will be rejected.

In the evaluation of proposals, the scientific committee will pay particular attention to the reproducibility of the research (where this is applicable). Reproducibility is ensured when the research makes all artifacts (input data, computational steps, methods and code) openly available to obtain consistent results. When available, the code shall be released under an open source license. Additionally, precedence shall be given to authors who intend tol present physically at the conference.

Abstracts are to be submitted online in plain-text format. You have the possibility to submit up to 3 figures that will accompany your submission, demonstrating the results already produced by the research. This is optional and not mandatory. Figures should be added only whether/when necessary and must be clear and legible. All figures must be referenced in the text and clearly numbered according to the order in which they appear in the text.

Abstracts will be evaluated by the scientific committee and external reviewers, when needed. Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to deliver an oral presentation or a lightning talk during the OSM Science 2025 sessions at the conference, or to present a poster (in case a poster session will be organised). Building on top of the successful proceedings of previous editions of the Academic Track (2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019), authors of the selected submissions will be required to submit extended abstracts (up to four pages in length and including a maximum of one figure). These extended abstracts will be published in the OSM Science 2025 Conference Proceedings, each with a distinct Digital Object Identifier (DOI) in Zenodo, an open access online repository.

The 2019 and 2020 Academic Track resulted in a special issue of the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information. Similarly and upon interest from the authors of the abstracts, the scientific committee may seek to further disseminate the contributions to this conference by investigating the organization of a special issue in a relevant, open access, scientific journal. In such a case, authors of the selected abstracts will be invited to submit a full paper to this special issue. Successful submissions may benefit from partial or full waiver of publication fees.

Timeline and Deadlines

  • 18 May 2025: Deadline non-academic talk submissions
  • 18 May 2025: Deadline academic talk submissions
  • 1 July 2025: Notification of acceptance / rejection
  • 15 July 2025: Program announcement
  • 3-5 October 2025: OSM Science at State of the Map 2025

Submit your presentation

Please submit your presentation proposal to our submission form.

Co-chairs

You can reach the academic track committee via email to academic-sotm@openstreetmap.org.

Dr. Marco Minghini

European Commission Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy.

Marco studied at Politecnico di Milano, where he got a PhD in GIS in 2014. After working as a Postdoc in the GIS group of GEOlab at Politecnico di Milano, in 2018 he joined the European Commission - Joint Research Center (JRC) in Ispra, Italy (Unit B.6 Digital Economy) as a Scientific Project Officer, making applied research on geodata interoperability and helping with the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive. Marco is an advocate of open source software and open data and has a long experience in OSM both as a contributor and as a researcher. He is a Charter Member of OSGeo, Secretary of ISPRS WG IV/4 “Collaborative Crowdsourced Cloud Mapping (C3M)”, Member of the OpenStreetMap Foundation and Voting Member of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team.

Dr. A. Yair Grinberger

Department of Geography, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Yair earned his PhD in Geography from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, studying human mobility behaviors using GPS traces. During his postdoctoral research at the GIScience Research Group in Heidelberg University, Germany he focused on large-scale data production events in OpenStreetMap and their effects. In his current research Yair studies, among other issues, the co-construction of mapping practices and data outputs. His broader research interests include Geographic Information Science, critical GIS, and digital representations of cultural and social phenomena and issues.

Dr. Peter Mooney

Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University, Ireland

Peter is an Associate Professor at the Dept. of Computer Science in Maynooth University and has been working in the domain of geospatial data research for almost two decades. He is particularly interested in understanding the processes behind the collection of VGI data and how computing techniques such as machine learning can be applied to these datasets and sources. He is heavily involved in OSGeo activities in Ireland. His teaching philosophy sees the exclusive use of FOSS4G (Free and Open Source Software for Geomatics) and Open Data for all student teaching and learning activities. He is currently an editor of the Transactions in GIS journal.

Dr. Anna Zanchetta

The Alan Turing Institute, London, United Kingdom

Anna is a Research Fellow based at the Alan Turing Institute in London, currently collaborating with HOT - the Humanitarian Openstreetmap Team, and HeiGIT - Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology. She has been active in open source and geospatial for the last 15 years, acting mostly in academic roles where she investigates and promotes the use of open tools and mapping, to tackle social inequality and enhance environmental sustainability.