At the welcome reception, Prof Wim de Villiers, vice-chancellor of SU, addressed delegates and the South African Youth Choir gave an outstanding performance that brought the audience to its feet. Later in the week, delegates experienced a South African braai (barbecue) at the conference dinner, held at Neethlingshof Wine Farm.

Making this conference a reality was no small feat, as it was originally planned for 2020, and there were many changes to navigate in order to bring it to life in 2023. The steering committee expresses many thanks to the host committee at Stellenbosch University for their perseverance and expertise, which resulted in an excellent OR2023 conference. For more details, you can

Slides from all talks are available in the Open Repositories Zenodo collection, with keyword OR2023, and a detailed summary of the conference was posted in SU’s news updates. 

We hope for another excellent OR conference in 2024, and planning is already well underway. In fact, the Open Repositories Steering Committee and Chalmers University of Technology are delighted to announce that the 19th Open Repositories Conference (OR2024) will be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, 3-6 June 2024 with the theme “Empowering Global Progress”. Save the date for 2024 and visit the conference web site for more information https://or2024.openrepositories.org. The call for proposals is expected to open in mid-October with a submission deadline of mid-December