Over 200 scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and research funders gathered in Berlin, Germany on October 25-27 to attend Force2017, an event set to change the way in which scholarly and scientific information is communicated and shared.

Force11 has been hosting these conferences for the last 6 years and attendees remain just as eager and excited by the opportunity to learn what’s new and fresh in the field, whilst innovators are equally enthusiastic to share. Michael Kurtz, Project Scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said that he is happy about meetings such as this, as it provides him with an opportunity to learn the latest trends happening in the field.

“Open access DOI tool is something that we will almost certainly implement, and I didn’t know about that, this will lead to another feature for users that will be beneficial. This will allow us to link to open access versions of papers in institutional repositories,” he said.

With participants from all across the globe, the three-day conference focusses on a wide range of topics and discussion, from open access’ changing culture to annotation and automation. There are many first time guests and some who have been here since the start of the conference in 2011. Todd Carpenter has been attending the FORCE since its beginning and praised the FORCE for its ability to integrate and bring together different communities in one room.  “The thing I love about FORCE is it brings communities together, different communities. There aren’t enough meetings that pull researchers, administrators and funders together. There’s little opportunity for the technologist, in the library and technology to come together and Force draws those communities together,” he said. DuraSpace’s International Membership and Partnership Manager, Michele Mennielli, is a first time attender of the conference and seems to agree. “It’s interesting because there are many different point of views represented here. The workshop on Block Chain was very interesting for me and I attended a few other sessions that were interesting projects, that were also very innovative. What I like the most is that audience of the sessions were very engaged, there was vibrant conversations and were not just listening,” Michele said.