WikiCite 2025, Bern, 29-31 August
- Cristina Grisot
- Aug 19
- 2 min read
WikiCite 2025 is a three-day conference, summit, and hack day dedicated to the vision of creating an ecosystem for bibliographic data to serve as an open infrastructure for research, education, and information quality (specifically authority control) across the web.
A Wikimedia initiative to develop open citations and linked bibliographic data to serve free knowledge. WikiCite is a series of conferences and workshops in support of that goal. The project is based in the Wikidata ecosystem.
The event will explore major developments and shared challenges in the WikiCite ecosystem, including:
Federated Ontologies and Wikibase Federation: Coordination across decentralized Wikibase instances and aligning schemas across platforms
Wikidata and Library Catalog Integration: Case studies from Swiss institutions on using Wikidata for authority data and bibliographic infrastructure
Open Citations and Structured Bibliographic Metadata: Linking scientific publications, cultural heritage, and research outputs using Wikidata
Tooling and Technical Infrastructure: New tools for querying, editing, and visualizing WikiCite data (e.g. LOTUS, Scholia, SPARQL evolution)
Scalability and the Graph Split: Discussions on the Blazegraph replacement, SPARQL federation, and long-term architecture of Wikidata
Data Quality and Disambiguation: Examples like the “Swiss homonyms cleanup” and strategies for maintaining data integrity
Collaborative Models and Governance: How libraries, Wikimedia chapters, and research institutions are collaborating to co-maintain the bibliographic graph
Community and Innovation: Lightning talks, interactive do-a-thons, Wikidata games, and open proposal slots for emerging ideas
The 2025 edition proposes a new hybrid and modular format, designed to be replicable and decentralized. While the first day (Friday 29th August) will take place on-site in Bern, the following sessions from Saturday 30th to Sunday 31st of August, 2025 will be online and will extend across time zones (Europe, Americas, Oceania), allowing broad international participation.
Location
Friday – Swiss National Library
Hosted at the Swiss National Library. This day is open to local stakeholders with a complete one-day event on a working day, making it more accessible to professionals. Located in the local “hub” and following the Wikidata Days format.
Saturday & Sunday – University of Bern (Marzili campus)
Held at the conference center in the Marzili campus of the University of Bern, oriented toward the global community of volunteers.
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