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Participate to the OpenAIRE AI Hackathon - Powered by Alien Intelligence.

Build with open scholarly works provided by OpenAIRE Graph and innovate.

At a glance

A 12-week open science build challenge co-organised by OpenAIRE and Alien Intelligence. Open to researchers, technologists, and end-users. Participants explore the OpenAIRE Graph via the OpenAIRE MCP plugged into Alien's AI Gateway, and contribute artifacts - code, methodologies, applied case studies, conversations - that turn open science into insight.

Hackathon dates

  • Launch date: 02nd June, 2026
  • Submission deadline: 20th August, 2026 (23:59 CET)
  • Review of submissions: August → early September 2026
  • Announcement of awards: Wednesday 16th September 2026, hosted at an OpenAIRE event (OpenAIRE Community Call Graph)
Who can join

A hackathon open to

Solo participants, research teams, startups, established companies, or interdisciplinary collectives. Based in Europe or collaborating with European partners is preferred but not required.

Domain researchers

Any researcher working on biology, social sciences, humanities, climate, etc. No AI / coding background needed.

End-users

Policy makers, librarians, journalists, educators, business analysts.

Tech-savvy builders

Developers, AI/ML engineers, research engineers.

Four themes to select from


All themes cover community needs aligned with latest topics on AI and open science.

  • Theme A: Explore and Narrate

Description: Pick a topic you care about and let the OpenAIRE Graph tell you something new about it. Follow the trail of papers, authors, datasets, and funding until a story emerges — then share it. Your artifact can be a documented conversation, a case study, a visual essay, or a structured write-up. No coding required. The insight is the contribution.

Ideal for: Domain researchers, educators

  • Theme B: Build

Description: Create something that makes the OpenAIRE Graph more useful. A tool, an app, an agent, a workflow, an integration with another data source - if it extends what people can do with open science data, it belongs here. You define the problem and the audience. We want to see something that works and that others can reuse or build on.

Ideal for: Developers, AI/ML engineers, research engineers

  • Theme C: Analyse

Description: Use the OpenAIRE Graph to produce evidence. Map a research field, track funding flows, identify gaps, benchmark outputs, or support a policy argument with data. Your artifact should answer a real question and be clear enough that a decision-maker could act on it. Reproducibility and transparency in your method are a plus.

Ideal for: Policy makers, scientometricians, business analysts

  • Theme D: Wildcard

Description: Cross-disciplinary, experimental, playful, or genuinely strange — if it uses the OpenAIRE Graph and you can't find another theme that fits, this is yours. The only rule is that it has to be interesting.

Ideal for: Anyone

Submission model

One submission = an artifact + a story.

What is expected to deliver

The artifact can be anything that demonstrates value:

  • Code, notebook, app, dashboard
  • Methodology document, protocol, workflow recipe
  • Integration combining OpenAIRE Graph with other tools
  • Applied case study in a specific scientific or business field

The story is a 1-2 page write-up explaining: the question, the journey, the insight, and what others can reuse.

We expect the materials to be available under a CC-BY license.

The submission period is closed!

Get to know the applications submitted and vote for community's favorite.

View the applications

01-OpenAIRE Evidence Ledger

Theme B - Evidence Before Narrative

OpenAIRE Evidence Ledger is a small, dependency-free Python tool that turns an OpenAIRE Graph search into a human-reviewed evidence pack. It is for researchers, public-sector innovation teams and open-science practitioners who need a shortlist they can inspect rather than a fluent answer whose factual boundary is unclear.

Code

Video

02-OpenAIRE Graph Evaluator

Theme B - Research paper classifier and LLM-as-Judge pipeline

Raw scholarly metadata is noisy and unclassified. Training AI tools that distinguish a methodology paper from a dataset paper from a review requires labelled data, and hand-labelling thousands of papers is slow, expensive and hard to scale across disciplines. We built a complete feedback loop that turns the OpenAIRE Graph, a vast but unlabelled index of research outputs, into validated training data for AI classifiers, at scale and with minimal human effort.

Code

03-ScholarMind

Theme B - AI Research and Knowledge Management System

ScholarMind is an AI-based research and knowledge management system designed to help researchers organize, connect, search, and reuse scientific knowledge. It provides a structured environment for managing research information and developing research memory rather than treating scientific papers as isolated documents.

Video:

Code

Archive

04-From Mathematical Reasoning to Algorithmic Judgment

Theme A - Tracing a Missing Bridge in AI Literacy Research with the OpenAIRE Graph

What research connections—and gaps—link mathematical and model-based reasoning with AI literacy, particularly in relation to interpretation, uncertainty, evaluation, and judgment? The question matters because AI literacy frameworks increasingly require people to “critically evaluate” AI, yet this phrase does not by itself specify the cognitive operations involved when an AI output is uncertain, probabilistic, or potentially wrong. The exploration therefore examined whether AI literacy research already connects to the traditions that study reasoning under uncertainty and to empirical research on when humans appropriately rely on, override, or reject AI advice.

Code

Archive

05-Replication Radar

Theme B - Find what’s been checked, what’s worth replicating, and how to replicate it

Replication Radar answers that on the OpenAIRE Graph. Search a field and, for each high-impact claim, it shows whether anyone has independently proven it: a signed Science Live replication verdict (validated / contested / refuted), read live from the nanopublication network, author-agnostic. Where the Graph knows only cited / not-cited, the Radar adds checked / not-checked.

Video

Code

Archive

Worked example

06-OpenPhys V2

Theme B - Agentic Physics-Informed Neural Network Engine with OpenAIRE Academic RAG

OpenPhys V2 is an agent-driven, open-source computational physics engine that solves Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) using Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs). Traditional numerical PDE solvers (FEM/FDM) require deep domain expertise, manual mesh generation, and rigid code bases. Conversely, standard machine learning approaches lack physical grounding and academic context. 

Code

07-Data Footprints

Theme C - Tracing dataset citation pathways for responsible research assessment

Data Footprints is a reusable analytical workflow and interactive application that uses the OpenAIRE Graph to make dataset citation pathways visible and interpretable for responsible research assessment. Starting from a researcher’s ORCID, the application discovers their datasets through the OpenAIRE MCP connector powered by Alien Intelligence, validates authorship, reconciles multiple records that may refer to the same conceptual dataset, and traces publications that cite those datasets through OpenAIRE Graph API V3. It then compares the dataset creators with the authors of each citing publication.

Code

Story

08-Open Quantum Evidence Atlas

Theme C

Funders can count grants and publications. Can they also trace the public evidence to datasets and software, identify which persistent links are missing, and measure whether those links improve over time? Open Quantum Evidence Atlas is a working, no-login Evidence Chain Auditor for funders, programme managers and Open Science teams. It answers one operational question: after research is funded and published, can the public evidence be followed to datasets and software—and which persistent links must be fixed when it cannot?

09-DARKON-BIORIX: D-RectifyL v3.0

Theme B - A General O(1) Protein and DNA Folding Tool

The full meaning of D-RectifyL is Deterministic Rectification Layer; an interactive, open-source tool that folds any protein or DNA sequence in microseconds using a physics framework derived entirely from open-access Zenodo preprints indexed in the OpenAIRE Graph and the EOSC community. Its a single-cell Google Colab application with a widget interface. The user types any UniProt accession, gene name, or raw sequence. The tool fetches live biological data from UniProt, queries the OpenAIRE Graph for the underlying physics corpus, and returns: the dominant phosphorylation site (the e₄ snap node), fold class, PTM site ranking, OZIP 8-component state, speed benchmarks, and a full biological identity card — all in under 30 milliseconds.

Notebook

Video

Code

Archive

10-Sophia in the Graph

Theme A - Exploring and Narrating the Future of Work through OpenAIRE

The question was motivated by a simple problem: “the future of work” is not a single research field. It cuts across economics, sociology, management, technology, labour studies, organisational research, public policy and, increasingly, artificial intelligence. A conventional literature search can retrieve relevant publications, but it is much harder to understand how these publications are connected, which themes are emerging, which researchers and organisations shape the field, and how research priorities change over time. We therefore asked whether the OpenAIRE Graph, accessed through the Alien Intelligence MCP connector, could be used not merely to find papers, but to explore the structure and evolution of a research landscape and turn the resulting evidence into an intelligible research narrative.

11-OpenGap

Theme B - Find What’s Missing in Research

OpenGap is an evidence-first web application that helps researchers move from a broad research idea to an inspectable potential-gap hypothesis. Instead of returning another long list of papers, it compares several kinds of research activity available through the OpenAIRE Graph — publications, funded projects, software and datasets — and surfaces simple structural imbalances that may deserve deeper investigation.

Code

12-Reproducibility Bench

Theme C - Letting a research graph decide which finance results get tested

Empirical finance contains thousands of published claims about how prices move. A person testing them on a private dataset normally chooses which claims to test, often with some intuition about what the data may say. The result can look like an independent test while behaving like a search for a convenient result. We asked whether a public research graph could make that choice explicit and auditable.

Code

Story

Vote for your favorite submission

Read the publicly available information about the applications and vote for your favorite one!

Awards


The successful applications receive plenty of awards, categorised into three tiers (evaluators choices) and one community selected award. The criteria and evaluation process, is available to download.
TierSelectionAward
Tier 1 - Grand prize
1 standout project
  • 500 euros as a prize
  • pilot partnership status co-developed with Alien team support;
  • featured at the next OpenAIRE flagship event (OSFAIR 2027 with travel grants);
  • possible follow-on funding via OpenAIRE collaboration activities
Tier 2 - Theme winners
4 winners (one per theme)
  • 12 months of Alien Gateway credits;
  • access to one premium data source (subject to availability);
  • co-authored case study published by OpenAIRE;
  • speaking slot at the September OpenAIRE Graph community call
Tier 3 - Finalists
~12 finalists across themes
  • 3 months of Alien Gateway credits;
  • visibility on OpenAIRE and Alien communication channels
Community Choice
Most voted submission
  • 6 months of Alien Gateway credits;
  • spotlight article on OpenAIRE and Alien communication channels

Timeline


The detailed information with dates that applicants can submit their applications follows.

  • 02 June 2026 | Applications Open
    Announcement of the hackathon. Access to OpenAIRE Graph - via-Alien MCP server is granted on a rolling basis, accompanied by quick-start guides

  • 05 June 2026 | Onboarding webinar
      Introductory call online 12:00-13:00 CET

  • 12 June 2026 | Open Office session
    Drop in and ask questions 10:00-11:00 CET

  • 3 July 2026 | Open Office session
    Drop in and ask questions 10:00-11:00 CET

  • 23 July 2026 | Open Office session
    Drop in and ask questions 10:00-11:00 CET

  • 20 August 2026 | Applications Close
    Closure of the applications submission at 23:59 CET

  • 21 Aug. - 11 th September | Community Voting
    Community vote for the favourite application

  • 20 August - 14th September 2026 | Evaluation
    • Evaluators review the applications
    • Finalists announced 
  • 16 September 2026 | Awards
    • Awards announced at the OpenAIRE Graph Community Call
    • All winners present live