After several years of silence, WikiCite is coming back — and it’s doing so with a fresh, hybrid format and a clear goal: to reconnect communities, institutions, and individuals working with open citations, bibliographic data, and the Wikidata/Wikibase ecosystem. Wikicite is crucial for the quality of artificial intelligence, as it enables AI to perform effective fact-checking and feeds AI with qualitative data. For those working with data, libraries, and research, this is a very important topic.

For this event, we are partnering with the Swiss National Library, Berner Fachhochschule, Science et Cité, and DARIAH (a European network of scientists).
Among the speakers, there are representatives of

  • the Wikidata team
  • Wikimedia Malta
  • Wikimedia Czech Republic
  • the National Library of Germany
  • the National Library of Italy
  • the National Library of Greece
  • the National Library of Latvia.
  • ETH Zurich
  • the Fachhochschule of Lucerne
  • Graduate Institute of Geneva.

Wikimedia France, Wikimedia Portugal, Wikimedia Poland, and additional chapters are invited to attend as well.

Whether you’re a Wikimedian, a librarian, a developer, or simply passionate about the future of open knowledge, this is your chance to participate in shaping the next chapter of WikiCite.

Wikimedia CH’s Innovation Programme organises the Wikidata Day (the first day) while Wikicite (the other two days) are mainly community driven. Wikimedia CH provides the online platform and the accommodation for the organisation team.
Volunteering helpers are welcome!

 

Event Overview

Day 1 – Friday, August 29
In-person in Bern, Switzerland
Institutional sessions and showcases with invited speakers.
All talks will be recorded and shared online.

Day 2 – Saturday, August 30
Fully online via live video conferencing
Technical discussions, community talks, and cross-timezone engagement.

Day 3 – Sunday, August 31
Online and community-driven
Interactive workshops, do-a-thons, and “Ideas for Tomorrow” closing sessions.

Key Topics

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 ETH Zürich and 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

 

Who should attend?

  • Wikidata contributors and WikiCite supporters
  • Librarians, archivists, researchers, digital humanists
  • Developers and data engineers
  • Institutions interested in structured, open bibliographic metadata
  • Anyone curious about Wikidata and open citations

 

Want to join? Let us know

Register (non-binding, helps us plan)
Program
Event info

 

More information coming soon

The detailed program and calls for proposals (talks, posters, workshops) will be announced shortly on the main event page.

Let’s rebuild WikiCite — together.
Mark your calendar and be part of it, share on your socials by using #WikiCite2025 #Wikidata #OpenCitations #WikimediaCH #BibliographicData.