09/01/2026
ERA KR21 Conference 2025 – Day 1
Open Data and Intellectual Property Institute ODIPI, with the support of the Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) programme, organised the fifth Open Knowledge Days, at which various building blocks of open knowledge have been presented since 2019. Several events were held within this framework, including the second ERA KR21 Conference 2025.
On the first day, December 17, 2025, the ERA KR21 Conference 2025 took place, dedicated to open science and the building of open source large language models.
The conference was opened by the host Maja Bogataj Jančič. Then the conferences’s first welcome speech was by Tomaž Boh, Director General of the Directorate for Science and Innovation, Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation of the Republic of Slovenia, who praised ODIPI’s efforts in this area. He attended the ERA KR21 conference for the second time and expressed his expectation for good cooperation in the future.
The attendees were then addressed by Ana Slavec, President of the Slovenian Open Science Community (SSOZ), who highlighted the importance of the copyright field and the important role of ODIPI, which is a member of the SSOZ, while Dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič is also a member of the SSOZ Expert Council and head of the Expert Body for Legal Issues Related to Copyright and Data Governance.
The morning session was focused on open science and copyright issues. Speakers included: Magda De Carli(Deputy Director, European Commission – DG RTD), who presented the ERA Act and open science, Ignasi Labastida i Juan (Deputy Rector for Scientific Publications and Open Science and Head of the Research Unit of the Centre for Learning and Research of the University of Barcelona – CRAI), who presented the results of the Project Retain, and Maja Bogataj Jančič (ODIPI, national and regional coordinator of KR21), who presented the secondary publication right (SPR) as regulated in Slovenia.
The afternoon part of the first day of the conference was dedicated to presentations of the legal bases for building open source large language models (LLMs). Marko Robnik-Šikonja (Faculty of Computer Science and Informatics, University of Ljubljana) presented what LLMs are and the technical aspect of building LLMs. Rosana Lemut Strle (Lemut Strle Law Firm) presented the legal protection of privacy when building LLMs. Paul Keller (Open Future) presented the legal bases as regulated in European regulation, more specifically in Article 3 of the CDSM Directive. Eric Luth (Wikimedia Sverige, national coordinator of KR21) presented to the audience how the national library in Sweden is dealing with legal challenges and media attacks. Maja Bogataj Jančič presented in detail the legal bases for building an open source LLM in Slovenia.
The presentations were followed by a round table entitled Building an Open Source LLM in Slovenian, where Marko Robnik-Šikonja, Jana Kolar (Director of the National and University Library – NUK), Tanja Petrič (President of the Association of Slovenian Literary Translators) and Iztok Ilc (Public Book Agency of the Republic of Slovenia) discussed the opportunities and challenges of building a Slovenian Open Source LLM under the guidance of moderator Maja Bogataj Jančič. During the discussion, it became clear that translators are in a very difficult position due to the use of artificial intelligence (AI), and that they therefore organized the campaign ” UIzi prevedeno. UIzi zgrešeno.” It also turned out that, according to the director, NUK currently does not provide LLM builders in Slovenian with access to copyrighted works and has ordered the preparation of a legal opinion to clarify the legal dilemmas related to this, on the basis of which appropriate decisions will be made. The round table also raised the question of whether it would make sense to establish a national platform for the so-called opt-out of Slovenian authors or copyright holders in connection with the commercial building of LLMs. All of this confirms that the issues raised at the conference are of extreme importance and that a moment for social debate is necessary.
