Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) is delighted to announce the launch of our 2025 Impact Report. 2025 was a challenging year for the global research ecosystem, yet it also underscored what enables real progress: proactive governance, sustainable business models, and collaboration between partners across traditional divides pursuing a shared vision of globally collaborative and open research. Despite the adversity faced in the year, we were able to channel US$3M to open infrastructure networks in Africa and Latin America, expand Infra Finder to more than 110 infrastructures, and develop tools that help institutions understand the true costs of public access. All of this would not be possible without the support of our partners who share our vision of a globally equitable and sustainable open research ecosystem.
Some of the key learnings that we unpack in the Impact report include:
- Coordination — rather than competition — is essential for the long-term sustainability of open infrastructures. In a resource-constrained environment, going it alone isn't viable. Strategic coordination lets organizations focus on serving their respective communities while sharing operational costs and risks.
- Funding is only one of the components needed for a healthy open research ecosystem. While funding is important, we also need stronger collaboration, strategic coordination, and fundamentally different models to set infrastructures up for success as viable, robust systems in service of the research community.
- Consolidation, mergers, and sunsetting can be positive. Consolidation and mergers can combine teams’ complementary strengths; sunsetting can clear space for new ideas and approaches — this isn’t failure, but evolution towards more resilient models.
Looking ahead, we hope to build on this work next year and make the open research ecosystem stronger with closer collaboration, breaking down silos that have jeopardized coordination in the past, and expanding the coalition of partners who share our conviction that open infrastructure is essential to the future of research.
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