Introduction

Three years ago, Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) staff and Steering came together to craft a vision and a strategic direction that has guided our decision-making, the programs and pilots we’ve built and tested, funding opportunities we’ve pursued, and how we’ve engaged with others to advance open infrastructure investment and adoption in research. Our 2021-2024 Strategic Plan was directly influenced by our first research effort, “The Future of Open Scholarship”, which engaged over 125 researchers, librarians, institutional leads, infrastructure providers and publishers worldwide to examine where opportunities existed to embed open infrastructure as the default in research – and what was needed to actualize them. 

Since that time, IOI staff have explored and tested a number of ways to shed light on funding needs and opportunities to guide the sector, run multiple funding pilots and convenings, prototyped tools, and worked with infrastructure providers to implement new strategies. We’ve deepened our engagement with funders, libraries, infrastructure providers, and research networks/institutions to be responsive to the needs of the sector as they continuously change. This body of work validated the strategic goals and activities outlined in our 2021-2024 Strategic Plan, and pointed us towards several potential areas that we believe are ready for acceleration and testing to further the use and sustainability of open infrastructure in research and scholarship. 

In this time we have also identified a pressing need to engage a broader set of organizations invested in supporting and encouraging a healthy open research ecosystem – including National and Regional Research & Education Networks, internet service providers, scholarly societies and publishing organizations, and those investing in research and development, to name a few – to ensure we are continually checking our assumptions and building towards more equitable representation. We continue to expand our core staff, governance, and representation in these communities and are actively engaging with organizations who share and support a shared vision of open infrastructure as a necessary and critical support for open science. 

At IOI, we define open infrastructure as the shared research infrastructures needed to support open science and serve the needs of its full spectrum of stakeholders. As described in the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, open infrastructures include “both virtual or physical, including major scientific equipment or sets of instruments, knowledge-based resources such as collections, journals and open access publication platforms, repositories, archives and scientific data, current research information systems, open bibliometrics and scientometrics systems for assessing and analyzing scientific domains, open computational and data manipulation service infrastructures that enable collaborative and multidisciplinary data analysis and digital infrastructures”. 

Our focus is on the narrower set of open-source solutions, systems, and supports that facilitate the creation and dissemination of open content and data and empower communities to deliver new, improved collective benefits without restrictions to participation, engagement, or usage. These solutions are open source by design and often the result of community-driven efforts. They employ open standards, interact and interoperate with other open services, and are shaped by community needs. This frame is aligned with the definition of open infrastructures included in the text of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, which states that shared research infrastructures “should be not-for-profit and guarantee permanent and unrestricted access to all public to the largest extent possible.” We believe the benefits of open infrastructure are many, including improving scientific reproducibility, addressing inequities in who can access and participate in research, advancing transparency of methods and models for others to build on, and enabling communities of practice to work together to solve complex problems. 

IOI sits at the intersection of a number of stakeholder communities – including funding bodies, libraries, service providers, and the research community, among others – united in a shared belief that digital infrastructure is critical to accelerating open science and driving innovation. We have made it our mission to drive new approaches to fund, scale, and sustain digital research infrastructure that will enable open and equitable research.

IOI helps institutions and funders better invest in the open technology and systems that research and scholarship rely on. We provide targeted, evidence-based guidance and strategic support to infrastructure providers, institutions, and funders of open infrastructure. That guidance is honed and refined through extensive research and consultations with infrastructure providers, librarians and library workers, community-network leaders of consortia and Research & Education Networks, research institutions, funders, and research practitioners.

Vision 

Our vision is for a future where open infrastructure is the default for open science. In this future, open infrastructure is sustained and available globally, and is recognized as a critical component in advancing a healthy, resilient, and equitable research ecosystem that prioritizes knowledge as a public good.

Mission

IOI works to drive informed, strategic, and coordinated investment in and adoption of open infrastructure. 

Our approach 

The following core principles underlie how we operate as a team, engage with the community, and how we approach our research efforts, strategic engagements, and funding pilots. 

Our organization aims to promote trust in the community and among stakeholders, and it prioritizes evidenced-based research and assessment that ensure the topics and solutions IOI promotes are actionable, approachable, reusable, and understandable.

We are committed to openness and transparency, and we share our process, findings, and work in formats that enable participation and reuse. Transparency and openness are two critical components of the healthy, inclusive research ecosystem we are building towards, and we aim to reflect that in our work.

We center our work on collaboration with and for aligned initiatives in the sector who are willing to challenge the status quo and test out different approaches. We’re committed to soliciting and incorporating feedback into our work products and process and learning in the open.  

Strategic Goals & Objectives

In order for an open, equitable, and inclusive research ecosystem to flourish, we seek to advance our collective understanding, investment, and strategies for driving change towards open infrastructure. 

The goals below speak to IOI’s work ahead: conducting targeted research, providing strategic support and added capacity, guiding investment, and helping to advance adoption, development, and sustainability of open infrastructure. 

Goal 1: Catalyze open infrastructure adoption and use by institutions, library consortia, and research networks. 

Key objectives:

  • Increase the visibility of open infrastructure providers and their value to the ecosystem through targeted research on the benefits, opportunities, and challenges associated with adoption. Expand our discovery tools and our mapping of infrastructure providers and needs to new disciplines and communities, including data storage, research data management, data analysis, and digital preservation. 
  • Deliver trustworthy and actionable research via standalone tools, research products, and our annual State of Open Infrastructure report to help decision makers converge on open infrastructure solutions. This includes identifying core open infrastructure needs and areas to prioritize for collaboration, interoperability, coordinated development and investment among institutions, libraries, consortia, and research networks, as well as indicators to monitor progress.
  • Focus on growing infrastructure adoption as a key driver of sustainability via funding pilots, strategic support services, and targeted work with infrastructure providers and potential adopters (institutions, libraries, consortia, research networks) to identify and pursue a shared path forward. This includes assisting providers and adopters in identifying and developing suitable business models for open to ensure the maintenance and growth of the project. 
  • Deepen and grow our work in Latin America and Africa to build more equitable representation of global research needs in open infrastructure development, with the aspiration to expand to additional regions via funding efforts and pilots, services to communities/infrastructures, and partnerships. We believe that open infrastructure is a critical and necessary component for a more equitable research ecosystem, and will continue work to ensure such infrastructure is well-supported while also striving to center the needs of research communities in Africa, Latin America, and beyond through increased representation of global voices.
  • Generate recommendations and sustainability models for increased open infrastructure use and availability for research institutions, networks, and communities. 

Goal 2: Help open infrastructures navigate moments of growth and transition. 

Key objectives:

  • Provide critical support and programming to infrastructures navigating change (e.g. scale-ups, spin-outs, consolidation, mergers, project sunsetting, leadership/governance build out and transitions, and expansion and adaptation to research communities in Latin America, Africa, and beyond).
  • Develop evidence-based strategies that help infrastructures diversify funding (including non-grant based revenue streams), reduce financial risk, and build representative governance to power their growth.
  • Identify shared needs and opportunities among infrastructures that translate into strategies and structures that unlock and de-risk funding. 
  • Address common needs and relieve operational burdens for infrastructures through targeted engagements and support services.
  • Pilot collaboration and cooperation initiatives to strengthen the open infrastructure ecosystem and accelerate success while ensuring representation from research communities relying on open infrastructure. 

Goal 3: Strengthen, expand, and activate a diverse network of open infrastructure funders globally.  

Key objectives:

  • Map and monitor funding trends, including shifts in infrastructure investment (both direct and in-kind contributions), balance between regions, funder priorities, governance of open infrastructure funding, and the status of funding programmes and initiatives. Advocate for and collaborate on the development of open funding data sources.
  • Support funders in understanding the impact of their giving and provide targeted recommendations and insights to guide their investment decisions.
  • Deepen engagement with philanthropies, governments, and institutions to align investment priorities and mechanisms with open infrastructure needs to advance open science. 
  • Cultivate new sources of funding, including development funding, contributions from commercial entities and other beneficiaries of open infrastructure, national research infrastructure and government investment, and institutional support. Explore where existing funding for closed systems could be directed towards open systems to diversify investment into open infrastructure.
  • Coordinate with existing funder networks and organizations advocating for collective funding of open infrastructure to maximize impact and share learnings. 
  • Pilot and test new mechanisms and strategies for catalyzing deeper, more dynamic investment in advancing the adoption and resilience of open infrastructures in research and scholarship. 
  • Documenting and sharing evidence on the impact of funding open infrastructures via IOI pilots and research to advocate for better funding mechanisms.

Goal 4: Build organizational capacity and effectiveness to deliver on our mission.

Key objectives:

  • Build robust funding pipelines and stability by establishing diverse revenue streams and maintaining 8-12 months of runway in the bank when possible, with a stretch goal of multi-year funding.
  • Develop and manage operational capacity through strategic collaborations and partnerships, staffing and in-kind support, building out the core IOI team and our network of trusted contractors, ensuring equitable recruitment and hiring practices, and implementing effective onboarding, skills development, and offboarding for team members and contributors.
  • Further develop governance and processes to support decision making and evaluation, including development of internal markers of progress and impact. 
  • Further evolve processes to ensure operational effectiveness and independence, building out our goal setting and review processes, plans for growing internal financial and operational functions, and our own performance and organizational metrics.
  • Ensuring equity and access are at the core of our work, building out anti-racist and anti-discriminatory governance practices and membership, embedding our values into our work,  acknowledging and working intentionally to address systemic biases that exist in open technology and higher education, and prioritizing access, equity, and global representation.