We believe that Infra Finder’s value grows with the inclusion of more infrastructure services and standards, and we invite infrastructure services to express interest in joining Infra Finder.

"I am excited that someone is pulling data together about open standards and open infrastructure. Often, these services are hidden in the background, operating on a shoestring budget, but are the keystone in the arch. If you pull us out, all of these other services that rely on us just crumble. If you don’t keep the foundations in good condition, nothing can be built on them." 

- Tasha Mellins-Cohen, Project COUNTER

Eligibility

Infra Finder’s aim is to increase the adoption of open infrastructure at scale and therefore prioritizes services, projects, or tools that are designed to be widely used.

IOI recognizes that open infrastructure is a spectrum, rather than a binary.

Your service may be eligible for inclusion if it is in active use as a service, protocol, standard or software that the academic ecosystem needs in order to perform its functions throughout the research lifecycle. 

We are currently prioritizing services that meet one or more of the following criteria:

  • Meets the definition of open source software (OSS);
  • Primarily or exclusively distributes openly licensed (open access) content;
  • Is free to use by anyone (free of charge or other restrictions);
  • Is community-governed and is transparent in its operations and finances;
  • Is operated by a non-profit or non-commercial entity.

Any services that meet the above criteria can express interest in being included in the Infra Finder. For the next phase of expansion, we are prioritizing adding computational and data manipulation services that enable the analysis, sharing of and/or collaborative work on research data.

Please note that eligibility criteria and prioritization for inclusion in the tool are works in progress and may change over time.

The expression of interest form should only be submitted by those affiliated with the service itself, as we will need to contact a service representative for more information. If you would like to nominate a service for inclusion in the tool, please share this page with a staff member, developer, or maintainer of the service and recommend that they fill in the expression of interest form.

Express your interest

What to expect

Your expression of interest will be reviewed by the IOI team. We endeavour to respond to expressions of interest as soon as we can, but as we are a small team, we can only handle data submission and verification for a certain number of infrastructures simultaneously and would also need to prioritize in accordance with the criteria mentioned in the Eligibility section. We ask for your patience and understanding. 

Intake and Data Collection

When you are invited to join Infra Finder, you will receive an intake form from us. The intake form will ask for links to key information, such as your infrastructure’s public policies, financial and governance documentation, and more (please see our current intake form at this link). We are working with infrastructure providers to improve the form continuously, so please note that the form you will receive may look different.

By submitting the intake form, you also grant permission for IOI to use the information that you provided for public release in Infra Finder, and for any other purposes consistent with its mission. More information about how we will use the data you have provided can be found on this page. 

Data verification and review

Once you have completed the intake form, our team will review the information against publicly available information. Before we publish your infrastructure’s data, you will also have an opportunity to review the data.

Questions?

Please email infra-finder [at] investinopen [dot] org.