When we talk about sustainable open scholarly infrastructure, governance often gets treated as an afterthought — something to figure out once the technology is built and adoption grows. But what if we flipped that approach? What if robust, community-centered governance was designed from the very beginning?
This is what Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) set out to explore in our recent partnership with the DeSci Foundation, where we worked together with Dr. Philipp Koellinger, CEO, DeSci Labs AG and President, DeSci Foundation, to develop governance frameworks for the CODEX Protocol, a decentralized data storage protocol for scholarly communication that includes strong censorship resistance and durability guarantees.
Why governance matters for open infrastructure
Open scholarly infrastructure faces a fundamental challenge: how do you ensure that essential research tools remain truly open, accessible, and community-governed over time? We've seen too many examples of platforms that started with good intentions but gradually drifted away from their founding principles as they scaled.
The development of the CODEX Protocol presented a unique opportunity to embed open principles and transparent governance processes into a protocol’s own rules and processes as it transitioned from DeSci Labs into a not-for-profit foundation environment . Rather than retrofitting governance onto existing technology, DeSci Foundation wanted to ensure their protocol would be built with community stewardship as a core design principle.
Our approach: Community-centered needs assessment
Over five months in Spring 2025, we worked closely with DeSci Foundation to identify, build, test, and refine key governance features for the CODEX protocol that will help enable it to become open scholarly infrastructure:
- Phase 1: Principles alignment. We conducted a mapping of existing open-source governance frameworks, particularly the Principles of Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) Framework, to identify core principles that should guide CODEX Protocol governance. This research informed our initial draft governance framework for what would become the CODEX Protocol Governance Group.
- Phase 2: Stakeholder needs assessment. We engaged with 18 key stakeholders across the scholarly communication ecosystem, including representatives from DeSci, universities, funders, metadata and standards bodies, open scholarly infrastructures, and scientific compute infrastructures. Our goal was to clarify stakeholder needs and desires around governance to ensure fit for purpose and to inform the finalization of the governance framework.
What we learned
Across all stakeholders we engaged, whether they were deeply familiar with protocol governance or completely new to it, transparency emerged as the unanimous top priority for protocol governance. Other consensus we’ve identified include:
- Protection of openness ranked as the most critical governance responsibility, with participants emphasizing the need for ongoing safeguards against future closure or commercialization
- Community involvement was consistently valued, though most felt it should be "sometimes important" rather than always required for every decision
- Key responsibilities for Protocol Governance group: Participating stakeholders clearly articulated what they wanted the governance body to focus on: managing licenses and rights, making technical merge decisions, and establishing clear "living will" or sunsetting plans. They were notably less interested in having governance bodies manage fundraising or implementing awards and rewards.
The trust challenge
One of our most interesting findings emerged from conversations with stakeholders who initially declined to participate in our survey. A significant number cited fundamental concerns about the use of blockchain technology in scholarly communication. One described this as encouraging "transaction culture" that inappropriately commodifies research functions.
This feedback highlighted a crucial tension: while blockchain technology offers certain technical advantages for decentralized systems, some in the scholarly communication community remain deeply skeptical. The governance framework needed to address these trust concerns head-on.
We also found that stakeholders that were uncertain about their trust in CODEX Protocol were interested in seeing the CODEX Protocol principal’s participation in existing scholarly communication networks. Our conversations with several informal interviewees suggested that DeSci Foundation could also build trust by having team members serve on governance bodies of related organizations, e.g. standards bodies, metadata aggregators, and other scholarly infrastructures. This approach creates relationships, demonstrates commitment to the broader ecosystem, and provides natural recruitment paths for CODEX's own governance bodies.
A framework for the future
The governance framework we developed with DeSci Foundation reflects these community insights. It starts with an appointed governance body focused on the core responsibilities that stakeholders prioritized and that were consistent with POSI and other values frameworks, with built-in mechanisms for transitioning to elected leadership as the community grows. Transparency and protection of openness are embedded as foundational principles, not optional add-ons.
"We knew from the beginning that CODEX needed robust governance — IOI's stakeholder needs assessment revealed insights we wouldn't have uncovered on our own. Their work helped us design a governance framework that addresses community concerns head-on while staying true to our vision of truly open, decentralized scholarly infrastructure,” said Philipp Koellinger, CEO, DeSci Labs AG and President, DeSci Foundation.
Lessons for the field
This partnership reinforced several key insights for anyone building open scholarly infrastructure:
- Start with governance, not technology. Community buy-in and trust are harder to retrofit than technical features.
- Transparency isn't negotiable. Across all stakeholder groups, transparency emerged as the essential foundation of trustworthy governance.
- Meet your community where they are. Understanding existing skepticisms and concerns is essential for designing governance that actually works.
- Design for evolution. Governance structures should be designed to mature alongside growing communities, with clear pathways from appointed to elected leadership.
The scholarly communication ecosystem is at a critical juncture, with new technologies offering unprecedented opportunities for open, decentralized infrastructure. But technology alone won't create the sustainable, community-governed systems our research community needs. That requires intentional governance design, deep stakeholder engagement, and a commitment to transparency from day one.
Interested in learning more about governance frameworks for open scholarly infrastructure? We'd love to hear about your experiences and challenges. Get in touch at research@investinopen.org.