Co-authored by Sarah Lippincott, Lauren Collister, and Katherine Skinner
It was a 24-hour rollercoaster ride as President Trump issued an executive order to freeze US Federal Grant Funding, a judge stayed the order, and then the order was rescinded after chaos and outcry, only for more confusion to follow from contradictory statements.
While US Federal Funding seems unfrozen for now, it’s still too early to tell what may happen in the coming weeks and months. Institutions, recipients of federal funding, and infrastructure organizations need to actively prepare for the possibility that these funds may not fully materialize, even with ongoing, active grants and contracts.
Consider the sheer scope of the 2600 programs affected, according to the Office of Management and Budget memo. These programs provide critical funding for entire sectors, including cultural heritage organizations, historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions, and programs that support at-risk or underrepresented communities. This single day of chaos showed us all what could happen, not just in the US but anywhere in the world where research practice and infrastructure rely heavily on any single source of funding. We recently have seen cuts to open science in locations including Argentina, France, and the Netherlands, showing how support may be eroded piecemeal; because the US threat was vast and sweeping, it threw the instability of our entire system of infrastructure into stark and plain view.
As soon as we heard the news earlier this week, the IOI team looked at the data we have compiled on funding for open infrastructures. We initially collected these data for our State of Open Infrastructure Report in 2024 and recently have updated it with new sources and searches. This dataset shows just how reliant our infrastructures are on so-called “soft” funding – grants, whether they are federal, state, or philanthropic. We identified over $16.5 million in direct awards over the last five years from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to 13 vital infrastructure organizations serving research and scholarly communications (out of the 57 in our 2024 sample). For many infrastructures, federal grants provide critical support for technology improvements, feature expansion, and collaborations that directly impact user communities. Reliance on soft funding is widespread, but always risky. This moment should prompt the research community to reflect on the implications of funding models that depend on uncertain, short-term funding sources rather than diversified revenue streams.
The unique nature of this week’s situation also clarified how vulnerable the other revenue streams supporting these infrastructures may be. Additional revenues for research infrastructure tend to draw on universities', research laboratories', and libraries' budgets, which could themselves experience massive impacts of these same federal cuts to programs that subsidize their institutions’ research and teaching. IOI has collected data on federal funding to inform our work on determining the costs associated with public access mandates. In 2023, on average, higher education institutions in the United States each received nearly 90 million dollars in federal research investment, with the largest public and private institutions receiving in the range of a billion each in federal research and development funding in a single year.
There are many potential downstream impacts when grant awards are in danger.
Cuts to federal programs at the speed and scale threatened this week would profoundly affect the research backbone of the United States. That strain, in turn, could have ripple effects on open infrastructure. The already precarious institutional funding sources for membership fees, software and technology purchases, and salaries for those who work on infrastructures with institutional homes or contribute to open source communities might be quickly compromised with downstream, compounding impact.
If the current situation exposes risks of depending on federal funding for research and research infrastructure, it also underscores the importance of community-ownership of the tools and data that drive knowledge creation. Community-owned infrastructure that follows sound technical and governance principles provides some insulation from political interference. In 2016, we saw the importance of community efforts to save climate data and websites that the first Trump administration threatened to obscure and erase. The slew of recent executive orders demonstrates that an even broader swath of federal tools and data could be under threat, from continued focus on climate change denial to the newly invigorated efforts to purge diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Independent, community-owned, open infrastructure is more critical than ever. The research community must take action to ensure its resilience. Values-aligned funders, university administrations, and the broader technology sector must prioritize supporting, adopting, and advocating for open infrastructure to protect research independence and insulate critical infrastructure from the damages inflicted by any loss of federal funding.
We need to identify these gaps and find ways to fill them in — not temporarily as a stopgap until some hypothesized future happens, but rather to create the future that we want to see. This week has shown us that we can’t afford to wait for cuts to happen before we act. We must agree now to support those research infrastructures that are community-controlled and independent – and work to fund these infrastructures in a way that doesn’t rely on a single stream of funding. We need to identify mission-aligned organizations and infrastructures and put our resources into those, focusing our cuts on those organizations that do not align with our mission and goals.
For infrastructure creators and hosts: Due to limitations in the data sources that we use to get information on federal awards, we can’t tell the full extent of the impact. That’s why we’re asking for your stories. Fill out this form to let us know: What fears were brought to your attention during this turbulent time? What gaps and opportunities did it reveal to you? What responses were you seeing around you? What concerns persist, and what do you need to address them?
For grant-funded researchers and administrative teams at Universities: Through our research into institutional workflows for grants, we heard from you that there are deep and complex processes related to the contracts for accepting federal grants. We are curious to hear from you about the terms of these contracts and encourage the pursuit of legally binding obligations.
For librarians, faculty, and University staff: Do not accept cuts that imperil projects aligned with your missions, such as critical open infrastructure. Consider how you can use the mission and values of your institution to direct the cuts that are to come, including some that may have received pushback from your communities before. Look to resources like SPARC’s Big Deal Cancellation Tracker and Unbundling Profiles for inspiration from other organizations who have been through this work. Consider addressing the critical questions like: do we cut our support of resources, tools, and services that enable more people to conduct and access the results of our research, or those that seek to restrict participation for profit or other gains that are not aligned with our mission?
For non-governmental funders: Now is the time to urgently step in to address a potential crisis for research-performing organizations and the research infrastructure they depend on. If IOI can help you start those conversations and processes, please contact us using this form.
For individuals and organizations already engaged: Collective action magnifies impact. We want to boost and support your efforts. Reach out to us and let us know what you’re working on and how we can help with our data, research, and networks.
Protecting open infrastructures is particularly important in a turbulent political context. It is time to act together to put our money where our values are.
Social media image by Valery Fedotov on Unsplash.