Crossref Metadata Retrieval was one of the first providers to participate in Infra Finder, both through IOI’s pilot project Catalog of Open Infrastructure Services and the first group of providers to participate in the new iteration, Infra Finder. IOI’s Lauren Collister had a chance to talk with Ginny Hendricks from Crossref to learn more about her perspective and experience with being part of Infra Finder.
Lauren: What was it like to create your entry in Infra Finder for Crossref?
Ginny: We found it thought provoking. Most of the questions were easy to answer, because we had worked on the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) and had regularly challenged ourselves to improve and reflect on our policies and principles. However, in working on the Infra Finder intake form, we did discover a few questions that prompted us to take some actions on our part. For example, we found that while we had created and approved several of the requested policies, we realised that we hadn’t necessarily made them public or easily findable. Now you can easily find our Equal Opportunities Commitment and we’ve expanded our community involvement information.
As participants of the pilot project, Catalog of Open Infrastructure Services, we gave feedback about the questions and the product that I can now see reflected in Infra Finder’s intake form and interface. It has been interesting to see the evolution of how people consider open infrastructure, what is important now, and how we have changed and developed over the last few years.
I also found the IOI team very supportive, responsive, and thoughtful as we communicated throughout the process.
Lauren: What advice would you give other infrastructure providers who are interested in being part of Infra Finder, and developing their own resources in these areas?
Ginny: You can now look at Infra Finder and see what others are doing in this space. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel and spend a lot of time searching everyone’s websites. For example, when we first made our Code of Conduct, we searched for and consulted many different examples – if we had had Infra Finder at that time, we could have come here to see easily what is already in use in our community.
I would also encourage people to see this as a chance to really engage in the topic of open infrastructure and to share information openly. You would learn more about your own infrastructure and how you are perceived and can measure your operation alongside the other systems you work with so we can all share best practices and prompt each other to keep improving. It’s not just checking off a series of boxes, but it’s about being aspirational and striving to be better, and keeping up with what is important to our communities now.
Lauren: How does the Crossref team and community use Infra Finder?
Ginny: When we have an inquiry from a potential collaborator, we can look them up in Infra Finder to learn more about their initiative, Looking at someone’s website is great, but if I just want to be able to quickly find out where an organization is based, or how big they are, or whether they are non-profit and who is on their board, it’s nice to have a go-to resource as a reference. Having this information in one place as a jumping-off point will save a lot of time.
One top-of-mind example is our recently launched program to look at our sustainability model and try to make Crossref participation more accessible and simplify our fees. We haven’t changed our fee structure in nearly two decades, and it’s become quite complicated with the many different services that we now provide. Infra Finder will be a good resource to put our work in context, and to find out what others are doing for fees and equity, and what models may already be familiar to our community. We will make sure to update our own entry when this work is complete.
Lauren: Besides checking Infra Finder for updates, how can folks learn more about this work and the other news from Crossref?
Ginny: We just launched a program page on our website for more information about the new sustainability review program, and on our community call on May 8th, we’ll share some early data for discussion (sign up for that here). You can also receive updates via our newsletter and blog and see what people are talking about on our community forum.
This post is part of our “Infra Finder Spotlight” series. To stay updated on posts from this series and more from Invest in Open Infrastructure, please sign up for our newsletter. If you’d like to see an organization in the spotlight, let us know in our Infra Finder Feedback Form.