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Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) is excited to today announce the eight recipients of grant funding from the Open Infrastructure Fund. The eight teams of grantees based in countries including Argentina, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Chile, Saudi Arabia, India, and Uruguay were selected from a pool of nearly 200 applications from over 50 countries across the world.
The Open Infrastructure Fund was designed to provide funding of between $5,000 and $25,000 USD to projects that support the development of open research infrastructure services, with the aim of strengthening sustainability and resilience and increasing the adoption of open infrastructure that underpins research and knowledge creation globally. The Fund sought applications from open infrastructure practitioners who are working on projects related to capacity building, governance, and critical shared infrastructure.
Our sincere gratitude to everyone who participated in the design of the Fund, all applicants, and the community advisor panel who reviewed the applications. Special thanks also to:
- OpenReview, whose platform enabled the open and transparent submission and review process
- MetaDocencia, who translated the funding call materials and office hours calls to Spanish
- The University of Buffalo and the Simons Foundation, for their financial contributions to the Fund
Your contributions have made the Open Infrastructure Fund a reality.
The participatory nature of the fund design and execution
The journey of the Open Infrastructure Fund began in November 2022 at IOI’s Funders Summit where IOI ran a participatory budgeting exercise which defined the core funding areas. In early 2023, we hosted a number of conversations, engaged with communities worldwide, and conducted an open design survey to refine the funding priorities and other parameters, such as the 60% carve out for projects based in/serving Low- and Middle-Income Economies (LMIEs). A two-month application window followed. We received 197 applications, both in Spanish and English, from 51 countries across the world. The applications were then subjected to a transparent review process that featured a community advisory panel of over 50 open science practitioners working in different fields worldwide.
“One of the things we care deeply about is ensuring that our work is rooted in the communities we serve. From the inception of the idea of the Open Infrastructure Fund and its participatory design in multiple languages to the community review process, we tried to ensure that the perspectives of our global community were integrated. After a year-long process, we are excited to share news of the eight funded projects. We cannot wait to see the global impact that their work, catalyzed by this funding, will have,” said Kaitlin Thaney, IOI’s Executive Director.
The funded projects
You can find out more about the funded projects below.
- Infraestructura para el uso responsable de datos de salud en Argentina: construcción de capacidades y comunidades en torno a datos sensibles. (English translation: Infrastructure for the responsible use of health data in Argentina: building capacities and communities around sensitive data) Mariela Rajngewerc, Veronica Xhardez, Laura Alonso Alemany, Laura Acion, Sabrina Laura Lopez, ARPHAI (LinkedIn, Twitter). The project aims to develop and sustain the infrastructure for processing and storing sensitive data from electronic health records.
- Education and Capacity Building for Open Science Hardware in Sub-Saharan African Universities. (ECB4OSH) Frank Bentum, AfricaOSH (LinkedIn, Twitter).
The project aims to develop awareness and capacity among Sub-Saharan African University students, developing their capacities in building and using open scientific instrumentation with a major focus on the OpenFlexure Microscope, an open-source, 3D-printed, and fully-automated laboratory microscope with a range of features suitable for resource-constrained regions. The project will donate all OpenFlexure Microscopes built to local schools, makerspaces, labs and other institutions in the Ghanaian region that are in need of scientific instruments for teaching, research or experimentation. - Creación e implementación de un repositorio/archivo digital sobre mujeres mapuche en Chile, visibilizando su rol histórico, social y de transmisión cultural en la sociedad chilena (English translation: Creation and implementation of a digital repository/archive on Mapuche women in Chile, making visible their historical, social and cultural transmission role in Chilean society) Jocelyn Patterson Leal, Fundación Nutram.
The project will create a digital repository/archive on Mapuche women in Chile, making visible their historical, social and cultural transmission role in Chilean society. The project also seeks to collect journal articles and research literature produced by researchers on Mapuche women. - Empowering Open Science Capacity in Arabic-Speaking Countries: The Open Innovation Platform Batool Almarzouq, Goodnews Sandy, Richie Moluno, Lamis Yahia, The Open Science Community in Saudi Arabia (OSCSA) (LinkedIn, Twitter).
The project will support the development of a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) learning platform, 'Open Innovation,' which supports right-to-left script languages to improve the accessibility of open science educational materials and address the pressing need for open science education in Arabic-speaking countries. - Open Science Roadmap: Improving Repository Infrastructure and Data Management in Uganda Universities. David Bukenya, Consortium of Uganda University Libraries (CUUL) (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Upgrading Dspace repositories and establishing new ones in Uganda will accelerate open access to research outputs as well as data management training activities for Ugandan Researchers. With reliable infrastructure, improved by the project, implementation of open science should become more amenable. - From Data Justice to Climate Justice: Modeling an Open Collaborative Review Process Madhuri Karak, Open Environmental Data Project.
This project pilots an open collaborative review process for a book co-authored with Becky Kazansky, University of Amsterdam. Tentatively titled ‘From Data Justice to Climate Justice’, the book is currently under contract with Sage Publications UK. The review process modelled in this project can be reused, remixed, or ported into other initiatives involving a global interdisciplinary mix of practitioners, scholars, and activist communities through open documentation. - Strengthening Community Governance in Latin American Bioimaging Network. Andres Olivera, Lia Pietrasanta, Andres Kamaid, Kildare Miranda, Hernandes Carvalho, Steffen Hartel, Verónica Eisner, Iván Rey, Juan Orozco, Iskra Tuero, Christopher Wood, Leonel Malacrida, Gabriela Casanova, Latin American Bioimaging Network (LABI) (LinkedIn, Twitter).
The project aims to implement community governance in LABI, promoting openness, transparency, and accountability. We seek to actively engage members to foster open dialogue and exchange of experiences, to create a solid framework to improve the governance and coordination of our community. - Improving accessibility and usability of FORRT’s Open Educational Resources Bethan Iley, Helena Hartmann, Flavio Azevedo, Dominik Kiersz, Leticia Micheli, Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT) (LinkedIn, Mastodon, Twitter).
The project aims to improve the usability and accessibility of the FORRT website and open educational resources on open science practices to make it easier for diverse research and science practitioners to utilize and benefit from the rich trove of community-developed resources.
A video recording of the OI Fund community call which took place on Friday, January 26 is available below. The video features the eight project leads introducing their projects and the IOI team sharing more about the process of developing the OI Fund and the key lessons learnt.
60% of the total funds were earmarked projects based in/primarily serving Low and Middle Income Economies (LMIEs). We are proud to share that this threshold was exceeded - 69% of the total funds will go to project teams based in/serving LMIEs.
The IOI team will continue to work closely with the grantees to support them in ensuring that the envisioned proposals translate to impact for the communities these grantees serve globally. We also look forward to learning from the projects’ work and their impact to inform our future funding pilots, and to share their achievements with the broader community. You can subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on the latest developments from the funded projects.
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Updated January 30, 2024, by Jerry Sellanga