We are excited to announce that Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) has received a generous grant of USD 1 million from the Mellon Foundation to catalyze investment in and adoption of open infrastructure in research. IOI is a fiscally sponsored project of Code for Science & Society. This grant will support the further development and productization of the Catalog of Open Infrastructure Services (COIs) and the testing of critical models and strategies to widen the pool of investors in open infrastructure.
COIs is designed as a resource for funders, users, and other interested stakeholders looking to make informed decisions about the open infrastructure services for research and scholarship. Through targeted engagement, user interviews, and listening sessions with a diverse and global community of potential users, we have identified and validated the value of COIs in addressing key information gaps for funders and budget holders, as well as driving change in infrastructure service providers’ governance and information disclosure practices. With this grant, we will be able to further develop the utility, usability, and value of COIs into a fully functional web application with key features, functions, and information to serve as a central source of information on open infrastructure offerings and the organizations behind them.
In addition, the grant will support our exploration of strategies to engage for-profit and non-profit companies serving the scholarly communications and research sector in reinvesting revenue derived from open knowledge and open research activities back into the underlying open infrastructure and services that underpin knowledge production. This targeted engagement and analysis approach to explore further diversification of funding sources is a critical next step to finding viable solutions towards creating a vibrant, viable, and sustainable ecosystem of open infrastructure services.
"The Mellon Foundation's support for IOI underscores the importance of understanding the costs and investment needs of open, community-owned infrastructure and services in advancing scholarship and research,” said Patricia Hswe, Program Officer for Public Knowledge at the Mellon Foundation. “We are excited to see IOI build on its success and further improve the resourcing, viability, and sustainability for open technologies that underpin research and scholarship."
"IOI is thrilled to receive this grant from the Mellon Foundation, which will help us expand on our aims to explore and test new strategies to accelerate investment in and adoption of open infrastructure,” said Kaitlin Thaney, Executive Director of IOI. “This work is not only crucial to our goal to provide strategic guidance to funders, institutional leaders, and others looking to invest in open infrastructure but also to strengthen our ability to further the infrastructure necessary for open knowledge to flourish for all.”
Please visit this page for more information on how we’re currently funded.
We are seeking a Product Lead, who will oversee the development and growth of COIs and will join the expanding IOI leadership team. With this announcement, we're also thrilled to share that Katherine Skinner has joined our expanding leadership team as Research Lead. We also look forward to welcoming our Business Development and Partnerships Lead in May.
We are also looking to fill three additional roles:
- Engagement Coordinator, Infrastructure, working to build and maintain relationships with open infrastructure service providers worldwide.
- Research Data Analyst, who will conduct important research into trends and gaps in funding for open infrastructure for research and scholarship.
- Django Developer (contract position) to help build out the features and functionality of COIs.
All applications are reviewed on a rolling basis up to and including May 15, 2023.
We are thrilled to have the support of the Mellon Foundation in our efforts to strengthen open infrastructure services and increase their adoption worldwide. We look forward to continuing to build partnerships and collaborations in the open infrastructure community.