Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) is today thrilled to officially launch the 2025 State of Open Infrastructure report. Over the past six months, the IOI team has been devoted to exploring and analysing at a granular level issues related to open infrastructure characteristics, funding, policy, and community health.
The report contains exclusive data, trends and insights on key issues related to open infrastructure characteristics, funding, policy, and community health. The report presents valuable insights from interviews with leading experts across diverse stakeholder groups in open infrastructure investment and adoption globally, tailored research by the IOI team, and thorough trend analysis on topical issues related to open infrastructure.
In light of the recent wave of funding cuts and radical policy shifts targeting science, research, and civil society across North America, Latin America, and Europe, open infrastructures are not just collateral damage—they are under direct threat, facing both immediate disruption and long-term instability. We have sought to ensure that the report has practical insights that open infrastructure service providers, adopters, and funders can use to navigate the current landscape and contribute towards developing a much more collaborative, resilient, and agile ecosystem for research and scholarship.
The report builds on last year's edition and we are excited that, in addition to the mainstay topics of characteristics of selected open infrastructures and state of open infrastructure grant funding, we have introduced two new topics on open infrastructure funding dependencies and the cost of public access to research. The report is bookended by a futuristic outlook on some of the emerging topics that we believe will interface with open infrastructure in the coming years in our Signals from the Future chapter.
We welcome you to explore the full 2025 State of Open Infrastructure report via this link. We also have two dashboards that allow for customized analyses by readers. The two dashboards are as follows:
- Grant funding data - explore over $550M in open infrastructure grant funding from 2001-2024 and slice and dice the data by time, geography, funder, type of support, and type of infrastructure.
- Characteristics of open infrastructure - dive into our data on infrastructures listed on Infra Finder, to discover pertinent information on areas like policies, community engagement, governance, and technical information.
Key Findings
Below is a snapshot of key findings from the report:
- From an analysis of over $550M in open infrastructure funding from 2001-2024, governments are a critical source of funding for open infrastructures. Given the recent (and ongoing) research funding cuts, there is a need for coordinated action to plug the deficit caused by the cuts in government spending on research in the US and beyond. Explore the grant funding chapter.
- From our analysis of open infrastructures listed in Infra Finder, there is a high level of reliance between open infrastructures which is a strength but can also be a weakness. Merging overlapping infrastructure solutions or strategically sunsetting redundant tools may strengthen the ecosystem, making it easier for users to make choices and infrastructure organizations to build resilient business models. Explore the characteristics of selected open infrastructures chapter.
- Policy is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to furthering public access. There are technological and socio-cultural needs and dynamics that must be addressed alongside policy. In this chapter, we unpack some of these adjacent yet important costs to consider to enhance compliance with public access mandates. Explore the cost of public access chapter.
Get Involved
We invite you to share your feedback on the report using this feedback form! We value your input and it will go a long way towards shaping future editions of the report, targeted areas of support and research.
We hope this report sparks your curiosity about the tools and systems the research and scholarship community relies on and helps you to think about how your decisions line up with your vision for the future of research and scholarship. If you need additional information and support around these decisions, please reach out to us. We are experienced in providing tailored research and recommendations, including discovery, due diligence, and stakeholder feedback collection, to inform the decisions you are facing.
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