This post is part of a series in which we share more about what we’re working on and what we’re learning. Read our last update.
Have a question or comment about anything you see here? Get in touch! We’d love to hear from you.
On to the update …
What we are working on:
- We shared findings from our exploration on the values of the Catalog of Open Infrastructure Services (COIs). The exploration, conducted by our User Researcher Taimour Azizuddin, featured insights from interviews with 12 funders and budget holders on how they make funding decisions and how COIs can help.
- We are launching an exploratory research project to better understand open infrastructure needs in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The aim is to better understand the existing initiatives and the issues that people involved in scholarly infrastructure in Africa, Asia, and Latin America face. Read more on the research.
- In two weeks, we will host our first-ever in-person workshop in Africa in collaboration with the West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN). The event will bring funders, intermediaries, and open infrastructure service providers together to explore common mechanisms to further investment in open infrastructure in Africa. It will feature representatives from organizations including the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and the Ghanaian Academic and Research Network (GARNET). More details are on this page.
- A fresh new look for IOI coming soon. Since the start of the year, our Outreach and Engagement team, in collaboration with Zack Adell, has been working on developing a new brand identity for IOI. Stay tuned for more updates as we begin the rollout of our new identity in the coming weeks.
Who we are talking to:
- Geci Karuri-Sebina and Yasmin Shapurjee, the Civic Tech Innovation Network (CTIN), to learn more about their work in convening civic tech practitioners in Africa and in understanding the landscape of civic tech funding.
- Stewart Scott and Maia Hamin, the Atlantic Council Cyber Statecraft Initiative, to share ideas on researching open source funding and the roles of various funders and other stakeholders.
- Bryan Nunez and Ramy Raoof, Open Technology Fund (OTF), to learn more about the design of OTF’s Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Sustainability Fund pilot.
What we are reading/exploring:
A list of highlights is below — for a more comprehensive view, please check out the Open Infrastructure Tracking Project (also on Twitter and Mastodon).
- Björn Brembs, Adrian Lenardic, Peter Murray-Rust, Leslie Chan and Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Mastodon over Mammon - Towards publicly owned scholarly knowledge, Zenodo, February 18, 2023
- Daniela Saderi, Open Peer Reviewers in Africa: A Train-of-Trainer Program pilot recap, elife sciences, Feb 15, 2023
- Stewart Scott, Sara Ann Brackett, Trey Herr, and Maia Hamin, Avoiding the success trap: Toward policy for open-source software as infrastructure, Atlantic Council, Feb 8, 2023
Upcoming events/talks:
We look forward to meeting you at the following events!
- IOI Executive Director Kaitlin Thaney, Engagement Lead Emmy Tsang, and Communications Associate Jerry Sellanga will be in Accra, Ghana from March 15 to the 17 for the IOI-WACREN workshop on Open Infrastructure as well as the WACREN 2023 Conference.
