RLUK Digital Shift Forum | The State of Open Infrastructure

RLUK’s Digital Shift Forum brings together colleagues from across the information, research, cultural and heritage communities, and third and commercial sectors, to discuss the future of the digital shift in collections, services, and audiences.

https://bit.ly/RLUKDSF

In the rapidly evolving landscape of scientific research, open science infrastructures are pivotal in ensuring access to knowledge and fostering innovation. Earlier this year, the team at Invest in Open (IOI) released the first State of Open Infrastructure report to shed light on trends, issues, and gaps in the investment and adoption of open infrastructure for research, with the aim of identifying areas for potential change or intervention. This talk digs deeper into the findings and explores collective paths forward.

This research builds on deep engagement with communities across four continents, and explores critical needs and areas for collective action to truly achieve the aims of open science. It includes analysis of over $415M USD in funding mapped for open research infrastructure, patterns in governance and key characteristics of over 57 infrastructures serving the open science ecosystem, and use cases we can learn from globally regarding policies and adoption of community-led infrastructures to advance open and equitable research.

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Kaitlin Thaney is the Executive Director of Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI), a nonprofit initiative dedicated to increasing investment in and adoption of open tools and software for research. Her career has been centered around open infrastructure organizations; helping them think strategically about program design, participatory engagement, and sustainability.

Previously she served as the Endowment Director for the Wikimedia Foundation, where she led development of a fund to sustain the future of Wikipedia and free knowledge. Prior to joining Wikimedia, Thaney directed the program portfolio for the Mozilla Foundation, following her time building the Mozilla Science Lab, a program to serve the open research community. She was on the founding team for Digital Science, where she helped launch and advise programs to serve researchers worldwide, building on her time at Creative Commons, where she crafted legal, technical, and social infrastructure for open access and sharing data on the web.