---
title: "Open Science Infrastructure"
chunk: 2/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Science_Infrastructure"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:49:40.430585+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Openness and the commons ===
Open science infrastructures are open, which differentiate them with other scientific and knowledge infrastructure and, more specifically, with subscription-based commercial infrastructures. Openness is both a core value and a directing principle that affect the aims, the governance and the management of the infrastructure. Open science infrastructure face similar issues met by other open institutions such as open data repositories or large scale collaborative project such as Wikipedia: "When we study contemporary knowledge infrastructures we find values of openness often embedded there, but translating the values of openness into the design of infrastructures and the practices of infrastructuring is a complex and contingent process".
The conceptual definition of open science infrastructures has been largely influenced by the analysis of Elinor Ostrom on the commons and more specifically on the knowledge commons. In accordance with Ostrom, Cameron Neylon understates that open infrastructures are not only characterized by the management of a pool of common resources but also by the elaboration of common governance and norms. The economic theory of the commons make it possible to expand beyond the scope of limited scope of scholar associations toward large scale community-led initiatives: "Ostrom's work (…) provides a template (…) to make the transition from a local club to a community-wide infrastructure." Open science infrastructure tend to favor a non-for profit, publicly funded model with strong involvement from scientific communities, which disassociate them from privately owned closed infrastructures: "open infrastructures are often scholar-led and run by non-profit organisations, making them mission-driven instead of profit-driven." This status aims to ensure the autonomy of the infrastructure and prevent their incorporation into commercial infrastructure. It has wide range implications on the way the organization is managed: "the differences between commercial services and non-profit services permeated almost every aspect of their responses to their environment".
Open science infrastructures are not only a more specific subset of scientific infrastructures and cyberinfrastructures but may also include actors that would not fall  into this definition. "Open access publication platforms" such as Scielo, OpenEdition or the Open Library of Humanities are considered an integral part of open science infrastructures in the UNESCO definition and in several literature review and policy reports, whereas they were usually considered as a separate entities in the policy debate on cyberinfrastructure and e-infrastructures. In the 2010 report of the European Commission on e-infrastructure, scientific publishing platforms are "not e-Infrastructures but closely related to it".
Open science infrastructures may also incorporate additional values and ethical principles. Samuel Moore has theorized a form of care-full scholarly commons that does not exist yet but would incorporate latent forms of open science infrastructure and communities: "In addition to sharing resources with other projects, commoning also requires commoners to adopt an outwardly-focused, generous attitude to other commons projects, redirecting their labour away from proprietary." In 2018, Okune et al. introduced a similar concept of "inclusive knowledge infrastructures" that "deliberately allow for multiple forms of participation amongst a diverse set of actors (…) and seek to redress power relations within a given context."

=== Principles for open science infrastructures ===
In 2015 Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructure have laid out an influential prescriptive definition of open science infrastructures. Subsequent definitions and terminologies of open science infrastructures have been largely elaborated on this basis. The text has also influenced the definition of open science infrastructure retained by the UNESCO in November 2021.
The Principles attempt to hybridize the framework of infrastructure studies with the analysis of the commons initiated by Elinor Ostrom. The principles develop a series of recommendations in three critical areas to the success of open infrastructures:

Governance: the governance of the infrastructure should be open and accountable to the scientific communities it aims to serve. Specific measures should ensure that the management of the organization is transparent and diverse.
Sutainability: the core activities of organization should be covered by recurring funds. Short-term subventions should be limited to short-term projects. While the organization could charge for services, it should not extend to the data that should remain "a community property".
Insurance: the technical infrastructure and the output of the organization are open. This ensure that the infrastructure can be recreated if necessary (in the jargon of open source, it becomes "forkable").
The text ends by mentioning several potential consequences of the principles. The authors advocate for a responsible centralization, that embodies a different than the large web commercial platforms like Google and Facebook while still maintaining the important benefit of centralized infrastructures: "we will be able to build accountable and trusted organisations that manage this centralization responsibly". Existing examples of large open infrastructure include ORCID, the Wikimedia Foundation or CERN.
A more critical reception has focused on the underlying political philosophy of the Principles. While the scientific community is a key part of the governance of open science infrastructure, Samuel Moore underline that it is never precisely defined, which raised potential issues of under-representation of minority groups:

[this] raises questions over who is the community that gets to govern and exclude, and what gives them the right to decide the conditions These questions are especially relevant for understandings of the commons that are all-encompassing or operate on a large scale, which tend to favour more powerful stakeholders, wealthy disciplines and countries in the Global North. Such commons treat subjects in a political vacuum rather than embedded in a particular situation and entangled in a number of different relationships and projects with asymmetrical power structures.

== History ==

=== Early developments (1950–1990) ===