---
title: "Open Science Infrastructure"
chunk: 1/8
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"
---

Open Science Infrastructure (or open scholarly infrastructure) is information infrastructure that supports the open sharing of scientific productions such as publications, datasets, metadata or code. In November 2021 the Unesco recommendation on Open Science describes it as "shared research infrastructures that are needed to support open science and serve the needs of different communities".
Open science infrastructures are a form of scientific infrastructure (also called cyberinfrastructure, e-Science or e-infrastructure) that support the production of open knowledge. Beyond the management of common resources, they are frequently structured as community-led initiatives with a set collective norms and governance regulations, which makes them also a form of knowledge commons. The definition of open science infrastructures usually exclude privately owned scientific infrastructures run by leading commercial publishers. Conversely it may include actors not always characterized as scientific infrastructures that play a critical role in the ecosystem of open science, such as publishing platforms in open access (open scholarly communication service).
Computing infrastructures and online services have played a key role in the production and diffusion of scientific knowledge since the 1960s. While these early scientific infrastructure were initially envisioned as community initiatives, they could not be openly used due to the lack of interconnectivity and the cost of network connection. The creation of the World Wide Web made it possible to share data and publications on a large scale. The sustainability of online research projects and services became a critical policy issue and entailed the development of major infrastructure in the 2000s.
The concept of open science infrastructure emerged after 2015 following a scientific policy debate over the expansion of commercial and privately owned infrastructures in numerous research activities and the publication of the Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructures. Since the 2010s, large ecosystems of interconnected scientific infrastructures have emerged in Europe, South and North America through the development of new open science project and the conversion of legacy infrastructures to open science principles.

== Definitions and terminology ==
Open science infrastructure is a form of knowledge infrastructure that makes it possible to create, publish and maintain open scientific outputs such as publication, data or software.
A Unesco recommendation about open science approved in November 2021 defines open science infrastructures as "shared research infrastructures that are needed to support open science and serve the needs of different communities". A SPARC report on European open science infrastructure includes the following activities within the range of open science infrastructures: "We define Open Access & Open Science Infrastructure as sets of services, protocols, standards and software contributing to the research lifecycle – from collaboration and experimentation through data collection and storage, data organization, data analysis and computation, authorship, submission, review and annotation, copyediting, publishing, archiving, citation, discovery and more".

=== Infrastructure ===
The use of the term "infrastructure" is an explicit reference to the physical infrastructures and networks such as power grids, road networks or telecommunications that made it possible to run complex economic and social system after the industrial revolution: "The term infrastructure has been used since the 1920s to refer collectively to the roads, power grids, telephone systems, bridges, rail lines, and similar public works that are required for an industrial economy to function (...) If infrastructure is required for an industrial economy, then we could say that cyberinfrastructure is required for a knowledge economy". The concept of infrastructure was notably extended in 1996 to forms of computer-mediated knowledge production by Susan Leigh Star and Karen Ruhleder, through an empirical observation of an early form of open science infrastructure, the Worm Community System. This definition has remained influential through the next two decades in science and technology studies and has affected the policy debate over the building of scientific infrastructure since the early 2000s
Open science infrastructure have specific properties that contrast them with other forms of open science projects or initiatives:

Open science infrastructures are not simply a technical product but embed a set of tools, institutions and social norms. Consequently, infrastructures are not always visible as they can be largely hidden under the routine of normal activities The resilience and tacitness of the infrastructures makes it especially difficult to identify the real contributions and "labour cost" of open science work, as it remains "invisible in the university system". This make it also difficult to allocate funding effectively as critical infrastructure may remain undetected by funding bodies.
Open science infrastructures are durable and resilient. They are expected to run on a long-term basis and multiple research programs relies on. To some extent, infrastructure are successful when they are forgotten and become an integral part of routine research activities: "Infrastructure at its best is invisible. We tend to only notice it when it fails."
Open science infrastructures can be shared and used by different actors and communities. It must be sufficiently consistent to remain coordinated and yet it have to welcome a diverse array of local uses: "an infrastructure occurs when the tension between local and global is resolved". Predefined agreement on the scope and the governance of the infrastructure within all stakeholders is a critical step.