This article is a teaser from the upcoming 2025 State of Open Infrastructure Report that we will launch in May, 2025.
The federal funding landscape in the United States is experiencing considerable upheaval and uncertainty. The situation is evolving so rapidly that virtually any summary will be out of date almost immediately, but the situation as of early April 2025 illustrates some of the challenges even as the specifics continue to evolve. (In fact, on March 31, just days before this post, all of the staff of the Institute of Museum and Library Services was put on leave, resulting in further delays, uncertainty, and challenges to those who rely on IMLS funding or who had active or proposed grant projects.)
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been very strongly targeted and provides a useful example of the challenges to research funding. In February 2025, the NIH was blocked from publishing notices of review activities in the Federal Register as is required by law before review meetings can be held, bringing review of grant proposals to a halt. The agency was also directed to limit indirect costs charged to research grants to 15%. Indirect cost rates typically range from 30-70% and reflect the real cost of supporting research at a university. These charges support shared infrastructure and services, including the cost of facilities and their upkeep, research administration (including regulatory compliance), information technology support, and more. Federal funders have also been instructed to identify and stop funding awards supporting activities deemed to be at odds with the priorities of the current administration, including “projects studying transgender populations, gender identity, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the scientific workforce, environmental justice and any other research that might be perceived to discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity.” Some orders have been declared invalid by judges who have ordered that funding be released, but it remains unclear whether the executive branch has been complying.
This ongoing uncertainty presents multiple challenges to open infrastructure. First, significant direct financial support from US federal funding sources is in jeopardy. The table below lists the total amount of funding from US federal funders for awards in our dataset with an end date of 1 January 2025 or later. The State of Open Infrastructure dataset focuses on the more than 70 open infrastructures that had been invited to participate in IOI’s Infra Finder by 30 September and had complete entries by 14 January, 2025, and the impact of instability in US federal funding is without a doubt far more significant than the data we present here indicate. Our cut off end date is somewhat arbitrary (but we think reasonable) given the fairly common practice of requesting a no-cost extension for award activities that continue past a grant’s original end date, if funds remain. We found one active award for each of the open infrastructures listed, and award duration ranges from one to seven years. To put this potential loss into perspective, arXiv reports annual operating costs of $2.3-3.4M USD for fiscal years 2023 and 2024 (from their 2023 annual report) and Dryad reports operating expenses of $0.9-1.5M for fiscal years 2022 and 2023. Notably, nearly all of the open infrastructures with active federal funding play an important role in the free and open dissemination of research results.
Table 1. Sum of direct support awards from US Federal funders with an end date of 1/1/2025 or later.
Second, the research activity that relies on open infrastructure is experiencing the same uncertainty and potential loss of funds due to the termination of current funded projects as well as reductions in future funding. For open infrastructures that operate with any measure of cost recovery from their users, this makes financial planning difficult and may result in a loss of revenue. Third, the threat of dramatic decreases to “overhead” charges will exert substantial budgetary pressure on colleges and universities. They will be looking for cost savings, potentially resulting in a decrease in membership or other types of contributions to open infrastructures. It is encouraging that some philanthropies recognize the crisis and are increasing their giving; whether this will benefit open infrastructures directly remains to be seen.
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