Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) is excited to unveil its new strategic plan today, which will, for the next three years, provide a blueprint of how we will work to drive informed, strategic, and coordinated investment in and adoption of open infrastructure.
Over the past three years, we have explored and tested ways to shed light on funding needs and opportunities to guide the sector. This included running multiple funding pilots and convenings, prototyping tools, and working with infrastructure providers and funders to implement new strategies. We've deepened our engagement with funders, librarians and library workers, infrastructure providers, and research networks/institutions to be responsive to the sector's needs as they continuously change. All this provided us with a robust understanding of where opportunities exist to further embed open infrastructure as the default in research.
The 2024-27 strategic plan builds on this robust understanding. Open infrastructure is essential in furthering global access and participation in vital areas of research such as health and climate and in improving research transparency, integrity, and reproducibility. Yet, despite their importance and rising popularity, many need help with long-term sustainability. Fragmentation among stakeholders hinders effective, coordinated action to enhance investment in and adoption of open research infrastructures.
There is an urgent need to strengthen, expand, activate, and coordinate a diverse network of open infrastructure funders globally, to deepen engagement with existing open infrastructure funders and developers and, at the same time, cultivate new sources of funding. IOI is positioned to bring all stakeholders together to effect change to further the adoption of and investment in open infrastructure. Our work extends to philanthropies, governments, institutions, libraries, development funders, not-for-profit and commercial entities, and others. We will continue to equip funders with up-to-date information on funding trends and opportunities, and will explore and test new mechanisms, conversations, and strategies to catalyse deeper investments into improving the resilience and health of open infrastructures and advance their adoption.
From the sector data that we are gathering and analysing (see the State of Open Infrastructure 2024 report and our infrastructure discovery tool Infra Finder as examples), we also see immense opportunities in strengthening global open infrastructures through providing critical support and programming to help them navigate moments of growth and transition. We note that open infrastructures often face similar challenges and have convergent needs, e.g. expertise and capacity in diversifying funding, business modelling, and evolving leadership and governance. In the next three years, building on the deep work with our current strategic support partners, we look forward to expanding our partnerships and services, working with and learning from communities worldwide to pilot collaboration and cooperation initiatives to strengthen the open infrastructure at the ecosystem level and achieve collective impact.
Planning for growth and (our own) sustainability
The design and development of this second strategic plan represented a unique moment and opportunity for IOI to plan for our continual growth. Sustainability and resilience sit at the heart of our mission and work, and we have been examining our paths towards sustainability and organizational maturity since 2021. Working with our Steering Committee, which brings together expertise and experience from not only the research and scholarship sector but also the broader technology, digital public good, non-profit, and funding and investment spaces, we are in the process of establishing IOI as an independent entity. We will be broadening our Steering Committee in the coming year to better support our mission and goals and to ensure that diverse stakeholders’ needs are taken into account. We are excited to continue the deep, collaborative work to examine additional structures and partnerships that would best support the delivery of our strategic objectives, further our mission, and unlock opportunities for additional funding and resourcing for the global open infrastructure community.
Our sincere thanks to our Steering Committee and representatives from funders, institutions, libraries, infrastructure providers, governments, and community members from five continents with whom we crafted this strategic plan through a collaborative design and feedback process.
Stay tuned for more in the coming months about a few new projects and updates we are launching to increase our collective understanding of the needs of diverse open infrastructures and to work with infrastructures, adopters, funders, and vision-aligned partners to cultivate change towards open infrastructure being the default in research. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated!