Catalyzing network investment in and adoption of open infrastructure for research

Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) believes that new approaches are needed to fund, scale, and sustain digital research infrastructure.

The IOI Fund for Network Adoption pilots a new form of investment and support to ultimately enable open and equitable sharing of data and content at scale.

The Fund will provide dynamic, flexible capital and strategic support to help networks implement, upgrade, and scale their usage of shared digital infrastructure.

Our goals include (1) pilot more dynamic and diverse investment in critical open research infrastructure (2) model sustainable ways to enhance the use and ongoing provisioning of open infrastructure services for member institutions and network communities, (3) facilitate the implementation and use of open infrastructure for research, and (4) share learnings across three regional use cases (Latin America, Africa, North America).

Funding from the Wellcome Trust will serve as a catalyst for additional financial contributions from other philanthropies, research funders, commercial providers, and governments.

Key words: open infrastructure, open access, data sharing, open science, funding, consortia, research networks, NREN, RREN, Latin America, Africa