Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
An identifier registry publishes annual POSI self-assessments documenting governance and finances.
- Is an instance
A funder requires open-source codebases and community governance for infrastructures it supports.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A foundational scholarly infrastructure governed solely by a single commercial entity with no community board.
- Not an instance
Infrastructure described as 'open' that depends on a closed codebase or proprietary data formats.
Editorial commentary
Open infrastructure is the layer of shared services scholarly communication depends on but researchers rarely think about directly: identifier registries (Crossref DOIs, ORCID), open citation graphs, preprint servers, and discovery indexes. Calling this infrastructure ‘open’ means more than free-to-read outputs — it means the infrastructure itself is community-governed, financially transparent, and cannot be quietly sold or discontinued by a single commercial owner.
Why this distinction matters
Proprietary citation databases, subscription-only identifier systems, and commercially owned indexing services have all, at points, changed pricing or access terms in ways that affected institutions with no alternative provider. Open infrastructure is a deliberate response — building equivalent services as community-owned or foundation-governed operations instead.
The reference framework: POSI
The most widely used yardstick for judging whether infrastructure meets this bar is POSI, the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure, first published 2015 and revised to v2.0 in October 2025. POSI groups its principles under governance, sustainability and insurance. See that page for the specific principles and how organisations self-assess — this page covers the broader concept and why the open/merely-free distinction exists.
Open infrastructure versus open access
These are frequently conflated. Open access describes the licensing/paywall status of a research output. Open infrastructure describes the governance and sustainability model of the systems that host, index and connect those outputs. A repository can be fully open access while running on commercially owned infrastructure that could change terms unilaterally — the two properties are independent.
Examples cited on each side
Crossref, DataCite, ORCID, DOAJ, ROR and OpenCitations are the names most consistently cited as meeting POSI-style governance and sustainability tests, each publishing some public self-assessment. Large commercial citation databases and identifier or metrics services owned outright by a single for-profit publisher are the recurring counter-examples — not for quality reasons, but because their governance gives one commercial actor unilateral control over pricing and continuity for services the whole sector depends on.
Frequently asked questions
Is open infrastructure the same as POSI?
No — POSI is the specific framework most commonly used to assess whether infrastructure qualifies as open. ‘Open infrastructure’ is the broader concept.
Does open infrastructure have to be free to use?
Not necessarily. POSI’s sustainability principles permit mission-consistent revenue, such as membership fees or usage-based pricing.
Can a for-profit company run open infrastructure?
Difficult to reconcile with a conventional shareholder-owned structure — several POSI principles constrain exactly the kinds of control such a company typically wants to retain, so aligned organisations are overwhelmingly non-profits or community-governed foundations.
References
- Bilder G, Lin J, Neylon C, ‘Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructure’, 2015/2020; POSI Adopters, v2.0, October 2025 (openscholarlyinfrastructure.org).
Also known as
Open scholarly infrastructure · POSI-aligned infrastructure
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Open infrastructure (POSI principles)"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-infrastructure-posi" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-infrastructure-posi",
"name": "Open infrastructure (POSI principles)",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-infrastructure-posi",
"description": "Scholarly infrastructure that is community-governed, financially sustainable, and operationally transparent, in alignment with the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI).",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/knowledge-equity#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-infrastructure-posi",
"sameAs": [
"Open scholarly infrastructure",
"POSI-aligned infrastructure"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-21T02:22:56",
"dateModified": "2026-08-22T15:38:17",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
