OpenAIRE’s self-assessment of the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) v.2
The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) offers a set of guidelines by which open scholarly infrastructure organisations and initiatives that support the research community can be run and sustained. OpenAIRE builds on these principles as a signal of our commitement to serve the research community in the long run.
Version: January 2026
Legend: = compliant, = making progress, = not compliant
Governance
| Principle | Coompliance | self-assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage across the scholarly enterprise – research transcends disciplines, geography, institutions, and stakeholders. Organisations and the infrastructure they run need to reflect this. | The OpenAIRE portfolio offers services for the research lifecycle activities (DISCOVER, PROCESS & ANALYSE, MANAGE DATA, PUBLISH, ASSESS, OUTREACH, INTEROPERABILITY, SUPPORT & TRAIN) across countries, disciplines, and research actors, such as researchers, research performing organisations, policy-makers, content & service providers, publishers, funders, research communities, innovators, research infrastructures, and society actors. | |
| Stakeholder Governed – a board-governed organisation drawn from the stakeholder community builds more confidence that the organisation will take decisions driven by community consensus and consideration of different interests. | OpenAIRE is governed by an elected Executive Board and General Assembly which build on contributions and open discussions along with the members organisations. | |
| Non-discriminatory participation or membership – we see the best option to be an “opt-in” approach with principles of non-discrimination and inclusivity, where any relevant group may express an interest and should be welcome. Representation in governance must reflect the character of the community or membership. | Membership is open to organisations or associations that commit to Open Science and align with the OpenAIRE mission. OpenAIRE’s National Open Access Desks (NOADs) act as focal points for coordinating Open Science activities in their respective countries and take part as Regular Members. Furthermore, OpenAIRE clearely states its Gender Equality and Non-discrimination Policy (https://www.openaire.eu/openaire-gep). | |
| Transparent governance – to foster trust, the processes and policies for governing the organisation and selecting representatives to governance groups should be transparent (within the constraints of privacy laws). | OpenAIRE is a Non-Profit Partnership (NPP) incorporated under the provisions of Greek Law (articles 741 onwards of the Greek Civil Code) and Law No 4072/2012. It Statutes lay out the regulations for communication and decision making in a transparent and open manner (cf. OpenAIRE AMKE Statutes, April 2020, https://www.openaire.eu/openaire-amke-statutes-april-2020). OpenAIRE is a participapatory initiative from its onset and this is reflected in its governance structure (https://www.openaire.eu/governance). | |
| Cannot lobby – infrastructure organisations should not lobby for regulatory change to cement their own positions or narrow self-interest. However, an infrastructure organisation’s role is to support its community, and this can include advocating for policy changes. | OpenAIRE is a community based non-profit organisation with the mandate to push for Open Science. However, OpenAIRE does not lobby for its own infrastructure following an inclusive approach to promote any service or infrastructure that supports open science. OpenAIRE provides an open infrastructure (data and APIs) for others to build upon. | |
| Living will – to build trust, organisations should establish and communicate clear commitments regarding their long-term stewardship responsibilities, including the principles by which assets, data, resources, services, and staff would be responsibly transferred to a successor or the organisation or service wound down. The commitments should address future governance, with defined criteria for acceptable successor organisations. This should include continued alignment with POSI and any legal or structural constraints. | OpenAIRE AMKE is the owner of software, data and services, which are all open. The operation and maintenance of the services can be splitted among member organisations and companies. All the knowledge necessary to operate the services can be transfered anytime and the responsible organisation in charge of the operation of the service is responsible and committed to this. | |
| Regular review of purpose and community value – Organisations and services should regularly review their relevance, effectiveness, and the level of community support to determine whether their continued operation is necessary. If no longer needed, they should take responsible steps to transition or wind down operations in consultation with the community and in alignment with their living will. | OpenAIRE is an organisation with a specific mission (according to art. 3 of its statutory documents “The mission of OpenAIRE shall be to establish, maintain and operate an open and sustainable scholarly communication infrastructure and provide the necessary services, resources and network for supporting a common European e science environment.”) OpenAIRE has a duration of twenty years within which it has to complete its mission (art. 23) and wind down (art. 24). OpenAIRE based its vision on strategy documents, driven by consultations with members, revised every 3 years. Furthermore, OpenAIRE engages with community and monitors its services relevance, by performing engagement activities all year around. Therefore OpenAIRE meets the demands of its members and communities based on Open Science mandates. |
Sustainability
| Principle | Coompliance | Self-assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Transparent operations - to enable organisational accountability and openness, the operating policies and procedures, detailed financials, sustainability models, fees, strategic and product roadmaps, organisational charts, and other appropriate operational information should be made openly available (within the constraints of privacy laws). Information should be available for investigation and reuse by the community. | The principle is partially implemented. OpenAIRE publishes its governance documents, policies and procedures openly. Including its services sustainability models (subscriptions, free usage) and roadmaps. It also shares openly its 3-year strategy and annual achievements of its services and the organisation's goals, for full transparency. OpenAIRE is a non-profit member organisation, therefore, all financial documents are made openly available to its members and accessible upon request to non-members. | |
| Time-limited funds are used only for time-limited activities – operations should be supported by sustainable revenue sources, whereas time-limited funds are used only for time-limited activities. Depending on grants to fund ongoing and/or long-term operations fully makes organisations fragile and distracts from maintaining core infrastructure. | OpenAIRE’s main activities are funded through third-party funding. It recognises the need to diversify its income streams and introduced its hybrid financial models, resulting to the introduction of subscription plans for its core services - OpenAIRE CONNECT, MONITOR, ARGOS, via subscription packages for Research Performing Organisations, Funders and National states. Additionally, it applied and achieved to successfully earn procurements and sign contracts with national actors to provide national coverage of Open Science with OpenAIRE CONNECT, MONITOR, ARGOS. OpenAIRE is committed to differentiate, report and monitor between service development costs (which are funded through projects and subscriptions, procurements) and operational / administrative costs funded directly by services provisions via subscriptions and membership fees. | |
| Goal to generate surplus – it is not enough to merely survive; organisations and services have to be able to adapt and change. Organisations and services that define long-term sustainability based only on recovering costs risk becoming brittle and stagnant. To weather economic, social and technological volatility, organisations and services need financial resources beyond immediate operating costs. | OpenAIRE has as one of its operational goals to develop a surplus of around 5-10% of its total revenue per year for the next five years. Overall, the development of a surplus fund to support its new services roll out is essential for the operation and success of OpenAIRE. | |
| Establish and maintain financial reserves guided by policy – organisations and services should have a clear policy on maintaining financial reserves, including the purpose, minimum and maximum level, and governance of these funds. The actual level of reserves should be determined and periodically reviewed by the governing body, ensuring that resources are available to support Living Will implementation, including an orderly wind-down, transition to a successor, or response to major unforeseen events. A financial reserve policy might include how funds will be held, under what circumstances they will be used, and how much would be necessary for an adequate wind-down or transfer of assets, given the complexity of the organisation’s infrastructure. | OpenAIRE recognises the need for reserves and makes sure that at any point in time it has reserves for 3 years. | |
| Mission-consistent revenue generation – revenue sources should be evaluated against the infrastructure’s mission and not run counter to the aims of the organisation or service. | Revenue sources of the organisations involve securing income for the development of new features and functionalities of current services, or new Open Science services by public or private funders funding open science projects, administrative costs by the members and service provision and other operational costs by customers deploying open science services. | |
| Revenue generated from services, not data – data related to the running of the scholarly infrastructure should be community property. Appropriate revenue sources might include value-added services, consulting, API Service Level Agreements, or membership fees. | OpenAIRE fully aligns with this principle by ensuring that all underlying data used in the provision of its services remains openly accessible and treated as community-owned, with the exception where privacy/GDPR is concerned. Revenue generation is strictly based on value-added services, such as customisedinteroperability features, consulting and/or support packages, API service-level agreements, or membership contributions for on-demand, computer intensive services, and never on restricting access to data or monetising community-generated information. This approach guarantees transparency, preserves the public-good nature of research outputs and metadata, and reinforces OpenAIRE’s commitment to open scholarly communication and community-driven stewardship. | |
| Volunteer labour - organisations that rely on volunteers and their labour should recognise this as a valuable resource for the organisation’s long-term viability, and factor it into sustainability planning and risk management. | OpenAIRE utilises community contributions (NOADs, working groups, Metadata Curators, developers, communities) and recognises the value of volunteer labour. All that are incorporated into the organisation's sustainability planning and risk management. | |
| Transition planning - organisations that are heavily dependent on a limited number of individuals should take steps to reduce their dependence on these individuals, including via transition and succession planning, so that the organisation is not at risk of collapse in the event of their departure. | OpenAIRE acknowledges records that reliance on individuals imposes risk, and it has governance structures, committees and working groups, to reduce single-point dependencies. |
Insurance
| Principle | Compliance | Self-assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Open source – all software and non-physical assets required to run the infrastructure should be available under an open-source licence. This does not include other software that may be involved with running the organisation. | The software powering OpenAIRE services results from the integration of Open Source software solutions and is made available online via open software repositories. | |
| Ensure open and secure data accessibility within legal and ethical constraints – To support potential forking or replication, infrastructure should aim to make all relevant data openly available, following best practices such as applying a CC0 waiver where appropriate. This must be balanced with compliance with privacy, data protection, and security requirements. Organisations should have a clear policy outlining how private or sensitive data will be handled—particularly in the event of a transfer to another organisation—to ensure continuity, legal compliance, and responsible stewardship. | All OpenAIRE’s generated data is published as CC-BY or CC0, depending on the service and the underlying data licensing dependencies. OpenAIRE is committed to making all possible efforts to license as CC0 all its published data. Furthermore, OpenAIRE services are accompanied with the necessary information - privacy statement, privacy policy. | |
| Available data (within constraints of privacy laws) – It is not enough that the data be made “open” if there is not a practical way to actually obtain it. Underlying data should be made easily available via periodic data dumps. | OpenAIRE’s generated data is published via regular data dumps in Zenodo.org and via open REST APIs. For more: https://graph.openaire.eu/develop/overview.html | |
| Available and preserved – it is not enough that content, data, and software be “open” if there is no practical way to obtain them. These resources should be made easily available with clear public documentation about where they are and how to access them, as well as an open licence where possible. It is not enough that “open” resources are available. In line with the Living Will, it is essential to deposit content, data, and software with at least one trusted third-party digital archive. | OpenAIRE’s generated data is crearly documented and accessible via regular data dumps in Zenodo.org and via open REST APIs. For more: https://graph.openaire.eu/docs | |
| Patent non-assertion – the organisation should commit to a patent non-assertion policy or covenant. The organisation may obtain patents to protect its own operations, but not use them to prevent the community from replicating the infrastructure. | OpenAIRE’s technical roadmap is committed to a patent non-assertion covenant policy. | |
| Prioritise interoperability and open standards to ensure continuity and resilience - infrastructures should adopt and support widely accepted open standards—both formal and de facto—to ensure that systems, data, and services can be replicated, migrated, or integrated with minimal disruption without the use of proprietary extensions or software. Where relevant, organisations should document dependencies on standards. | OpenAIRE uses open standards, supports interoperability (APIs, metadata standards, OpenAIRE services integrated), aligning with this principle. When necessary, OpenAIRE collaborates with domain organisation to the definitions of new interoperability frameworks and standards. |