PKP Joins TSOSI to Ask: "Who Funds Open?"

Background photo of a bridge spanning a large body of water, representing the critical importance of infrastructure. — Background photo by PKP’s Rafael Slonik.

PKP joins TSOSI towards transparency in support for open infrastructure and to contribute to questions of how much money is actually being invested in supporting open access, particularly in comparison with the commercial scholarly publishing sector.

The Public Knowledge Project is delighted to announce that we are now part of Transparency to Sustain Open Science Infrastructure (TSOSI), an initiative led by the French public university, Université Grenoble Alpes, dedicated to “making support for open infrastructure visible.”

Our decision to share this data reflects our commitment to openness and transparency. We want to recognize the institutions that are putting material resources behind their commitments to open access by investing in the foundations of the open scholarly publishing landscape. In our case, that means supporting the infrastructure that makes open scholarly publishing possible through Open Journal Systems (OJS), the world’s most widely used journal publishing software, as well through Open Monograph Press (OMP) and Open Preprint Systems (OPS).

The thinking behind TSOSI is to create a sea change by bringing to the fore the institutions that are supporting open infrastructure. By making these contributions visible, we can show that this kind of support is not only possible, but already happening. If they’re doing it over there, then it must be possible, and we can do it here too.

Maxence Larrieu, TSOSI Principal Investigator, says, “Support for open infrastructures should not stay hidden and TSOSI is here to make it visible: the more we highlight the institutions that have supported open infrastructure, the more supporters we will attract. TSOSI is delighted to welcome PKP and its worldwide supporters, bringing our key mission, what Demmy Verbeke calls ’values-aligned investments to the front”.

It would be easy to dismiss TSOSI’s work as simple, thankless data collection and organization. But ultimately, the value lies in bringing together thousands of data points to make sense of what they reveal when considered in relation to one another. This work is critical for many reasons. One that stands out is the opportunity to take stock of how much money is actually being invested in supporting open access, particularly in comparison with the commercial scholarly publishing sector.

TSOSI’s data can help us better understand the political economy of scholarly publishing: where resources are flowing, who is investing in open infrastructure, and how those investments compare with spending on commercial publishing. What is the proportion of institutional investment in open infrastructure and open access as compared to commercial publishing? How much are institutions spending to sustain each in comparison to the value they deliver? What is the geographical diversity of the supporters of an open infrastructure?

These are only some questions that are critical to illuminating the state of the scholarly communication landscape. More importantly, answering these questions will help lay bare the reality of where resources are allocated, making visible the choices we are collectively making about what kind of scholarly ecosystem we want to sustain.

Check out TSOSI’s website here. To get started and make visible all the financial support of your institution feel free to contact the team.

Please note that contribution amounts, including details about how much each institution contributed to PKP, will only be made public where the contributing institution has shared this information directly with TSOSI and agreed to make it publicly visible.