Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A scholarly identifier service publishes a public POSI self-assessment and addresses identified gaps within a year.
- Is an instance
A library consortium uses POSI compliance as a criterion in choosing which infrastructures to fund.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A service claiming POSI alignment without publishing a self-assessment.
- Not an instance
An infrastructure passing POSI governance criteria but with no open-source codebase.
Editorial commentary
POSI comprises ~16 specific principles organised under three headings. Governance: stakeholder-governed, non-discriminatory membership, transparent operations, cannot lobby, living will. Sustainability: time-limited funds used only for time-limited activities; goal to generate surplus; mission-consistent revenue generation; revenue based on services not data; transparent finances. Insurance: open source software, open data, patent non-assertion, available data via download. POSI-aligned organisations include Crossref, DataCite, ORCID, DOAJ, ROR and OpenCitations, each publishing periodic self-assessments. POSI is widely cited as the de facto standard for assessing open-infrastructure status.
References
- Bilder G, Lin J, Neylon C, 2015/2020 (openscholarlyinfrastructure.org). Lin J 'Principled organisations need principles' 2020.
Also known as
POSI
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI)"
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"description": "A set of principles published in 2015 (updated 2020) by Bilder, Lin and Neylon defining the governance, sustainability and insurance characteristics that scholarly infrastructure should have to be considered open and community-controlled.",
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"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/posi-principles",
"sameAs": [
"POSI"
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"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}







