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v2026.1714 entries · CC-BY 4.0
Dictionary termTrack EStablev2026.2

Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI)

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.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board
· Last updated 21 May 2026

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

JATS XML <role> element
xml
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Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)
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Adopted by research universities worldwide

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  • University of Cambridge logo
  • Columbia University logo
  • University of Edinburgh logo
  • Harvard University logo
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology logo
  • University of Oxford logo
  • Princeton University logo
  • Stanford School of Medicine logo
  • University College London logo

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