The Principles of Fauxpen Scholarly Infrastructure

Jennifer Lin, Cameron Neylon, and I proposed The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) almost a decade ago. We drafted these principles because we were frustrated that the research community always seemed surprised when commercial organizations enclosed critical research tools that were once considered “open.”  We wanted to provide the community with a set of guidelines to help them avoid such enclosures in the future.  In short, we wanted to provide the community with heuristics to help them distinguish “open” from “fauxpen.”

Since then, 19 organizations have publicly adopted POSI and have committed to periodically auditing themselves against the principles. This so-called “POSI posse” comprises organizations representing a critical part of the hidden infrastructure that scholarly research depends on daily.

So we’re safe, right? 

You can probably guess the answer.

In this presentation, I discussed POSI’s limitations and the risks associated with the self-auditing culture that has developed around them. I also discussed recent developments in the community that threaten to slow or even roll back the adoption of open scholarly infrastructure.