With this blog post, the science blog archive Rogue Scholar starts the formal process to adhere to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI). To do so, an organization has to perform a self-audit of its compliance with the principles, with a focus on principles and not hard rules. POSI was updated to version 2.0 this October, with the changes marked up in a separate document.

In the coming weeks, I hope to finish this document with feedback from blogs participating in Rogue Scholar, other users, and the Rogue Scholar Advisory Board that meets in November. Below is an overview of where I think Rogue Scholar already adheres to POSI (🟢), some work is still needed (🟡), or where major gaps exist (🔴). I then describe the major gaps and the work that is needed in more detail.

Governance

🟢 Coverage across the scholarly enterprise
🔴 Stakeholder governed
🟢 Non-discriminatory membership
🟡 Transparent governance
🟡 Cannot lobby
🔴 Living will
🟡 Regular review of purpose and community value

Sustainability

🟡 Transparent operations
🟢 Time-limited funds are used only for time-limited activities
🔴 Goal to generate surplus
🔴 Establish and maintain financial reserves guided by policy
🟢 Mission-consistent revenue generation
🟢 Revenue generated from services, not data
🔴 Volunteer labour
🔴 Transition planning

Insurance

🟢 Open source
🟡 Ensure open and secure data accessibility within legal and ethical constraints🟡 Available and preserved
🟡 Patent non-assertion
🟢 Prioritise interoperability and open standards to ensure continuity and resilience

Stakeholder governed

A board-governed organisation drawn from the stakeholder community builds confidence that the organisation will make decisions driven by community consensus and a balance of interests. Rogue Scholar has had an Advisory Board since January 2024, but no board-governed organization structure. This is the most critical shortcoming for Rogue Scholar, and work is underway to address this in the coming months.

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. This is another major shortcoming of Rogue Scholar, but can't be addressed until stakeholder governance is in place. By using paid services from the Internet Archive (content archiving) and Crossref (metadata registration and archiving), central aspects of the Rogue Scholar science blog archive will live on even if the service stops to exist.

Goal to generate surplus

To weather economic, social and technological volatility, organisations and services need financial resources beyond immediate operating costs. As a Diamond open access infrastructure with no fees to authors or readers, Rogue Scholar struggles to generate surplus even for immediate operating costs. Thanks to the reliance on open source software and the automated workflows ingesting blog content and metadata, operating costs are moderate, and donations are a big help. Going forward Rogue Scholar will make it easier for organizations and individuals to contribute financially, linked to the planned board-governed organizational structure mentioned above.

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. Again, this is a consideration for a future board-governed organizational structure.

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. Volunteer labour is a central element for Rogue Scholar operations, as all participating blogs are maintained without contributions (time and/or infrastructure) from Rogue Scholar, which focuses on archiving existing scholarly blogs. Running the Rogue Scholar archive also depends on volunteer labour, but good progress has been made migrating the service to the InvenioRDM platform. Rogue Scholar benefits from the work of the InvenioRDM community both for new features and bug fixes. Going forward, more functionalities can be migrated to InvenioRDM, in particular, the extraction of content and metadata from blog feeds, and volunteer labour contributions to Rogue Scholar can be specified.

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. Rogue Scholar was started by me in 2023, and it depends heavily on my personal involvement. While I have no intentions to reduce my involvement in Rogue Scholar, the organization has to evolve and involve more people, e.g. evaluating new blog submissions or working on funding opportunities, and start work on transition and succession planning.

Blog posts of other organizations following POSI

These organizations following POSI have written blog posts about it that have been archived in Rogue Scholar. These blog posts provide good context to what Rogue Scholar tries to achieve with adopting POSI:

There are more blog posts about POSI (e.g. from Crossref), you can find them in the Open Infrastructure community. If your organization has committed to POSI and you have written a blog post about it, reach out if you want your blog archived by Rogue Scholar.

Please use Slack, email, Mastodon, or Bluesky if you have any questions or comments regarding Rogue Scholar following the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure, ideally until November 4.

Rogue Scholar is a scholarly infrastructure that is free for all authors and readers. You can support Rogue Scholar with a one-time or recurring donation or by becoming a sponsor.

References

  1. POSI Adopters. (2025). The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure v2.0. https://doi.org/10.14454/G8WV-VM65
  2. Eve, M. P. (2023, July 28). Rules vs. Principles in POSI. Martin Paul Eve. https://doi.org/10.59348/7sgt5-1qy45
  3. Fenner, M. (2024, February 8). Introducing the Rogue Scholar Advisory Board. Front Matter. https://doi.org/10.53731/9yf86-p8541
  4. Bilder, G. (2020, December 2). Crossref’s Board votes to adopt the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure. Crossref Blog. https://doi.org/10.64000/hzemx-j7n79
  5. ROR Leadership Team. (2020). Aligning ROR with the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure. https://doi.org/10.71938/N0KG-4K60
  6. Katz, D. S., Smith, A. M., Niemeyer, K., Huff, K., & Barba, L. A. (2021, February 14). JOSS’s Commitment to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure. Journal of Open Source Software Blog. https://doi.org/10.59349/m5h23-pjs71
  7. Di Giambattista, C. (2021, August 9). OpenCitations’ compliance with the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure. OpenCitations Blog. https://doi.org/10.59350/p5czb-8ff81
  8. Buys, M. (2021). DataCite’s commitment to The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure. https://doi.org/10.5438/VY7H-G464
  9. Europe PMC Team. (2022, Februar 21). Europe PMC adopts the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure. Europe PMC News Blog. https://doi.org/10.59350/qpyx2-xj167
  10. Liberate Science. (2022, August 2). Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure evaluation (2022). Liberate Science. https://doi.org/10.59350/n09bh-vbj58
  11. Stranack, K. (2024, May 29). PKP Signs on to the POSI. Public Knowledge Project. https://doi.org/10.59350/pkp.11288