Call to action: Protect vulnerable infrastructure and research independence

"The near-freeze of US federal grants this week revealed the extreme vulnerability of open research infrastructure funding, highlighting the need for diversified support and the importance of community ownership....

Independent, community-owned, open infrastructure is more critical than ever. The research community must take action to ensure its resilience. Values-aligned funders, university administrations, and the broader technology sector must prioritize supporting, adopting, and advocating for open infrastructure to protect research independence and insulate critical infrastructure from the damages inflicted by any loss of federal funding.

We need to identify these gaps and find ways to fill them in — not temporarily as a stopgap until some hypothesized future happens, but rather to create the future that we want to see. This week has shown us that we can’t afford to wait for cuts to happen before we act. We must agree now to support those research infrastructures that are community-controlled and independent – and work to fund these infrastructures in a way that doesn’t rely on a single stream of funding. We need to identify mission-aligned organizations and infrastructures and put our resources into those, focusing our cuts on those organizations that do not align with our mission and goals...."