Since our inception in 2016, the Open Research Funders Group (ORFG) has been singularly focused on making articles, data, code, protocols, and a range of other materials more rapidly accessible and reusable for as many people as possible. While openness is a laudable goal, in 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s killing and the subsequent wave of protests, the ORFG came to the belated realization that we need to be much more actively engaged in building a just, inclusive world. Given our remit, we aspire to leverage open research practices to create a more transparent, welcoming, and collaborative research ecosystem. In 2020, the ORFG launched an Equity & Open Science Working Group, which includes representatives from five ORFG members, as well as seven scholars, scientists, and activists working at the intersection of open research and marginalized communities. The working group has determined that to rapidly and visibly champion a more equitable and open research environment, philanthropies should leverage the best asset they bring to the research conversation – their grantmaking capabilities. To that end, the ORFG has launched two specific, action-oriented programs.

Open & Equitable Model Funding Program

The ORFG oversees the Open & Equitable Model Funding Program, a coalition of 11 funders exploring specific interventions to make both the processes of grantmaking and the resulting research outputs more transparent, inclusive, and trustworthy. The program is supported with funding from Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Moore Foundation, and Rita Allen Foundation, and is run in conjunction with the Health Research Alliance. For more on how funders are adapting their requirements and workflows, please visit the dedicated Open & Equitable Model Funding Program site.

Open scholarship seed awards

Open research accelerates the pace of discovery, reduces information-sharing gaps, encourages innovation, and promotes reproducibility. However, through hundreds of consultations with students, professors, researchers, librarians, and university administrators, we are keenly aware that systemic barriers render the distribution of open scholarship resources and activities uneven at best. To begin addressing these inequities, the ORFG has developed a $100,000 seed award fund to stimulate open scholarship activities at Minority-Serving Institutions (MSI) in the United States and academic institutions in countries and territories eligible to receive official development assistance.

The purpose of this program is twofold.  First and foremost, we aspire to stimulate open scholarship engagement within networks that have traditionally faced barriers to participation.  Additionally, we seek to test a theory of change for advancing open scholarship. The ORFG posits that small, timely, strategic investments supporting bounded projects, activities, events, etc., can have a significant and lasting impact on open scholarship engagement for the awardees and their networks.  We further hypothesize that these awards will stimulate a culture of open scholarship at the institutional level.

The Open Scholarship Seed Award Program launches in mid-2023 and is made possible through the generous support of the John Templeton Foundation, Schmidt Futures, Templeton World Charity Foundation, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. For more details, visit the program page.