Invest in Open Infrastructure (#IOI, @investinopen) makes an important point in its new report:
https://investinopen.org/state-of-open-infrastructure-2025/sooi-foreword-2025/
"Imagine just a few of the major open infrastructures serving scholarship today: #arXiv, #PubMed, #DSpace, #OpenJournalSystems, or perhaps #CreativeCommons…Consider how many of these have been created on a cycle of grants and sustained on a combination of donations, membership fees, service hosting, and/or specialized development…Most scholars, teachers, and researchers…accept them as a given and depend on them…But these infrastructures are not, on the whole, sustainable businesses with robust fiscal models and diversified revenues. Many do not turn profits; most operate at steady losses that are absorbed by philanthropic and government funders and a variety of research institutions including labs, universities, and colleges. They operate on systems rife with technical debt, and they depend upon volunteer labour to cover much of their human costs from governance to editorial review to code development."
