Engineering Open by Design into Research Infrastructures

Research activities utilise and depend on interlocking infrastructures – tools, standards, protocols, and other systems and structures at local, national, and international scales that enable researchers to collaborate, analyze and share data and software, and discuss their research findings. Despite growing policy momentum towards open science, a significant challenge persists: a substantial portion of research infrastructure remains inherently closed or restrictive. This lack of openness undermines transparency, integrity, limits reproducibility, and constrains researchers’ ability to fully engage with each other. In this paper, we examine how research infrastructures can be designed to embed open principles throughout their development and operation, borrowing elements from Manufacturing Principles, Systemic Service Design, and Open Science frameworks. We propose an open-by-design reference framework for infrastructure builders and guidance for enabling, making visible, and incentivizing specific elements of “openness” within research infrastructures that are prerequisites for a thriving research and knowledge ecosystem.