Open Network Infrastructure for the Commons
Authors: Wake Hyde Zoe 
Published: November 2022

An ongoing challenge in the day-to-day reality of research work is the disparate, disconnected array of tools they must piece together to manage their work. What’s more, there is a clear hierarchy in the research tools landscape, preferencing “traditional” scholarly output, elevating certain disciplines over others (both in direct and indirect ways), and obscuring the very human work of doing research.
While there is no single solution to these challenges, academy-owned and -designed infrastructure is emerging to help address them. This poster will explore one such effort: HCommons. The Commons model is a natural ally for open research work, and, critically, centers the social dimensions alongside resources and protocols. Crucial to a healthy Commons is infrastructure, which HCommons provides. Hosted at Michigan State University, HCommons facilitates:

Collaboration, communication and sharing, both public and private
Open publication & archiving, including of so-called “grey literature"
Public-facing sites and profiles

With more than 30,000 users worldwide, HCommons started life in the Humanities – a rarity in the open research space that offers a unique perspective – and is expanding into other disciplines, with explicit support of open education and open data, in addition to the broadest possible range of open publications. Work is also underway to integrate open peer review, and future features could include user-curation and annotation. In addition, community development efforts are focused on equipping users to organise and manage their own communities, and to contribute back to the governance of HCommons itself.
As an example of commoning in action, HCommons has partnered with STEM education research experts to establish a new STEM-focused Commons node, which will be developed in line with CARE, FAIR and Open standards. This initiative recently received a National Science Foundation (NSF; one of the largest federal science funding bodies in the United States) grant, which includes funds to migrate to CERN-developed Invenio as the underlying Commons repository software, further establishing robust infrastructure for the network.
Aside from the technical components, the new Commons will be seeded with a wide range of initiatives underway by our STEM education research partners, demonstrating the power of a holistic approach. These include:

Creating collaborative spaces for discipline-based education research
Launching a public site to recruit post-doctoral candidates via a transparent, equity-driven process
Transitioning an established listserv to offer increased value to subscribers

By consolidating multiple related efforts, the team can bring their work into alignment, reduce barriers to participation, reduce management overhead, and put their values into action.
Our goal is to use our experience to create a replicable model to develop new nodes in an open network, whether discipline-focused, institutional, project-based, serving scholarly societies or specific geographic areas, which in turn will foster a vibrant, interdependent, collaborative Commons for sharing knowledge globally. We invite you to join us.