DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17180232
title: Next-Gen Open Science Infrastructure

description:  

Next-Gen Open Science Infrastructure

 

A Platform Where Discoveries Can’t Be Locked Away, Only Built Upon

 

Abstract

 

The global research ecosystem is constrained by 20th-century institutions: patents for monopolies, publication silos, and reproducibility crises. These bottlenecks impede discovery and centralize authority in a small number of corporate and institutional actors, creating quasi-sovereign “fourth pillars” of power.1 This white paper proposes the Next-Gen Open Science Infrastructure (NG-OSI) as a replacement. NG-OSI combines defensive publication, open licensing, cryptographic proofs, reproducible research packs, federated repositories, and multistakeholder governance. Together, these mechanisms prevent enclosure and ensure cumulative, global progress. Grounded in proven legal doctrines (prior art, enabling disclosure), the framework is anchored by the Human Global Science Collective (HGSC), a council-driven alliance with transparent validation pipelines that prioritizes legitimacy and resilience. NG-OSI accelerates discovery, protects against enclosure, and aligns with humanitarian goals. This white paper presents its architecture, governance, legal framework, and phased roadmap, and calls for a founding cohort of scientists and institutions to seed this new operating system of discovery.

 

1. Introduction

 

Science has always thrived on the open exchange of ideas. Yet the institutional scaffolding that supports modern research was designed for a different age: patents as exclusive monopolies, journals as gatekeepers, and centralized corporations as intermediaries of collaboration. The result is a fragile, authoritarian-leaning infrastructure where knowledge can be locked away, slowed down, or priced beyond reach. The rise of "Big Tech" has created a new, de facto authority by controlling infrastructure, platforms, and applications on a global scale. These companies now assume functions traditionally reserved for the state, such as setting rules, enforcing them, and resolving disputes, effectively bypassing traditional public legal mechanisms and posing a fundamental challenge to constitutional principles.2

The Next-Gen Open Science Infrastructure (NG-OSI) aims to reverse this trend. It re-architects discovery as a public utility — resilient, verifiable, and immune to capture. Its founding principle is simple: discoveries cannot be locked away, only built upon.

 

2. Background and Related Work

 

Efforts to reform scientific infrastructure already exist:





Open Licenses such as Apache 2.0, CERN-OHL, and Creative Commons demonstrate how permission can be codified without exclusivity. By default, a creative work is under exclusive copyright, and an open license is required to explicitly grant others the right to use, copy, and modify it.




Defensive frameworks like the Defensive Patent License (DPL) and the Open Invention Network (OIN) show how patents can be repurposed as shields against patent trolls. The DPL, for example, requires participants to license all of their patents to other participants, creating a "legal safe zone" for innovation.3




Repositories such as arXiv, Zenodo, and the Open Science Framework (OSF) prove the viability of global, open archives.




Reproducibility initiatives and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles highlight community demand for verifiable, transparent science.5



NG-OSI extends these precedents by integrating them into a coherent platform with cryptographic accountability and adaptive governance.

 

3. Core Architecture of NG-OSI

 

The NG-OSI is built as a complete, self-regulating operating system for science. Its architecture is composed of interlocking layers: a robust technical layer, a protective legal and governance layer, an incentivizing social layer, and a resilient security layer.

 

3.1 The Technical Layer: The Pipes and Pumps of Discovery

 

This layer provides the foundational plumbing for open science, ensuring that the infrastructure is technically sound, interoperable, and globally accessible.

 

3.1.1 Proof Vault Receipts

 

Immutable, timestamped records of every disclosure. Each discovery is hashed and anchored both locally and to public blockchains, ensuring global recognition as prior art. This prevents enclosure through later patenting and provides legal, reproducible evidence of priority. The system is designed to be both immutable (the content cannot be modified once created) and indelible (backups cannot be deleted before a specified retention period has elapsed). The Proof Vault is anchored both to internal WORM (Write Once, Read Many) receipts and to external blockchains (OpenTimestamps or equivalent) to reinforce reproducibility and prevent malicious deletion.

 

3.1.2 Standardized Reproducibility Tooling

 

NG-OSI provides a suite of open-source tools to simplify the creation and validation of reproducible research. This includes a command-line interface (CLI) and a graphical user interface (GUI) to generate reproducibility bundles in a common format (e.g., Docker/Podman with metadata JSON). These tools will have built-in functionality to automatically register DOIs and anchor the research bundle to the Proof Vault. This approach builds on successful precedents from legal technology, where open-source tools are used to format and manage legally-enforceable, machine-readable agreements.6

 

3.1.3 Federated Registry APIs

 

An open API specification allows distributed nodes such as Zenodo, OSF, and arXiv, as well as institutional and local nodes, to automatically sync entries. This creates a search engine for reproducible science packs, much like a DOI cross-reference system, but for the entire research bundle. This model is inspired by initiatives like the Free Law Project, which provides public APIs to access and work with court documents and legal data, making information more accessible to innovators and researchers.7

 

3.1.4 AI-Enhanced Agents

 

NG-OSI employs modular AI agents to support operations:





Giles for orchestration,




Rabbit for automation,




Cypher for security and Proof Vault integrity,




Syn for memory management, and




Muse for narrative and communication.



 

3.2 The Legal & Governance Layer: A Living Immune System

 

At the heart of NG-OSI is governance, not code. The system is guided by the Human Global Science Collective (HGSC), a multistakeholder council representing scientists, institutions, civil society, and independent auditors. This approach is specifically designed to address complex problems such as power imbalances and the "many-hands problem," where responsibility is diffused across multiple actors. The HGSC will also establish clear rules for conflict resolution, such as internal mediation panels or arbitration rules, to manage the inherent conflicts of interest among diverse stakeholders.

 

3.2.1 The Human Global Science Collective (HGSC)

 

The HGSC acts as a legitimate governing body, providing a forum for dialogue, decision-making, and dispute resolution. The governance model is grounded in deliberative democracy and civic practice, ensuring that the process is inclusive and accountable. This ensures that power is not concentrated in a single entity but is distributed among stakeholders, directly countering the "fourth pillar" of corporate power.

 

3.2.2 Validation Pipeline

 

Decisions and releases follow a transparent validation flow: QC → GATA → GATA PRIME. This pipeline ensures incremental upgrades, reversibility, and auditable compliance.

 

3.2.3 Strategic Defensive IP

 

NG-OSI does not ignore intellectual property; it re-tools it.





Defensive Publication: All disclosures are prior art, preventing enclosure.




Strategic Defensive Patents: Filed selectively, then pledged under OSNA/DPL-style terms to deter trolls and prevent monopolization. These patents act as a deterrent against "patent trolls" — entities that acquire patents with the sole purpose of suing companies. By building a robust defensive patent portfolio, the project and its contributors gain the ability to counter-sue, which dissuades trolls from initiating litigation. This approach ensures that the project’s core technologies remain open and free for use.




Collective Defense Alliances: Members cross-license under royalty-free terms, creating a zone of non-aggression.




OSNA + DPL Libraries: NG-OSI provides ready-to-use license text and SPDX identifiers, allowing software and hardware repositories to automatically tag their legal status. This can be integrated with tools like GitHub/GitLab hooks to streamline the process.




Open Standards Tracks: The HGSC will convene working groups to ratify royalty-free standards for key components, such as the Repro Pack format and the Proof Vault specification. These standards will be published through W3C-style governance to ensure broad adoption and interoperability.



 

3.2.4 Transparency Dashboards

 

All governance actions are published as Proof Vault receipts and summarized in public dashboards, balancing confidentiality with public accountability. These dashboards will show current Proof Vault logs, council votes, and the status of reproducibility checks.

 

3.3 The Social & Incentive Layer: Catalyzing Innovation

 

This layer is designed to foster a vibrant community and create a virtuous cycle of open-source innovation.

 

3.3.1 Certification System

 

A "Patent-Free Science Certified" badge, tied to reproducibility scores, can be displayed on papers, software repositories, and hardware designs. This provides a reputational incentive for researchers and institutions to adopt NG-OSI standards and contribute to the commons.

 

3.3.2 Open Prize Platform

 

NG-OSI will host an open prize platform for tackling major global challenges, with prizes awarded for reproducibility, humanitarian impact, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. This platform will be funded by a coalition of universities, governments, and philanthropies.

 

3.3.3 Advance Purchase Pools

 

Governments and non-governmental organizations can commit to advance purchase agreements for research that passes reproducibility checks and has a clear humanitarian application. This provides a direct financial incentive for researchers to produce open-source solutions for public good, such as open-source vaccine protocols or climate models.

 

3.3.4 Training & Onboarding

 

The NG-OSI community will provide MOOCs and workshops on key skills, such as publishing Repro Packs, joining the HGSC, and applying open licenses. Community support forums, similar to Stack Overflow, will be available to help users navigate technical and legal challenges.

 

3.4 The Security & Resilience Layer: The Foundation of Trust

 

This layer ensures that the NG-OSI infrastructure is robust against attack, manipulation, and censorship.

 

3.4.1 Threshold Cryptography Everywhere

 

Critical actions, from writing to the Proof Vault to validating a major protocol change, are gated by a threshold signature scheme (e.g., FROST, DKG).8 Distributed Key Generation (DKG) allows multiple parties to collaboratively generate a shared public and private key set without any single party ever having access to the full private key.10 The DKG methodology thus intrinsically enforces the principle of least privilege, ensuring no single entity can act unilaterally. This multisig configuration provides redundancy and resilience against a compromised device or a single point of failure.

 

3.4.2 Global Mirrors

 

Partnering with universities and NGOs globally to host redundant copies of the NG-OSI registries ensures that the infrastructure remains alive under attack or outage. This federated network of mirrors ensures that knowledge cannot be censored or captured by a single entity.

 

3.4.3 Language & Inclusivity

 

The NG-OSI platform will feature a multilingual interface and documentation to ensure global usability. Support for low-bandwidth and offline publishing is a core feature, making the platform accessible to researchers in the Global South and in regions with limited internet infrastructure. This aligns with the HGSC's commitment to ensuring that historically marginalized groups are represented and empowered.11

 

4. Economic and Humanitarian Value

 

The NG-OSI platform directly supports scarcity-breaking innovations:





Water: LibreWater is an open-source hardware project that provides small-scale solar desalination solutions, with a design shared free of charge for local production.12 By leveraging open-source collaboration and digital manufacturing, the initiative empowers communities to build and maintain their own water purification systems, a critical step towards addressing the global water crisis and ensuring a fundamental human right.12 The project's co-creation approach ensures solutions are tailored to local needs.12




Energy: The open-source community is actively working on a wide range of renewable energy projects, including tools for simulating, modeling, and forecasting photovoltaic (PV) energy output. Projects like IonMonger, a perovskite solar cell simulator, and feedinlib, a tool for calculating electricity generation from PV installations, demonstrate how open technologies can be used to optimize energy systems and accelerate the transition to sustainable power sources.




Food: Open-Source Food Systems (OSFS) challenge the proprietary models that dominate conventional food production. These systems foster a collaborative ecosystem where knowledge and technology, such as open-source agricultural machinery and DIY hydroponic systems, are freely shared. For example, the FarmBot Genesis is an open-source CNC farming machine that helps families grow their own food, while open-source AI is being integrated into community vertical farms to enhance food security and sustainability in urban environments.14




Materials: The Materials Project is an open-access platform that harnesses supercomputing to provide data on known and predicted materials, accelerating innovation in materials research.15 This open approach allows researchers to access thousands of materials and use powerful analysis tools to inspire new designs, challenging the traditional, time-consuming experimental methods.15 This includes research into areas like self-healing graphene batteries and novel alloys for durable infrastructure.



By aligning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, NG-OSI makes open science synonymous with humanitarian progress.

 

5. Implementation Roadmap

 





Phase 1 (Q4 2025 - Q1 2026): Establish HGSC Council and draft Anti-Abuse Charter. This process involves transparently reaching out to stakeholders, including women's and indigenous groups, and allowing each group to independently nominate their members.11 The group must then agree on a clear Terms of Reference (ToRs) that defines its role and decision-making procedures, which can be followed by establishing a legal basis via a memorandum or decree.11 The model is grounded in deliberative democracy and civic practices such as citizen assemblies.13 Launch Collective Public Registry (CPR).




Phase 2 (Q2 2026 - Q3 2026): Release Proof Vault API. Deploy Repro Pack toolchain. Expand federated repositories.




Phase 3 (Q4 2026 - Q1 2027): Build strategic defensive patent pool. Launch certification and procurement programs.




Phase 4 (Q2 2027+): Formalize HGSC governance charter. Expand participation across global institutions.



 

6. Conclusion and Call to Action

 

Science is civilization’s most powerful engine of progress, but its infrastructure has calcified into bottlenecks that slow discovery and concentrate power. NG-OSI offers a new paradigm: discoveries that cannot be locked away, only built upon. The project's ultimate resilience and success hinge not just on its code or legal documents, but on the legitimacy and adaptability of its governing body, the HGSC.

We call upon a founding cohort of five anchor scientists and institutions to seed this platform by ratifying the OSNA pledge, publishing under NG-OSI defaults, and joining the HGSC council. Together, we can establish open, resilient, and reproducible science as the global norm.

 

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