The research nexus and Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI): sharing our goal of an open, connected ecosystem of research objects

Abstract

As a community, it is impossible to ignore the fact that sharing research and information related to research is a much broader proposition than sharing an article, book, or conference paper. In supporting an evolving scholarly record, making connections between research organizations, contributors, actions, and objects helps give a more complete picture of the scholarly record, which open infrastructure organizations like Crossref call the research nexus. Crossref is working to support this evolution and is thinking about the metadata it collects via its members and that it supplements and curates, to make it broader than the rigid structures traditionally provided by content types. Furthermore, because of Crossref’s commitment to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI), this network of information will be global and openly available for anyone in the community to access and reuse. The present article describes this vision in more detail, including why it is increasingly important to support the links between research and elements that contribute or are related to that research; how Crossref, its members, and the wider community can support it; and the work and planning Crossref is doing to make it easier to achieve this.