The 2026 State of Open Infrastructure report is out. This is the third annual analysis of where and how funding flows (or doesn’t) to the infrastructure that underpins research and scholarly communication. Some of the disruptions over the last two years have been very loud, with budget cuts and policy shifts across the globe. Herein, we try to spotlight some of the ripple effects that often are quieter and harder to see. The biggest take-away may well be that the fragility the field feels today is not new,: instead, it is a built-in characteristic of the structures and models used to fund open infrastructure for decades.
