FAQs

OpenCitations is an independent infrastructure organisation for open scholarship dedicated to the publication of open bibliographic and citation data. It also provides open source software and free services for use by the global academic community and the general public, and is engaged in advocacy for open citations and open scholarly metadata, particularly in its role as a key founding member of the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC), and the Initiative for Open Abstracts (I4OA). At the end of 2019, the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS), which facilitates funding to help ensure the sustainability of the world’s Open Science infrastructure, has selected OpenCitations, together with two other open infrastructure services, as worthy of community crowdfunding support in its three-year-long second funding cycle. In evaluating OpenCitations among all the applicants, the SCOSS Board concluded that OpenCitations:

• aligns well with open science goals;
• provides an innovative service of open citation data;
• could be a game changer, challenging established proprietary citation services;
• supports change in research assessment;
• is infrastructure at risk and in need of financial sustainability.

At the end of 2021, OpenCitations received the Open Publishing Award in Open Data as an infrastructure that perfectly represents the open principles. The jury panel stated that "it is clear that OpenCitations is one of the fundamental projects in open publishing, specifically in open scientific publishing".

Your institution can help ensure a strong and stable future for OpenCitations by providing your support either in two ways: membership and donation. All the information on the three levels of memebership are available here.

OpenCitations membership offers different benefits, depending on the membership level. Alle the benefits are listed here.

Research institutions, universities, libraries, publishers, funders and other public and/or private entities embracing the principles of Open Access and of Open Science, and having complementary expertise and/or purposes consistent with the aims of OpenCitations, may request to develop cultural and scientific cooperation of mutual benefit with OpenCitations by becoming a collaborating Member. To apply for OpenCitations membership, your institution must

• be a legal entity,
• commit to the principles of Open Science: “Open Science is the practice of science in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research data, lab notes and other research processes are freely available, under terms that enable reuse,redistribution and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods.” - FOSTER (https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/taxonomy/term/100 ).

Yes, for the Supporting Membership level. The yearly contributions for the Supporting Membership level vary arying according to the size and type of the institution/organization. All the contribution levels for the Supporting Membership are available here.

Yes, for the Supporting Membership level. 25% discount will be deducted from the individual contributions made by members of consortia of 10 or more organizations. Please note that Organizations may form consortia to support OpenCitations. Each consortium of organizations supporting OpenCitations may become a Member and will be assigned to a Membership category according to its combined financial contribution, and will have the names of all participating organizations listed after the consortium name on the OpenCitations Membership web page, but each consortium will be able to appoint only one delegate to the OpenCitations Council and (for consortia that are Strategic Members) to have only one seat on the International Advisory Board for OpenCitations.

Membership is for a period of one year, renewably by mutual consent of the member and OpenCitations.