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Panel

From partnership to ecosystem: building/evolving open collaboration

16 September 2025| 14:00
81/R-003A - Science Gateway Auditorium A

Moderator

Emma Green

Invest in Open Infrastructure
Emma Green is the Director of Development at Invest in Open Infrastructure, where she leads strategic efforts to build sustainable funding models and foster transparent partnerships that support the resilience of open science infrastructure. With a background in science and extensive experience in digital strategy and organizational change, Emma specializes in bridging commercial and open initiatives to create mutually beneficial collaborations. Emma’s career bridges 3 decades in commercial publishing, nonprofit strategy, and grassroots infrastructure development. Emma has held senior positions at Delta Think, Nature Publishing Group and Hindawi. As Director of Portfolio Development and Partnerships at Hindawi Publishing, she developedpartnerships and transformed the partnership unit by aligning open-access goals with publisher needs, showcasing mutual benefit frameworks. At Invest in Open Infrastructure, Emma advances diversified funding streams and institutional collaboration to address systemic underinvestment in critical open infrastructure. Emma serves on the Board of the Zoological Society of London and as a Non-Executive Director at Wild Team Conservation, where she advises on digital strategy and organizational change to advance global conservation goals and supports inclusive funding models for underrepresented conservationists. She holds a Degrees is Conservation Genetics and Marine Biology. Her work is centered on developing equitable, transparent, and resilient ecosystems that enable open science to thrive alongside commercial innovation.

Open and Commercial: Rethinking Partnerships for Sustainable Open Infrastructure

Can openness and commercial collaboration truly coexist? This panel brings together voices from across sectors to tackle tough questions about trust, funding, and sustainability. Join us for a candid discussion on building equitable, transparent partnerships that support resilient open infrastructure, without compromising core values.


This panel brings together diverse stakeholders from commercial entities and open initiatives to engage in a candid, interactive conversation about building transparent, respectful, and mutually beneficial partnerships. It will address the critical challenge of sustaining open infrastructure in a difficult funding landscape, where over-reliance on single stakeholders threatens vital systems. There is an urgent need to step outside the boxes of the past and embrace innovative approaches. Progress has been hindered because collaboration requires balancing competing priorities: private stakeholders often hesitate to engage due to concerns about control, profit timelines, or misaligned incentives, while open advocates fear that commercial involvement could undermine transparency and accessibility. This panel will start the crucial conversation to diagnose these systemic barriers and analyse why previous initiatives fell short. It will place a significant focus on the dynamics of private-public partnerships, recognising their potential to drive innovation and secure diverse funding streams for open infrastructure. By reframing the narrative from 'open versus commercial' to 'open and commercial', the panel explores practical opportunities for collaboration that uphold openness principles while leveraging industry partnerships. It aims to showcase difficult conversations, as well as how equitable, transparent partnerships and diversified funding can support infrastructure investment, development, and resilience. The discussion will cover building sustainable models, creating trusted spaces for partnerships, and real-world examples. It brings together diverse stakeholders from open initiatives, commercial entities, foundations, and research institutions. This session aligns with the track's objective by demonstrating how collaboration can build and sustain the digital backbone of open science.

Panelists

Moy Bracken

Sally Chambers

Tony Roche

Felix Reda