ICOR Webinar: Open Research Policy – Private Funders’ Perspectives
Highlights of ICOR Public Webinar #12, 16 Sep 2026
Please see the video below and the chat record for the full recording of the webinar.
Introduction
ORFG 2026 Funder Policy Landscape Analysis
Kristen opened the meeting by highlighting a new upcoming open science conference called Convergence that will happen in Montreal, Canada on 16-18th June following the Metascience Conference. The event aims to fill the gap in North America for a dedicated open science meeting and is seeking volunteers and organizational supporters.
Emily Ford, Director, Open Research Funders Group [slides; streaming video 4-12 min]
Emily set the scene with a summary of the Open Research Funders Group’s (ORFG) Funder Policy Landscape Analysis. Emily emphasised a significant shift towards stricter requirements. Currently, 76% of funders mandate access to published articles, an increase from 56% in 2023. Additionally, expectations for preprint deposits are growing. To adapt to new methods of scientific communication, the report advises funders to eliminate publisher embargoes, encourage preprint adoption, partner with community-driven open infrastructure providers, expand data management requirements, and create streamlined workflows and incentives to make compliance easier for researchers.
Templeton Religion Trust: open science policy
Ereoshi Turnquest, Senior Program Associate at Templeton Religion Trust. [slides; streaming video 12-21 mins]
Ereoshi explained how the foundation is integrating open science into its grantmaking strategy by anchoring the initiative in Templeton Religion Trust’s (TRT’s) mission to advance spiritual progress and deepen understanding of religion and the human experience. By directly linking open science to Sir John Templeton’s founding principles, Ereoshi emphasised that research transparency and shared discovery exemplify intellectual humility, promote scientific advancement, and enable ideas to be rigorously tested, revised, and built upon. Through open science, TRT aims to remove research barriers, broaden access to global knowledge, foster collaboration, and accelerate discovery.
To achieve these goals, TRT follows a three-stage process: listening to experts and funding peer groups, learning from operational challenges and opportunities, and developing policy aligned with organisational readiness. A written policy is only one part of a much larger ecosystem that includes staff capacity, technical systems, grantee support, and funding structures. TRT assesses its strategy through four interconnected lenses: Policy (what is expected), Implementation (how to make it work), Experience (practical reality), and Strategy (achieving long-term goals). This approach applies across the grant lifecycle, from application and development to award, reporting, and closeout.
This integrated framework considers broader organisational impacts, specifically addressing grantee support and costs, internal staff training, and grant management processes. Ereoshi concluded by outlining TRT’s core strategic insights: ground open science in organisational purpose, design implementation support and training alongside policy, and learn from real-world experience before scaling broad mandates. The TRT policy is not the endpoint but the starting point for enabling open science.
Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research: open science policy
Josh Gottesman Program Lead, Open Science at The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research [slides; streaming video 22-37 mins]
Josh outlined how the world’s largest non-profit funder of Parkinson’s research is incorporating open science into its core grant-making operations. With over $3 billion invested in research, MJFF has broadened its policy beyond basic open access to accelerate discoveries across the field, mitigate risks in future research investments, and facilitate collaboration between the funder and its beneficiaries.
The updated open science framework requires earlier, more specific sharing of research outputs, including mandatory preprint submissions by the manuscript submission date, persistent identifier (PID) linking to grant DOIs, output-specific licensing, and mandatory data and code sharing within 12 months for grants that do not result in formal publications. Additionally, MJFF now requires data and code availability statements and actively encourages practices such as pre-registration, protocol sharing, and the use of resource identifiers like Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs). To ensure these requirements are implemented effectively, MJFF is integrating compliance into grant lifecycle workflows, contracts, award packets, and check-in agendas. The foundation is also developing comprehensive training materials for grant managers, staff scientists, and grantees. MJFF is also expanding its grants management system to collect metadata and integrate external tools to automate compliance checks and track the long-term impact of research.
Josh finished by emphasising a nuanced, educational approach to compliance. He noted that while instances of non-compliance will be considered in future funding decisions, grantees will have opportunities to address issues and navigate specific publishing or commercialisation challenges. Guided by the principle that no policy is permanent, MJFF aims to continuously refine its open science approach based on real-world feedback from administrators and researchers, ensuring that compliance supports meaningful progress in research.
The Astera Institute: open science policy
Prachee Avasthi, Co-founder and CSO of Arcadia Science and Head of Open Science at Astera: [slides; streaming video 38-56 mins]
Prachee began by outlining Astera’s belief that the traditional journal publishing system is outdated. Astera operates under a strict “no gates, no waiting” policy that explicitly prohibits using its funding or time for journal articles. This includes listing Astera affiliations on journal papers, paying publication fees, or delaying research releases to accommodate peer reviewers. Instead, Astera’s open science policy encourages researchers to continuously release FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) outputs as soon as they are ready for public use or reference. By valuing substantive research and scientific rigour over quality indicators such as journal impact factors, Astera aims to eliminate editorial gatekeeping, speed up discovery, and promote the rapid public sharing of both successful breakthroughs and informative failures.
To put this vision into practice, Astera sets clear licensing and venue requirements for all output categories. Code must be released under an MIT or more permissive licence on GitHub; data must be accompanied by a CC0 waiver and deposited in Zenodo or relevant disciplinary repositories; protocols must be licensed under CC BY on Protocols.io; and physical materials should be made available through platforms such as Addgene or DSMZ. Text and narrative outputs are shared under CC BY licences on preprint servers such as bioRxiv, as nanopublications, or through web posts archived on Zenodo. To replace traditional journal structures and ensure interpretability, researchers maintain a standardised tracking log with Astera’s open science team to document and catalogue all continuous research outputs.
Acknowledging that challenging the publishing status quo is inherently difficult, Prachee emphasised that the written policy acts as a minimum requirement rather than a restrictive limit – “it’s the floor, not the bar”. To address complex implementation challenges, such as defining units of release and preventing external collaborations from becoming loopholes, Astera offers dedicated structural support. This includes building open infrastructures such as The Stacks publishing platform, funding AI-ready data programmes, and providing direct assistance through data stewards and progressive publishing partners. Astera views its policy as an evolving, real-world experiment to free researchers from traditional journal constraints and make rapid, transparent sharing the new standard in scientific communication. Prachee concluded by saying Astera will continue to support others by being bold in its implementation.
Conclusion
Research funders are shifting from voluntary guidelines to policies that require the immediate, open release of preprints, data, code, and protocols. To facilitate compliance, grantmakers are now providing support throughout the grant lifecycle by investing in dedicated open infrastructure, offering hands-on data stewardship, and delivering ongoing training. These advances enable funders to move beyond traditional journal systems, share the research they fund, and place greater emphasis on making outputs more open and widely available to advance science.
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