Memberships and donations

Help ensure a strong and stable future for OpenCitations by becoming a member of OpenCitations.

By supporting OpenCitations, you will help us to:

Why support OpenCitations?

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:

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".

Financial administration

OpenCitations is managed by the Research Centre for Open Scholarly Metadata of the University of Bologna. This permits OpenCitations to use the professional administrative services of the University to manage financial donations for OpenCitations.

Become a member

Legal entities may apply to become Members of OpenCitations. The steps to undertake are:

  1. Read the Memorandum of Understanding, and the two additional documents describing the Rules of Membership and the Organizational Bodies and Finances of OpenCitations.

  2. Send a written request to the Directors of OpenCitations, at the email address membership@opencitations.net, in which the candidate declares:

    • its details, legal nature, legal address, and legal representative;

    • its wish to become a Member of and to collaborate with OpenCitations;

    • its commitment to the principles of Open Science;

    • its commitment to contribute financially (specifying the amount of the contribution) to the operating costs of OpenCitations and to assist in the implementation of its goals, according to the level of membership participation (Supporting Membership, Development Membership, Strategic Membership) briefly outlined below;

    • the conflicts of interests of the legal representative (please use the CoI module and attach it to the email), in which he/she documents any interests that compete with the purposes of OpenCitations (if any).

  3. After a positive decision by the Directors of OpenCitations returned by written communication via email, the legal representative of the candidate signs the Memorandum of Understanding and sends it back to the Directors of OpenCitations, at the email address membership@opencitations.net.

  4. After the Memorandum of Understanding has been signed also by OpenCitations, it is returned by email to the candidate, which formally becomes a new member of OpenCitations. Information to submit the agreed financial contribution is provided as well.

  5. Upon receiving the financial contribution, OpenCitations delivers appropriate receipts to the new member.

OpenCitations membership has an annual duration and offers different benefits, depending on the membership level.The three levels of OpenCitations membership are:

1) Supporting Membership: financial contribution of at least € 500 and no more than € 8,000 per year at the start of each membership year. Such contributions vary according to the size and type of the Party, as set out in the Rules of Membership. A Supporting Member shall:

2) Development Membership: financial contribution of more than € 8,000 and less than € 30,000 per year at the start of each membership year. A Development Member shall:

3) Strategic Membership: financial contribution of at least € 30,000 per year at the start of each membership year. A Strategic Member shall:

If it is not possible for your institution to apply for a membership, you can help now by committing to fund the OpenCitations infrastructure via a donation. We recommend that organisations pledge an annual donation as shown in the Rules of Membership, in which we suggest funding levels vary according to the size and type of the organisation.

For more details and guidance about how you can help support OpenCitations through a donation, please contact us directly at donations@opencitations.net.