After over 10 years of using Fedora, an open source repository system, to run 4TU.ResearchData, we made a decision to migrate a significant part of our technical infrastructure to a commercial solution offered by figshare.

Why did we decide to do it? And, why now, at a time of increasing concerns about relying on proprietary solutions, particularly associated with large publishing houses, to run scholarly communication infrastructures? (see for example, In pursuit of open science, open access is not enough and the SPARC Landscape Analysis)

Our current and former directors, Marta Teperek and Alastair Dunning respectively, anticipated that members of our community, as well as colleagues that use or manage scholarly communications infrastructures might be wondering about these questions.

Read their latest blogpost explaining our thinking. We hope it facilitates more discussion about such developments in the scholarly communications infrastructure.