I am exploring a promising funding opportunity that could support maintenance and community development work for OpenRefine. The Research Software Maintenance Fund from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is currently open for applications. This fund is designed to support the long-term sustainability of research software, including efforts around technical upkeep and community building.
However, a key requirement is that the lead applicant must be an organization eligible for UKRI funding. You can find the list of eligible institutions here.
I am starting to reach out to identify a UKRI-eligible partner so we can submit an expression of interest by May 30 and the full proposal by September 12.
If you are connected to an eligible organization, or if you can make an introduction to someone who is, I'd love to hear from you. I have a few potential partners in mind, but some (like Ordnance Survey and KEW) seem to have paused their involvement with OpenRefine.
Any introductions, recommendations, or insights from the community would be greatly appreciated!
I wanted to follow up here with more detail on the direction we’re considering for the application and how it aligns with the goals of the UKRI Research Software Maintenance Fund.
I’ll be attending the May 7 UKRI informational webinar and will report back here with any updates or clarifications that could inform the proposal planning.
OpenRefine’s use of the funds
We want to use this funding opportunity to support OpenRefine’s core team. The roles we propose to fund align closely with the fund’s stated objectives and can complement the activities of a UK-based organization (if we are applying as co-Lead).
The Developer & Contributor Engagement role, which focuses on technical maintenance, contributor onboarding, and community infrastructure
The Project Manager role, supporting governance, partnership development, operational continuity, and cross-institution coordination.
Eligibility and Strategy for OpenRefine Grant Applications
We are exploring two different application types.
As Project co-Lead (International)
Our fiscal sponsor, Code for Science and Society (CS&S), is a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Under the fund’s eligibility guidelines, this makes us eligible to participate as a Project co-Lead (International) (PcL(I)). According to the fund:
The combined costs of all PcLs from business, third sector and government organisations and any Project co-Leads (International), PcL(I)s, from non-OECD DAC list countries must not exceed 50% of the total fEC of the grant application.
To remain within scope, I am actively seeking a UKRI-eligible academic institution to act as the lead applicant (or co-lead), ensuring the application meets both the budget distribution and team composition requirements. I have ongoing conversations with some organizations in the UK, and I will update this thread as I have more concrete progress.
Q: Are international organisations eligible to be lead organisations?
A: Yes, but only in specific circumstances. International organisations that are eligible for UKRI funding (such as EMBL-EBI) can be lead organisations on applications to this fund. If you have questions about your organisation's eligibility, please contact grants@software.ac.uk.
I contacted the grantors to see if we can qualify as the Project Lead.
Just a quick update for those following this opportunity:
Following the webinar, we’ve confirmed that OpenRefine (via Code for Science & Society) is not eligible to apply as lead for the Research Software Maintenance Fund. However, we can participate as an International Project Co-Lead (PcL(I)), covering up to 50% of the project costs.
We are currently in conversation with two UKRI-eligible partners:
We’re collaborating with them to identify suitable project. We’ve started drafting and organizing the project ideas in a shared public planning document. As always, we welcome community review and contributions.
I have calls scheduled with both organizations to continue the discussion and decide how we apply. Thanks to everyone who’s expressed interest and offered connections.
Following my meetings last week, we are now working on a proposal with KEW as potential lead (to be confirmed) around improving the reconciliation infrastructure for biodiversity and GLAM workflows. The goal is to make it easier to for user to configure and run a reconciliation service based on any authority file. We are evaluating how it relates to the goal post Native Reconciliation with arbitrary external datasets.
You can participate to the conversation via this document.
Quick update on our application planning for the UKRI Research Software Maintenance Fund (Small Award track):
KEW has confirmed they are willing to act as the lead applicant, with Nicky Nicolson as Principal Investigator.
OpenRefine will apply as the international co-Lead.
We are collaborating with King’s Digital Lab, who will contribute technical input around infrastructure, deployment, and UI/UX
RBGE has also been involved in the discussion and remains a potential partner or contributor.
We’re focusing the proposal on improving the reconciliation infrastructure that supports OpenRefine’s role in digitisation and metadata enrichment, especially in biodiversity and GLAM contexts. This includes refactoring KEW’s reconciliation framework, simplifying deployment, integrating it more tightly into the OpenRefine ecosystem, and strengthening documentation and training.
At this stage, the EOI does not require a detailed budget; it just requires confirmation of team composition and project focus.
The current draft application is a patchwork of feedback we received so far. I plan to clean it up early next week, but please feel free to jump in with comments and suggestions on how we should approach it.
During the meetup this week @Martin asked for my feedback on the application.
I think it is a nice collaboration idea, it makes sense to partner with reconciliation service authors to work together on such improvements.
One thing I am not sure about is how the project contributes to the "native reconciliation with arbitrary datasets" goal post. The solution that is proposed is to make the reconciliation and matching framework as easy to run as possible, so that people can easily spin up a reconciliation service on a dataset and then use it in OpenRefine, but that doesn't seem to go in the direction of native reconciliation with arbitrary datasets to me, as it requires running this adapter. Unless it is foreseen to bundle the reconciliation framework inside OpenRefine somehow, so that people don't have to run it separately?
I guess I struggle with the goal post on its own, independently of this application, because I don't understand the vision behind it. How could OpenRefine possibly offer something like "native reconciliation with arbitrary datasets"?
Otherwise, the application looks good to me. It would be worth improving the wording and cleanliness of the presentation before submitting it, to maximize its chances (accepting Google Docs' suggestions in blue dotted underlined phrases would be a first step).
@antonin_d thanks for the early feedback. I’m still working on the draft, but it’s now in a much more readable state.
If OpenRefine were to bundle a native reconciliation service, I believe that would be the most accessible way to make this functionality available to the community (isn't it what #2003 is about?).
Within the scope of this grant application, I envisioned the following workflow where the user
Downloads a copy of the authority file locally,
Loads it in OpenRefine as project,
Configures a local reconciliation by selecting columns and setting scoring rules
Runs the native reconciliation service.
We’ve planned a design phase during the project to validate what works best for institutions and determine how to package the solution. It could be either as a third-party application, an OpenRefine extension, or integration within OpenRefine core. Feedback from the Core Dev Group is welcome at any stage.
I opened PR #458 to clarify the goal post. When I created the goalpost page I ported the content from Results from the Feature Prioritization Survey 2024 with minimal copy edits to avoid getting bogged down in scoping details for each goal and delaying the page publication.