October 2021
The closure of Microsoft Academic — and its 170 million records not covered by Crossref — was a wake-up call for the scholarly community. Published on the LSE Impact Blog in October 2021, this piece draws lessons from that moment and makes the case for open, collectively governed, and sustainable metadata infrastructure.
Understand why open scholarly infrastructure is fragile — and what makes it resilient. How the loss of Microsoft Academic revealed gaps in coverage, governance, and sustainability, and why POSI offers a framework for building something more durable.
Know what your organisation should commit to. A direct call to action for publishers, funders, institutions, and infrastructure providers — and why mandating open, FAIR metadata is essential to the health of the scholarly record.
See the gaps and how to fill them. What the Microsoft Academic coverage data revealed about grey literature and Global South scholarship, and how open metadata workflows and full-text access can address those gaps.
