Why Three Top Science Philanthropies Think Open Source Software’s a Good Investment

We've written before about the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's grantmaking for the development of open source software to better enable and advance science research. CZI has been, if not alone, the highest-profile philanthropic funder of these unsung but important tools for the field. But in the last year, two top science funders, the Kavli Foundation and the U.K.-based Wellcome Trust, have joined CZI, adding both dollars and visibility to a vital domain of scientific infrastructure.

To the layperson, funding for open source software may not inspire much excitement, and the same has often been true among philanthropic funders otherwise focused on scientific and medical research. In recent years, however, these tools have become integral to the practice of science, increasingly cited in scientific literature for the key role they play in research and discovery.

Think of data-intensive efforts like genome sequencing or the analysis of cells in microscopic images, or science that requires analysis on the molecular level — these and so many more depend on huge data sets and the specialized science software that helps scientists make sense of them. However, creating and maintaining these tools has traditionally been an unfunded task taken on by researchers themselves.

"By and large, the story of the computational foundations in science, not just in medicine, but in science at large, is the story of open source software," said Dario Taraborelli, the science program officer who leads CZI's Essential Open Source Software for Science (EOSS) program. "So open source software has really become the de facto computational foundation of science."

Because they’re free for anyone to access, use and modify as they see fit, open source tools enable reproducibility and transparency in science, and perhaps most importantly, ease the teamwork between labs, institutions and countries that defines modern research. That is, open software tools don't just enhance discovery but democratize it, so data can be accessed by anybody in the world — a core tenet among philanthropic science funders.

For example, recent grants out of EOSS have supported the development of applications for a free, open source software tool called 3D Slicer, which enables researchers to visualize and analyze 3D medical and biomedical images. The software had been widely used — but only by English-speaking scientists. New grants back the development of applications for non-English-speaking scientists. Another grant will support a unified framework for cell-cell communication modeling and exploration — a growing area of biomedical and disease research — to make it available to the entire scientific community.

Started in 2019, CZI's EOSS program had committed $40 million by its fifth grant cycle. But the CZI team knew the need was far greater. "We had set out to find partners who aligned with what we're trying to do," Taraborelli said. "We're fortunate that Kavli and Wellcome decided to participate." With the two new partners and increased spending out of its own coffers, CZI will be upping its current round of support through the program — the sixth — by more than 25%, raising the total spend to $53 million.

While open source software tools are used across the scientific field, CZI, in keeping with its mission to eradicate disease, has focused on the development of software tools for biological and medical research. The Kavli Foundation will seek to fund projects that have applications in neuroscience, one of Kavli's core areas of focus. Wellcome, the U.K.'s largest charitable health and medical research funder, shares many of CZI's broader health and science research interests.

Grantmakers at the Kavli Foundation have long recognized the need for the development and ongoing support of software tools, and had already set up an Open Data in Neuroscience program area. "As a scientist, I had the opportunity to review [open source software] grant applications where I saw outstanding proposals that didn’t get funded, not because they weren’t worthy but because the number of great proposals is greater than available grant dollars," said Amy Bernard, director of life sciences at Kavli. In the past, Bernard had often served as an outside peer reviewer for many science grant programs, including CZI's EOSS. "That insight stuck with me when I joined the Kavli Foundation, so that as a funder, I knew there were excellent projects out there."

The fact that Kavli and Wellcome are joining CZI to fund this work has given it a boost, but according to CZI’s Taraborelli, the bigger takeaway is that an increased focus on open source software needs to expand throughout the science funding ecosystem — including outside the realm of philanthropic support.

In recent years, CZI has also been working with others in the international scientific community, such as the Research Software Alliance, to collectively support open software solutions. The alliance convenes annual meetings of funders focused on these tools. "I think that's an indication that there is a lot of traction for figuring out collectively in the funding community how to support the technology for science," Taraborelli said. "Now we have these three philanthropies collaborating, but it's important to emphasize that this [program] is not a solution to long-term sustainability of these projects. There needs to be a discussion that involves public funders, governmental funders, because this is such a fundamental need for science that goes beyond what philanthropy can do."

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