Across the past several years, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has supported the foundation and growth of academic Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) at 12 universities in the United States. OSPOs are units that support and coordinate open source software development and adoption. Ithaka S+R’s previous work has examined the successes and challenges of these Sloan-funded OSPOs in their early years.

While these were each respectively based at a single academic institution, both the University of California (UC) and University of Texas (UT) systems have now turned to a new model for OSPO work, one that operates as a network to serve institutions across the system. The UC system launched an OSPO network in 2024 through support from the Sloan Foundation. In the summer of 2025, the foundation awarded a planning grant to OSPO leaders in the UT system to scope out their own system-wide OSPO network.

Today, we are publishing an issue brief analyzing these two system-wide OSPO projects. Our study, funded by the Sloan Foundation, is based on interviews from the fall of 2025 with individuals affiliated with the UC and UT system-wide OSPOs. The issue brief takes a closer look at how these networked OSPO models aim to maximize their capacity and impact by sharing resources and expertise between campuses. It addresses how they are structuring themselves and leveraging existing system-wide networks and collaborations between units such as libraries, data science centers, engineering departments, and technology transfer. It also examines how and why OSPOs are investing in building trust across campuses and with the academic community members they serve.

For more information about our work on open science, please reach out to Dylan Ruediger (dylan.ruediger@ithaka.org).