As part of FORCE11’s 15th Anniversary, we’re celebrating the ideas, collaborations, working groups, and community initiatives that have helped shape research communication and open scholarship around the world.  You can see many of these reflected on the timeline we recently posted at https://force11.org/post/force11-turns-15/

Many of these efforts began within FORCE11 working groups, some emerged from conferences and community discussions, and others were developed through partnerships where FORCE11 helped bring together the people, expertise, and momentum needed to move ideas into practice. 

We invite the community to vote for the achievements that have had the greatest impact on research, scholarship, infrastructure, and knowledge sharing over the past fifteen years. 

Below you’ll find a brief description of initiatives and the role the FORCE11 community played in helping make it a reality. Check out the timeline for more.

• The FORCE11 Manifesto: Published in 2011, the FORCE11 Manifesto helped articulate a vision for a future scholarly communication system built for the web rather than inherited from the print era. The document brought together researchers, librarians, publishers, technologists, and funders around the idea that scholarship should be more open, connected, machine-actionable, and capable of incorporating new forms of research outputs. It became a foundational statement of purpose for the emerging FORCE11 community and helped establish many of the themes that would define the organization’s work over the following decade. The Manifesto remains an important touchstone for discussions about the future of scholarly communication. More info: https://force11.org/info/force11-manifesto
  
• Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles: The Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles established one of the most influential frameworks for recognizing research data as a first-class scholarly output. Developed through a FORCE11-led synthesis effort involving numerous organizations and stakeholders, the principles created a shared foundation for how data should be cited, attributed, identified, preserved, and accessed. The declaration has since been adopted by publishers, repositories, funders, infrastructure providers, and research communities around the world. Its influence helped transform data citation from a niche practice into a core component of modern research infrastructure. More info: https://force11.org/info/joint-declaration-of-data-citation-principles-final/
  
• Scholarly Commons: Scholarly Commons emerged from a broad FORCE11 community effort to explore how scholarly knowledge could be made more open, interconnected, reusable, and community-governed. Rather than focusing on a single platform, the initiative encouraged the development of shared principles, prototypes, and discussions about a more equitable and interoperable scholarly ecosystem. It created space for experimentation and collaboration across disciplines, institutions, and infrastructure providers. The work helped advance conversations about community ownership, open infrastructure, and the future architecture of scholarship. More info: https://zenodo.org/communities/scholarlycommons/
  
• Beyond the PDF: “Beyond the PDF” became one of the defining concepts associated with FORCE11’s early years. It challenged the scholarly community to rethink research communication beyond static documents and explore richer forms of digital scholarship that could incorporate data, software, workflows, multimedia, annotations, and machine-readable content. The concept inspired conferences, working groups, demonstrations, and new research publishing experiments. Many ideas that are now common within open science and scholarly infrastructure discussions can trace their roots back to these early conversations. More info: https://force11.org/info/beyond-the-pdf2-outcomes/
  
• Collaborative Metadata Enrichment Task Force (COMET): COMET explores how the scholarly community can collaboratively improve research metadata across publishers, repositories, PID infrastructures, CRIS systems, and other research services. Rather than relying on isolated enrichment efforts, the initiative promotes a shared model for identifying, curating, validating, and distributing metadata improvements across the research ecosystem. FORCE11 provided a community venue for bringing together stakeholders who rarely work together directly on metadata quality challenges. The project represents a contemporary example of FORCE11’s role as a convener for cross-sector collaboration. More info: https://www.cometadata.org
  
• The Researcher Bill of Rights: The Researcher Bill of Rights was developed to articulate the rights researchers should have when interacting with scholarly infrastructure, publishing systems, and research services. The effort highlighted issues such as openness, transparency, portability, accessibility, and researcher control over scholarly outputs and metadata. FORCE11 provided a forum where diverse stakeholders could discuss these concerns collectively rather than through individual organizational interests. The result helped frame broader conversations about researcher-centered scholarly infrastructure. More info: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5013929
  
• Software Citation: FORCE11 played a leading role in establishing software citation as a recognized scholarly practice. Through its Software Citation Working Group, the community developed principles that helped define how software should be cited, credited, identified, preserved, and connected to the scholarly record. These principles helped elevate research software from a largely invisible component of research to a recognized scholarly contribution. The work continues to influence publishers, repositories, indexing services, and research evaluation efforts. More info: https://force11.org/info/software-citation-principles-published-2016/
  
• FAIR Principles: While the FAIR Principles emerged through a broader international effort, the FORCE11 community played an important role in their discussion, dissemination, adoption, and implementation across scholarly communication and research infrastructure communities. FORCE11 events, working groups, and collaborations helped connect FAIR concepts with publishers, repositories, PID organizations, software developers, and research institutions. The community contributed to turning FAIR from a set of principles into an operational framework. Today FAIR remains one of the most widely recognized concepts in open science. More info: https://force11.org/info/guiding-principles-for-findable-accessible-interoperable-and-re-usable-data-publishing-version-b1-0/
  
• FORCE11 Scholarly Communications Institute (FSCI): The FORCE11 Scholarly Communications Institute created a unique environment for intensive learning, collaboration, mentorship, and professional development. Bringing together participants from around the world, FSCI combined coursework, workshops, and community-building around topics such as open science, scholarly communication, digital scholarship, infrastructure, and policy. Many participants describe the program as transformative for their careers and professional networks. FSCI helped cultivate a generation of leaders working across scholarly communication and open research. More info on FSCI: https://force11.org/fsci/
  
• Taxonomy for Contributions and Affiliations: FORCE11 helped provide a community forum for advancing contributor role taxonomies and discussions about how scholarly contributions should be recognized. Through collaboration with publishers, infrastructure providers, and research organizations, these efforts supported the broader adoption of contributor role frameworks such as CRediT. The work helped move scholarly credit beyond traditional authorship models and enabled more nuanced recognition of diverse contributions. These conversations continue to influence research assessment, metadata standards, and publishing workflows. More info at: https://force11.org/group/attribution-working-group-2/
  
• Data Publication Ethics: The Data Publication Ethics initiative brought together experts from repositories, publishers, ethics organizations, and research institutions to address emerging ethical challenges surrounding research data publication and sharing. The group developed guidance and recommendations for handling issues such as sensitive data, consent, corrections, retractions, and responsible stewardship. FORCE11 provided a neutral venue where different sectors could work toward shared solutions. The effort helped expand conversations about research integrity beyond traditional publications to include research data. More info at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.539129
  
• Open, Multilingual and Global Scholarly Communication (OMG): The OMG initiative challenged assumptions that scholarly communication should primarily operate through English-language, Western-centric systems. It created space for discussions about linguistic diversity, regional scholarship, equity, and global participation in knowledge creation. The FORCE11 community helped bring together voices from different regions, languages, and scholarly traditions to explore more inclusive models for scholarly communication. The initiative continues to influence conversations about equity and representation within open scholarship. More info on OMG: https://force11.org/group/open-multilingual-and-global-scholarly-communication-omg-2
  
• Reimagining Educational Practices for Open (REPO): REPO focused on how educational practices, training, and professional development can better support open scholarship and open research. The initiative encouraged collaboration among educators, librarians, researchers, and practitioners working to embed openness into teaching and learning environments. FORCE11 provided a platform for sharing experiences, resources, and community-driven approaches. The effort helped broaden FORCE11’s impact beyond research outputs to include the development of future scholarly communities. More info on REPO: https://force11.org/post/reimagining-educational-practices-for-open-repo-2/
  
• FAIR for Research Software (FAIR4RS): Building on the success of the FAIR Principles, the FAIR4RS initiative sought to adapt FAIR concepts to the unique characteristics of research software. Convened jointly by FORCE11, RDA, and the Research Software Alliance, the effort brought together software specialists, infrastructure providers, and researchers to develop community guidance for making software more findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. The resulting work has become a key reference point for research software communities worldwide. It represents a significant example of FORCE11’s role in facilitating cross-organizational collaboration around emerging scholarly infrastructure challenges. More info on FAIR4RS: https://zenodo.org/communities/fair4rs
  
• Annotating All Knowledge Working Group: The Annotating All Knowledge Working Group explored how annotation can serve as a foundational layer for scholarship, learning, review, and collaboration. The group brought together researchers, technologists, publishers, librarians, and standards experts interested in making annotations portable, interoperable, and reusable across platforms. FORCE11 provided the environment needed for these conversations to span disciplinary and organizational boundaries. The work helped advance annotation as a critical component of networked scholarship. More info: https://hypothes.is/annotating-all-knowledge/
  
• Resource Identification Initiative: The Resource Identification Initiative addressed a fundamental challenge in reproducible research: the consistent identification of research materials such as antibodies, organisms, software tools, databases, and instruments. By promoting persistent, standardized identifiers for research resources, the initiative improved transparency, reproducibility, and discoverability across scientific publications. FORCE11 helped amplify and connect these efforts to broader scholarly communication and infrastructure communities. The initiative demonstrated how practical infrastructure solutions can have a significant impact on research quality and reproducibility. More info on RRIDs: https://scicrunch.org/resources
  
• So Many Others: Over the past fifteen years, FORCE11 has incubated dozens of working groups, community initiatives, collaborations, events, principles, reports, and partnerships that have helped shape the future of scholarly communication. While we’ve highlighted some of the most visible and influential efforts, we know this list is far from complete. Use this option to nominate a FORCE11 initiative, community effort, working group, event, publication, partnership, or idea that you believe deserves recognition as one of the most important contributions of the past fifteen years.
  

Help us celebrate: Vote for the FORCE11 Community Achievements that shaped scholarly communication!