Purpose and Principles

VeriMe provides researchers a secure digital identity that enables verified access without exposing personal data. Worldwide.

VeriMe was created for and by researchers to increase trust in the digital identities used by members of the research community. We seek to achieve this goal in a way that provides individuals control over their personal information. In addition, we feel it critically important to balance the governance of this important information and services across all parties, including the researchers themselves.

These values require us to innovate in multiple dimensions. To provide open research infrastructure that increases trust in digital identities, it is necessary to explore the technology, community engagement, and decision-making aspects that together are the infrastructure.

Since research infrastructure derives value from researcher participation, VeriMe has developed a cooperative organizational and governance structure that recognizes and rewards researcher participation. We also recognize the people who build VeriMe in this structure. Researchers and staff may participate as VeriMe Members, and take part in our governance as well as patronage distributions. Members are responsible for ensuring VeriMe remains aligned with our principles, reviewing our budget, and for assuring our living will provisions.

We encourage you to read our governing documents. On this page you will find our guiding principles, code of conduct, articles of incorporation, and our bylaws. Feel free to re-use what works for your organization. And please get in touch to share your ideas and experiences!

Our Principles

The VeriMe Cooperative adopts and subscribes to the seven International Cooperative Alliance Cooperative principles:

1. Voluntary and Open Membership. We provide a way to benefit from VeriMe services free of charge, as well as a means to become a Member and participate in decision-making. 

2. Democratic Member Control. The VeriMe infrastructure derives its value from researcher participation and from the people who build and maintain it. To recognize this value, VeriMe has developed a cooperative organizational and governance structure that recognizes and rewards value generation. 

3. Members' Economic Participation. Members of VeriMe – Founders, Workers, and Researchers – are eligible for patronage dividends in alignment with their contributions.

4. Autonomy and Independence. VeriMe is an independent organization.  Relationships with individuals and organizations are governed by our Code of Conduct, Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and other legal agreements such as Membership and Subscriber agreements. 

5.  Education, Training, and Information. In addition to providing our Members with training on cooperative governance, one of the reasons we are founding VeriMe is as a co-op demonstrator for other research infrastructures.  We have posted our bylaws and other governance documents on our website and are actively engaging with our community on the value of cooperative organization. 

6. Cooperation among Cooperatives. We benefit from and contribute to cooperatives, including the Center for Community Wealth Building and the USFWC.

7.   Concern for Community. We are grounded by our community commitment to create and sustain research infrastructure that puts researchers at the center. 

In addition, the Cooperative subscribes to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure:

  • Governance. Transparent stakeholder governance, opt-in membership, and living will.

  • Sustainability. Purpose-consistent revenue generation based on services.

  • Insurance. Open documentation of policies and processes, including where applicable software code, description of operational components, and use of existing open infrastructures and frameworks such as FAIR and CARE and persistent identifiers. 

Our Values in Action

  • We serve researchers: We design the user experience for researchers to support their control of their account, obtain credit for their contributions, and participate in governance.

  • We take an ecosystem approach: We collaborate and interoperate with our stakeholders to support community-level integration and impact.

  • We put privacy first: We concentrate the work of identity verification so that everyone benefits.

  • We build for the long term:  We prioritize reliability and leverage proven and open source technology as VeriMe's foundation, and in kind, make our work available under an Apache 2.0 license.

  • We are fiscally responsible: We are an open research infrastructure supported by our Members and parties that integrate VeriMe services into research workflows. As a co-op our earnings are redistributed to our Members and reinvested in our platform.