A New Home for Open Photosynthesis Research: Introducing openJII

We are very happy to announce in this first post on our blog the upcoming release of openJII.

Many of you had an account on the open science community platform previously available at PhotosynQ.com. In late 2024, the Jan IngenHousz Institute (JII) purchased the legacy platform previously hosted on PhotosynQ.org. Since that time, we have been working on transitioning the open science platform to JII.

To keep the collaborative spirit of the community alive, a group of researchers and contributors, including members of the original open photosynthesis community, have launched a new platform: openJII.

As openJII progresses, we will add more capabilities that further enable this mission, transforming it into a vibrant community with tools — including open-source, open-access sensors, analytical tools, massive reference data sets and community communications — that will enable the next level of science.

The openJII team will be describing these efforts in an upcoming series of blog posts.

But first, a brief introduction to let you know how you can transition to openJII and what is in store for users over the short term.

Why openJII?

openJII is an open science platform built and supported by the Jan IngenHousz Institute (JII; jii.org) as part of our open science effort to transform the way science is done and address the challenge of understanding how photosynthesis works in the real world. By advancing this scientific knowledge, we aim to support the efforts to improve the productivity and sustainability of crops.

The platform was initiated by JII, building on collaborations with Wageningen University and Michigan State University and several funding agencies and foundations, to support open, collaborative research in photosynthesis. openJII is designed as a central, unifying tool that helps researchers, developers, data scientists, and crop improvement experts to share, integrate, and interpret complex, large-scale datasets—ultimately uncovering genetic linkages that shape photosynthesis.

JII is a charitable (not for profit) foundation based in The Netherlands, committed to promote open science solutions to understanding photosynthesis and disseminating knowledge and scientific tools to improve the productivity and sustainability of crops. All data and tools created within openJII will remain open access and will not be turned into a for-profit business.

openJII already fully supports measurements from MultispeQ devices and is built to integrate new sensors and upcoming features as the platform grows.

A Note on the Current Version

openJII is currently in beta, meaning the foundation is in place but many more tools, features, and refinements will be released soon. We welcome your feedback as we continue building and improving the platform with the community.

Some of the workflow will be familiar, but some have been redesigned to allow for powerful new approaches. For example, it will be possible to use modern coding languages and implement cloud-based data analyses that can be shared among users across the community.

Moving Forward

We invite you to join openJII and continue your research without interruption. This includes that you can transfer your data from the legacy platform and you always decide what to migrate and when. Our aim is to ensure that open science data remains accessible to the community, enable researchers to continue their work using legacy protocols, and to expand the capabilities and power of the data.

Create an account and request moving your projects here

To collect and analyze data in real time you can download the openJII app (Android only).

In the future, you will be able to transfer the data and protocols to openJII yourself to allow you to expand the experiments, providing archives, continuity of protocols and expanded capabilities.

As with any online platform, there will be specific new terms and conditions for use of openJII, but these are designed to maximize the power and openness of the science.

If you have data sets running experiments you will receive notification of how to make the transfer.

How can you participate?

We will send an invitation email to active community members to ask if they would like to join in stages, and provide valuable testing feedback.

Need Help?

If you have questions about using openJII or transferring your data, we’re here to support you: openjii@jii.org.

Thank you for being part of this scientific community. We look forward to continuing the journey with you in an open, collaborative research space.

We look forward to this new era of open science!

— David M. Kramer, Sebastian Kuhlgert, Alexander Laarman and the entire openJII Team