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 Governance

VeriMe is a membership cooperative dedicated to researcher identity verification.

VeriMe provides secure, researcher-owned and directed digital identity verification services that enable verified access without exposing personal data.

VeriMe is an open research infrastructure supported by our Members and Subscribers. Researchers may create an account and link it to their ORCID record for no fee. Researcher Members may access services to verify identity using official documents and may also take part in VeriMe governance. Subscribers may request verified identity data from Members using VeriMe APIs.

  • Verime is committed to conducting its business ethically and transparently. Integrity and honesty underlie all of our community relationships. Our Code of Conduct articulates our high expectations for our Members and stakeholders: listen first, and actively practice good judgment, diplomacy, and courtesy in our interactions with each other and our community. Our goal is to foster a values-based culture in which each individual within our organization and across our community feels welcome, respected, and treated with dignity, while also recognizing the personal responsibility each of us has in creating and maintaining that culture. 

  • VeriMe Cooperative (the “Cooperative”) is a limited cooperative association organized under the Colorado Uniform Limited Cooperative Association Act, C.R.S. Title 7, Article 58 (“ULCAA”). The Cooperative’s business shall be conducted on a cooperative basis for the mutual benefit of the Cooperative’s Members.  The Cooperative may have offices in such places as the Board may from time to time determine or the purposes of the Corporation may require. Our Articles of Incorporation were filed on 1 May 2025 withe the State of Colorado.

  • Our bylaws describe our governance structure, membership classes, requirements for patronage distributions, decision-making processes, and specify our living will provisions. You may review and comment on our bylaws in this open document.

  • VeriMe Members include Researchers, Workers, and Founders.

    The Membership Agreement specifies buy-in provisions, annual fees, activity requirements for patronage distributions, and governance access and expectations.

    At launch (2025) the Researcher Member fee is US$60 per year. Researcher Members are required to maintain the currency of their contact information and undergo an annual identity verification to be eligible for patronage distributions.

    Patronage distributions come in the form of credit points that can be applied to the annual membership fee or other products and services available through the VeriMe marketplace (launching in 2026).

    We will be releasing the Researcher Member Agreement at the same time we launch VeriMe account services. You can view the Researcher Member Agreement here and sign up for alerts.

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.