The principles of the scholarly commons set the norms for activities in the scholarly commons. They start from the vision that scholarly communication needs to be as open and participatory as possible, and lay out the rules needed to achieve that. The principles can be used as: a framework for an agreement between researchers, funders, publishers, librarians, citizen scientists and others active in science and scholarship on how to make research open and participatory for anyone, anywhere a guide to decide how to practice and support research a basis for badging of activities as commons-compliant, by individuals and organization