Category Archives: oa.doab

Call For Applications: Workshop ‘Towards Sustainable Open Access Book Publishing in the African Context’, Feb 07-09, 2024 | OBC Information Hub

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Dates: February 7th, 8th, 9th 2024

Location: University of Cape Town 

Partners: Association of African Universities, African Platform for Open Scholarship (formerly Continental Platform), Lancaster University, Open Book Collective, Thoth, OAPEN/DOAB

Language: English

Application deadline: 15th December 2023

This 3-day workshop explores challenges that inhibit a sustainable open access book publishing ecosystem with the remit of developing interventions that contribute and/or accelerate the growth of African scholarship. The event is designed to respond to barriers and needs related to Open Access book publishers and initiatives across the African continent. It provides a space for skills development, sharing experiences, expertise, and for learning about new developments in the support and funding of Open Access book publishing.

The event is open to authors/editors, publishers and infrastructure providers. This means initiatives involved in all aspects of Open Access book production and distribution, ranging from content development, producing and distributing open access books, to working on hosting and distributing them. This event is hosted by the University of Cape Town, developers of the African Platform for Open Scholarship (formerly Continental Platform) and the Open Book Futures project. Open Book Futures is an international consortium of stakeholders committed to developing a sustainable, equitable and diverse future for Open Access books led not by large commercial operations, but by communities of scholars, small-to-medium-sized publishers, not-for-profit infrastructure providers, and scholarly libraries. The project is committed to engaging with publishers, universities, and infrastructure providers in a diverse set of national and linguistic contexts beyond the Global North.

The event will have two focus areas: training and development. With regard to training:  

upskilling authors and/or editors on crafting academically strong manuscripts

upskilling infrastructure providers on managing the workflows for the production of open books

With regard to development:

skills sessions, in which publishers can learn from each other and participating initiatives

scoping sessions, to share experiences, learn about new developments, and challenges that need to be overcome

panel discussions, featuring discussions and debates on Open Access book publishing futures on the African continent

The event is free to attend, with places for around 30 delegates in total. Catering costs will be covered for all delegates. In addition, we expect that there will be funding available to pay for travel and accommodation costs for around 15 delegates from the following countries on the African continent: Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe. 

To apply to join the event, delegates are invited to contribute the following information by December 15 2023: 

Name: 

Affiliation: 

Email address: 

A description of your Open Access initiative, including aims and remit (up to 150 words): 

A brief summary of barriers and difficulties encountered in your work (up to 150 words):

Ideas for how these barriers could be overcome (up to 150 words): 

Details of either a manuscript for an Open Access book, or another project designed to build Open Access publishing capacity, that you could bring to introduce and discuss with colleagues (up to 250 words)

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Free Ebook Foundation and OAPEN collaborate to check DOAB links

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“The Free Ebook Foundation and the OAPEN Foundation have unveiled a new website that is checking all the links in the Directory of Open Access Books. The website, open to for all to access checks each of over 68,000 links in DOAB approximately once a month. The DOAB-Check website presents lists of the checked links, organized by publisher, by the web host, and by they type of problem observed for the most recent check. The entire set of recent checks is available as a bulk download, and an API provide for programmatic access to link status for any DOAB identifier. As of the beginning of November, 68,765 links are being checked, and 5,667 of them have issues of some sort…..”

Continuing partnerships after SCOSS – SCOSS – The Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services

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“With the infrastructures from the SCOSS 2nd funding cycle nearing the end of their active fundraising period through SCOSS, we would like to highlight their need for continued support. All three infrastructures (DOAB/OAPEN, PKP and OpenCitations)  are actively pursuing long-term funding strategies and fostering connections with existing and future supporting organisations. Their work continues, and has accelerated over the years, and we need them as part of a healthy Open Science ecosystem.

While DOAB/OAPEN has already reached its SCOSS funding target, both PKP and OpenCitations still need additional financial support to help reach their funding target before the end of this year. We strongly encourage you to help them as this funding ultimately helps the wider OS community….”

Increasing the Visibility and Impact of Nigerian Research: Upcoming Webinar on August 31, 2023 – DOAJ News Service

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“This upcoming webinar aims to raise awareness among policymakers, scholars, and publishers in Nigeria about the importance of publishing research openly in local journals. Key highlights of the webinar will include:

Overview of the African Open Access publishing landscape for journals and books and the importance of Nigeria.
Open Access Advantages: Discussing the benefits of open access, enabling researchers to reach a wider audience without barriers.
Governmental Roles: Stressing why governments must adapt policies and reward systems that recognize local open access venues.
Criteria and Application Procedures: Explaining the application procedures for DOAJ and DOAB.
Q&A Session: Addressing questions from the audience….”

Enhancing Visibility and Impact: Indexing Nigerian Science in DOAJ and DOAB

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“This collaboration between WACREN, DOAJ and CVCNU aims to raise awareness of the importance of publishing research in local open access journals and books for policymakers, scholars and publishers in Nigeria.

The webinar will highlight the advantages of open access and discuss some open access publishing systems in place. It will outline why governments must take the first step and adapt their policies and reward systems to acknowledge local open access venues as valuable output. However, this is only possible with proven quality assessment systems for open access journals and books. The speaker will then explain the criteria and application procedures for DOAJ and DOAB and take questions from the audience.”

DOAB celebrates its 10th anniversary! – OAPEN – supporting the transition to open access for academic books

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“This year, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), led by OpenEdition and OAPEN Foundation, celebrates its 10th anniversary. Since its inception, DOAB has evolved from an idea for indexing high quality peer-reviewed open access books and chapters to a globally used and open directory serving not only researchers and the wider scholarly community, but also the public. …”

 

Blog | Directory of Open Access Books

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“This year, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), led by OpenEdition and OAPEN Foundation, celebrates its 10th anniversary. Since its inception, DOAB has evolved from an idea for indexing high quality peer-reviewed open access books and chapters to a globally used and open directory serving not only researchers and the wider scholarly community, but also the public. …

Guest Post – Towards Global Equity for Open Access Books  – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“Today’s guest post is by Niels Stern, managing director, OAPEN Foundation and co-director, DOAB, and Ronald Snijder, CTO, OAPEN Foundation. OAPEN was founded as a not-for-profit foundation in 2010 to promote and support the transition to open access for academic books by providing open infrastructure services to stakeholders in scholarly communication. In 2013 DOAB was launched to help publishers increase the discoverability of their open access books and to enable libraries to freely integrate a large collection of peer-reviewed books into their catalogues.

Ferwerda et. al. (2023) Open Access to Books – the Perspective of a Non-profit Infrastructure Provider | The Journal of Electronic Publishing

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Ferwerda, E. & Snijder, R. & Stern, N., (2023) “Open Access to Books – the Perspective of a Non-profit Infrastructure Provider”, The Journal of Electronic Publishing 26(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.3303

Abstract:

This article describes the open access (OA) book platforms OAPEN Library and Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), based on 1.the development and activities of OAPEN in the first ten years; 2. the underlying technical approach behind the platforms; 3. the current role of OAPEN and DOAB and future outlook.

OAPEN started out as a project funded by the European Commission, and become a legal non-profit Dutch entity in 2011. It hosts, disseminates and preserves open access books. OA book publishing has been explored in several pilot projects. Its current collection contains over 24,000 documents. DOAB launched in 2012, inspired and supported by DOAJ. It became a legal non-profit Dutch entity in 2019, owned by the OAPEN Foundationand OpenEdition. It’s current collection contains close to 60,000 titles.

The data model of both platforms  is optimised for a multilingual collection and supports funding information. Ingesting books has been optimised to support a wide array of publishers and the dissemination of books takes into account search engines; libraries and aggregators and other organisations. The usage has grown in the last years, to 1 million downloads per month.

The future developments entail increased support of research funders with the establishment of a FunderForum and multi-year research into policy development. DOAB will invest more in bibliodiversity, by adding more emphasis on African and Asian countries. Also,DOAB will roll out its Peer Review Information Service for Monographs (PRISM).

OAPEN and DOAB will continue to work on developing reliable infrastructures, policy development and quality assurance around open access books.

 

OAPEN & DOAB POSI self-audit | OAPEN – supporting the transition to open access for academic books

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by Laura J. Wilkinson

It is with great pleasure and sense of achievement that we share with you today our POSI self-audit for OAPEN & DOAB (download OAPEN & DOAB POSI self-audit PDF).

As you may know, OAPEN and DOAB are separate but interconnected infrastructures for open access books, governed by the OAPEN Foundation and DOAB Foundation respectively. In practice, our small team of nine people works with both systems on a daily basis. But since the two organisations have different governance, we’ve carried out a self-audit for each. We hope you agree that seeing the two self-audits side-by-side helps to compare and contrast the ways they operate.

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£5.8 million funding to significantly expand and accelerate COPIM open access infrastructures | Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

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The Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs project (COPIM) is delighted that Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund are supporting a new initiative that will build on the pioneering work of the COPIM project.

The Open Book Futures project (OBF), led by Lancaster University, will significantly expand key infrastructures created by COPIM to achieve a step change in how community-owned Open Access (OA) book publishing is delivered.

Open Book Futures will follow the principles of ‘Scaling Small’ that guided the work of the COPIM project, further developing the infrastructures, business models, networks and resources that are needed to deliver a future for Open Access books led not by large commercial operations, but by communities of scholars, small-to-medium-sized publishers, not-for-profit infrastructure providers, and scholarly libraries.

Among its activities, OBF will deepen and accelerate the work of:

the recently launched Open Book Collective, which makes it easier for academic libraries to provide direct financial support to small- and medium-sized OA publishing initiatives;

the Thoth metadata management and dissemination platform;

the Opening the Future revenue model;

the forthcoming Experimental Publishing Compendium; 

the forthcoming Thoth Archiving Network.

Open Book Futures, which will run from 1 May 2023 to 30 April 2026, will increase COPIM’s long-term impact and ensure that a wide range of voices have the opportunity to shape the future of open access book publishing. In order to amplify bibliodiverse and equitable community-led approaches to OA book publishing, OBF aims not just to strengthen existing networks in the UK and North America, but also to engage further with publishers, universities, and infrastructure providers in a diverse set of national and linguistic contexts, including Africa, Australasia, Continental Europe, and Latin America.

With that in mind, OBF will reunite many of the COPIM project partners, including Birkbeck, University of London, Coventry University, Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), Jisc, Loughborough University, Open Book Collective (OBC), Open Book Publishers (OBP), punctum books, Thoth, and Trinity College, Cambridge University, and they will also be joined by a wide range of new partners including Continental Platform/University of Cape Town, the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI), the Digital Preservation Coalition, the Educopia Institute, Knowledge Futures, Lyrasis, OPERAS, Public Knowledge Project (PKP), Research Libraries UK (RLUK), SciELO Books, Scottish Universities Press/SCURL, and SPARC Europe. The project is also supported by Lancaster University Library.

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£5.8 million project to deliver a more sustainable future for Open Access books | Lancaster University

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A new project that works to increase access to valuable research is to receive more than £5.8 million in funding.

Led by Lancaster University, the Open Book Futures (OBF) project will develop and support organisations, tools and practices that enable both academics and the wider public to make more and better use of books published on an Open Access basis. Open Access books can be accessed and used online free of charge.

In particular, the project, which is also supported by Lancaster University Library, aims to achieve a step change in how community-owned Open Access book publishing is delivered.

Funded by Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund, the project marks a shift in the ambition, scope and impact of community-owned Open Access book publishing.

It will significantly increase and improve the quantity, discoverability, preservation and accessibility of academic content freely and easily available to all.

This will be done by building the infrastructures, business models, networks and resources that are needed to deliver a future for Open Access books led not by large commercial operations but by communities of scholars, small-to-medium-sized publishers, not-for-profit infrastructure providers, and scholarly libraries.

This includes expanding the work of the recently launched Open Book Collective, which makes it easier for academic libraries to provide direct financial support to Open Access publishing initiatives, as well as the Thoth metadata management platform, the Opening the Future revenue model and the forthcoming Experimental Publishing Compendium.

Open Book Futures, due to start on May 1st, builds on the pioneering work of the Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project. COPIM, a strategic international partnership led by Coventry University, began the work of establishing the key open, community-led solutions required to address the barriers to the wider impact of Open Access books.

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Job opening: Community Manager at OAPEN & DOAB | OAPEN

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“OAPEN and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) are looking for a Community manager, responsible for the development of and engagement with our library community. This is a full-time position (40 hrs/week). OAPEN and DOAB have their offices in The Hague in the Netherlands, but the position is open to working remotely.

The deadline for applications is 31 March 2023….”

Engage with PALOMERA via the OABN! Launch event March 28, 2023, 4pm (CEST) | Open Access Books Network

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The Open Access Books Network (OABN) is working with the PALOMERA project, a two-year initiative funded by HORIZON Europe that seeks to investigate why so few Open Access (OA) funder policies include OA books, and to provide actionable recommendations to change this.

We will be hosting a PALOMERA Series of events that will provide a forum for anyone interested in open access book publishing to:

engage with PALOMERA via the OABN, 
contribute your knowledge and expertise as the project progresses, 
offer feedback to help shape PALOMERA’s outputs and recommendations. 

We want to gather a broad group of representatives from different stakeholders in open access book publishing, as we did for our Voices from the OA Book Community workshop series in 2021, and enable you to contribute to the PALOMERA project via the PALOMERA Series.

Launch event

We will host a launch event on Tuesday 28 March at 3pm BST / 4pm CEST where you will hear from some of the project’s leaders, including Niels Stern (OAPEN/DOAB) and Ursula Rabar (OPERAS/OAeBU). You will have the opportunity to ask questions about the project and to let us know the best ways for you to engage with PALOMERA. The event will also be recorded.

Sign up for the launch event: it’s free and everyone is welcome! 

Please also share the link with anyone who might be interested.