Press Release, March 2024

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is delighted to formally announce that four new platforms have recently joined the DOAB Trusted Platform Network. JSTOR, the African Platform for Open Scholarship (APOS), Fulcrum (University of Michigan Press), and Thoth Open Metadata have each signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with DOAB to facilitate cross-platform collaboration for open access books.

The DOAB Trusted Platform Network is a global initiative that brings together platforms committed to maintaining the highest standards in open access book publishing to create a more seamless process for publishers to index their open access books in DOAB. Publishers who add their books to any of these platforms can request that they check and verify which books meet the DOAB criteria. These books would then automatically be listed in DOAB, further enhancing their discoverability.

By joining the Trusted Platform Network, JSTOR, APOS, Fulcrum, and Thoth Open Metadata continue to show their dedication to transparency, quality, and the promotion of open scholarship principles, aligning strongly with DOAB’s mission to promote open access books and increase trust in open access book publishing.

DOAB is excited to include their first platform from Africa, reinforcing their commitment to engaging with the scholarly communications ecosystem outside of Europe and North America. DOAB sees the inclusion of APOS as a significant step in advancing open scholarship and fostering greater accessibility to open access books globally.

Hear what each platform says about joining the Trusted Platform Network:

JSTOR

“Trust is everything when it comes to scholarship and open access,” says John Lenahan, Vice President, Published Content at ITHAKA, the non-profit home of JSTOR. “The DOAB Trusted Platform Network is playing a vital role in defining and verifying open access books that meet specific requirements that are important to libraries, publishers, and authors. We’re pleased to have registered more than 10,300 of the open access books already available on JSTOR, and look forward to making ongoing deposits, including the 1,000 forthcoming open access books being published through the community-driven Path to Open initiative.”

African Platform for Open Scholarship (APOS)

“The DOAB’s platform network gives expression to opening up the channels of dissemination of African scholarship, moving Africa to the epicentre of the world’s knowledge production. This network also facilitates the bi-directional flow of scholarship between and among scholars.” UCT Libraries’ Dr Reggie Raju, Director of Research and Learning and Jill Claassen, Section Manager of Scholarly Communication and Research.

Fulcrum

“As a specialized host of data-rich, multimodal long-form publishing, Fulcrum is excited to work with the OAPEN Foundation to amplify the discovery of not only simple ebooks but also open access titles that go beyond the book,” says Charles Watkinson, Associate Librarian for Publishing at the University of Michigan. “We are excited to join the network of Trusted Partners advanced research integrity.”

Thoth Open Metadata

Toby Steiner, COO and Product Manager at Thoth Open Metadata says, “Thoth is honoured to be invited to contribute to the DOAB Trusted Partner Network’s stated goal of enhancing the discoverability of open access books and creating a more seamless process, and we are thrilled to take up that role of a Trusted Partner working particularly with small- and medium-sized publishers to have their open access books listed in DOAB.”

If you have questions about the DOAB Trusted Platform Network, please contact Niels Stern, co-director of DOAB ([email protected]). Contact details for each of the platforms can be found below.

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About JSTOR

JSTOR strengthens the depth and quality of research by bringing together more than 12 million journals, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines on a platform with unique tools for teaching and exploration. We do this in partnership with libraries, museums, and publishers, working together to reduce costs, extend access, and preserve scholarship for the future as affordably and sustainably as possible. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a non-profit organization with a mission to improve access to knowledge and education for people around the world that also includes Constellate, Ithaka S+R, and Portico.

Contact: Heidi McGregor, VP, Communications, ITHAKA/JSTOR, [email protected]

About the African Platform for Open Scholarship (APOS)

The African Platform for Open Scholarship supports diamond open access publishing of African books and journals. This publishing model is built for the advancement of social justice principles, that is, the removal of barriers to publishing without compromising on academic rigour. The platform aims to address capacity, infrastructure, affordability and sustainability issues making it a potential solution for advancing the dissemination of African scholarship. APOS offers each participating African institution the opportunity to retain their identity through taking ownership of their segment within the platform (referred to as the tenant model) showcasing its academically sound scholarship.

Contact: Jill Claassen, Section manager of scholarly communication and research, University of Cape Town Libraries, [email protected]

About Fulcrum

Fulcrum is a community-based, open source publishing platform that helps publishers present the full richness of their authors’ research outputs in a durable, discoverable, accessible and flexible form.

Contact: Charles Watkinson, Associate Librarian for Publishing, University of Michigan, [email protected]

About Thoth Open Metadata

Thoth Open Metadata is a community-led non-profit platform and service facilitating open metadata management and dissemination workflows for Open Access (OA) books and book chapters. With Thoth, publishers can easily create and distribute metadata in a variety of standard formats such as MARC, ONIX, KBART, and JSON, in numerous variants reflecting specific platforms’ requirements. Thoth’s platform and services assist publishers in the creation, management and dissemination of fully open metadata records for their titles and chapters, leading to improved, high-quality metadata that benefits the entire scholarly publishing ecosystem. Thoth also supports an integration of the data, which is released with a CC0 dedication, with third-party applications through its open APIs, enabling innovative new content and services to be developed. We invite publishers interested in opening up their Open Access content and corresponding metadata, as well as dissemination platforms and libraries seeking to ingest the open metadata created through Thoth into their OA catalogues get in touch with Toby Steiner (Product Manager) and Hannah Hillen (Metadata and Publisher Outreach Specialist) via [email protected].