Engaging Stakeholder Networks to Support Global OA Monograph Usage Analytics

This article, published OA in Vol. 12 (2020) Iss. 2 of Collaborative Librarianship, was produced for the "Developing a Data Trust for Open Access Ebook Usage" project funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It documents key stakeholder networks within the OA eBooks ecosystem and the communications and engagement strategies used by the project to support such stakeholder involvement during the COVID pandemic. 

Abstract: Just as COVID-19 brought in-person meetings to a halt, the Open Access eBook Usage (OAeBU) Data Trust transitioned from a two-year stakeholder planning project to a two-year global pilot tasked with developing infrastructure use-cases, software code, sustainability models, and governance mechanisms to better enable the usage and impact analyses of OA monographs. This report introduces the array of stakeholders involved in OA book analytics and summarizes how this data trust effort worked to engage them during the first third of the project. Virtual network building and engagement strategies such as online stakeholder-oriented communities and collaboration tools are discussed alongside traditional strategies like interviews and proof of concept partnerships. The report concludes with observations made to date as the team explores whether a global usage data trust can meet the needs of OA monograph creators, editors, publishers, publishing service providers, libraries and sponsors.