Thoth Archiving Network: How institutional repositories can become involved in preserving long-form scholarship

The Thoth Archiving Network (TAN), developed within the COPIM Project and continuing as part of Open Book Futures (a Copim community project), is a network of participating University repositories and web-archiving platforms working to archive digital open access monographs from small and scholar-led publishers. TAN operates as part of Thoth, an open metadata management and dissemination platform and service, also created as part of COPIM. The aim of the Thoth Archiving Network is to allow for the small and scholar-led press, as well as other small to medium independent presses, an accessible way to quickly and easily deposit their OA monographs into participating institutional repositories and web-archiving platforms in an 'archiving as dissemination' workflow, to prevent against loss and ensure continuing access. TAN is an opportunity for institutional repositories and higher education institutions to contribute tangibly towards the advancement of the open access ecosystem, in addition to progressive financial contributions already being made by some universities towards OA initiatives and infrastructure.