Reflections on interoperability working across open not-for-profit infrastructures for open access books

Presentation delivered at the joint Copim, SCOSS and SPARC Europe webinar held on Tuesday 11 November 2025: Beyond technical interoperability? The future of open infrastructures and open access.

As a technical infrastructure, Thoth Open Metadata is all about ensuring technical interoperability with other infrastructures. Drawing on their experience in fostering collaboration with publishers, libraries, and infrastructures in the context of Thoth Open Metadata and the wider Copim community, Hannah and Toby talked about the multiple facets that go beyond enabling technical data exchange via APIs – to highlight the manifold socio-cultural exchanges that are needed to establish and maintain ongoing dialogue between stakeholders to foster cultural interoperability within a bibliodiverse, open ecosystem for OA books.

They delved into the many connections that have been established with organisations across the globe, incl. numerous publishers from a diverse set of regions, the many infrastructures and aggregators active in OA book publishing, incl. OAPEN, SciELO Books, the African Platform for Open Scholarship (APOS), Project MUSE, JSTOR, and international networks incl. OPERAS, the Copim Community, the Public Knowledge Project, the Barcelona Declaration group of signatories, and the COMET initiative.