From OMP to DOAB, via Thoth: Open Collaboration to Amplify Slovenian OA Books

A workshop organised by the Open Infrastructures for OA Books Working Group, OA Books SIG, bringing together members of the Slovenian National Node with open infrastructures, Thoth Open Metadata, the OAPEN Foundation, the Directory of Open Access Books, and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP).

Abstract

Three Slovenian university presses produce ca. 70% of the country’s scientific open access (OA) monographs, yet face persistent structural challenges in metadata management, dissemination, and international visibility. This workshop proposes a practical showcase of open collaboration between Slovenian publishers and four open not-for-profit infrastructures – Thoth Open Metadata, the OAPEN Foundation, the Directory of Open Access Books, and the Public Knowledge Project’s Open Monographs Press (OMP) – to address these needs end-to-end.

Focusing on academic publishing houses of three Slovenian educational and research institutions (ZRC SAZU, University of Ljubljana, and University of Maribor) that use OMP to host a variety of long-form outputs, the session will demonstrate how locally produced, peer-reviewed open access books can move efficiently “from OMP to DOAB.” Participants will explore workflows for improving metadata quality and interoperability, and consider aspects such as the integration of PIDs (e.g., DOI,  ORCID, ROR), the facilitation of multilingual metadata outputs, the management of controlled subject classification schemas (e.g., UDC, BIC, BISAC, Thema), and a streamlined dissemination into OAPEN and DOAB via the open-source and freely-available Thoth metadata management platform. The workshop will highlight the Thoth–OMP plugin as a shared, open solution for reducing spreadsheet- and email-based workflows and aligning OMP metadata with downstream aggregator requirements via the Thoth platform, alongside OAPEN’s perspective on discovery and funder-based collection building. 

We will also discuss the quality of metadata as a key element in supporting the discoverability and reuse of open access books and chapters and outline how, in this context, a collaborative effort between publishers, infrastructure providers, and users can effectively create and utilise open resources.

Aimed at publishers, librarians, and infrastructure providers interested in open publishing of long-form scholarly outputs, the session proposes to sketch out a replicable model of cross-infrastructure collaboration, positioning Slovenian publishers more strongly within European OA networks such as OPERAS, while contributing a concrete case study that has emerged out of the Open Infrastructures Working Group, part of the OPERAS OA Books SIG.

Participants are invited to discuss the showcase’s potential applicability to other national and regional settings. We would also like to invite feedback on other aspects pertaining to the discoverability of non-peer-reviewed long-form outputs that can be managed through the Thoth platform and would currently not be eligible for submission to DOAB, such as open textbooks, musical notations, or conference proceedings.

Note: An online version of the slidedeck is available here.