Metadata Quality as a Shared Effort: Collaborative Innovation for Discoverability and Bibliodiversity

High-quality metadata is the cornerstone of discoverability and trust for open access books. Achieving it is not a technical task, but a shared, community-driven effort that unites publishers, librarians, and infrastructure providers.

In the presentation, we share how the OAPEN team undertook a fundamental workflow transformation, guided by an independent technical audit. We moved from a manual, intensive process to an automated pipeline that embeds quality assurance at every stage.

We will highlight how this shift is not just about efficiency gains, but about fostering bibliodiversity and equity. By implementing consistent, rigorous standards, we ensure that books from all regions and languages have an equal opportunity to be discovered on global channels.

The core of our story is about the human collaboration behind the code. We will showcase how a small, cross-functional team combined domain expertise with technical innovation, and how continuous feedback loops with our community are shaping the next evolution of our infrastructure.

The case study serves as a model for practical, collaborative innovation in open science. Attendees will gain actionable insights into building infrastructures that are not only robust and scalable, but also inclusive and community-owned.