July - September 2024 OAEBUDT Update
Ursula Rabar
Greetings everyone,
The OAEBUDT community has been busy this past quarter, preparing for the data space technical pilot and developing our sustainability model. We're excited to share updates from July to September below.
For any questions, feel free to reach out using my contact info:
Ursula Rabar, Community Manager | OA Book Usage Data Trust
ursula.rabar at operas-eu.org
OA Book Usage Data Trust (OAEBUDT) | July - September 2024 Update
Highlights:
Sustainability model development and fundraising for 2025 are underway
Building upon the community’s indication of membership, grants and API-based fees as the most appropriate ways to recover costs associated with the OAEBUDT, the OAEBUDT Board of Trustees approved a limited Q4 2024 pilot of the Supporting Membership category to refine membership administration processes, test the viability of membership for generating operational funds for an effort at this early stage of operations, and allow organizations to provide immediate direct support to the OAEBUDT that will assist with 2025 grant transitions. Organizations interested in becoming a founding Supporting Member should review details about the limited pilot and contact Ursula to sign up.
Simultaneously, a community consultation on proposed organizational and supporting membership fees and benefits was drafted for October review by the Membership and Sustainability Committee, for an expected public consultation period from October-November.
Data collected from the 2023-2024 workshops and consultations was published in Zenodo, while drafting began for a companion synthesis report.
Community members are reminded to express their interest in taking part in OAEBUDT community governance via this form. Those expressing interest by 15 November 2024 will be provided with more information related to 2025 governance participation.
Technical OAEBUDT-Data Space build
In July, our Board concluded an RFP process by electing to partner with Think-IT to develop the OAEBUDT’s open technical infrastructure according to the emerging Data Space Protocol. Technical development now awaits funding, as described more fully below.
______________________________________________________________
The Details:
Community Governance
While the Board of Trustees and the various committees continue to meet to provide direction as we prepare for a service launch, community members are welcome to express interest in taking part in OAEBUDT community governance. Anyone interested can fill in this form by 15 November. Those expressing interest will receive further information from December-January 2025.
OAEBUDT Participation and Data Sharing Agreement Development
Version 0.0 of the OA Book Usage Data Exchange and Stewardship Rulebook moved into legal review and codification via terms and conditions in standard contractual clause drafting. Yannick Legré, Co-PI on the Governance Building Blocks Mellon-funded project, is managing this process and legal team in collaboration with the other project PIs. The model language received in October will be shared with governance and pilot partners for initial review.
Technical Pilot
In July, OAEBUDT Trustees selected Think-IT as our data space technical development partner. The decision followed a review and discussion of four proposals, follow-up responses and Technical Advisory Committee feedback. The Board’s consensus aligned with that of the Technical Advisory Committee.
Technical development work now awaits funding.
Funds are sought to support:
An immediate two-month Sprint 0 to provide a foundational proof of concept data space that facilitates data access and agreements related to API-based COUNTER data via a managed identity wallet, data connector discovery service, and Tractus-x Eclipse Data Connectors ($50k USD).
An additional 11 sprints over eight months to support the development of a full data space open infrastructure inclusive of user interfaces for the Coordinating Office, data providers, and data recipients, a dynamic data connector hub, usage metadata brokerage, data exchange auditing reports powered by a transaction clearinghouse; with all functionality created for the OAEBUDT community to self-host or use as a managed service ($400k USD).
Data provider and data recipient participation, facilitation and support during technical development and pilot phase.
Once technical development is funded, the alpha cohort of the OAEBUDT data space pilot's will begin to explore the data space's capabilities and potential returns on time and resources. Organizations are still welcome to participate in alpha or beta cohorts, joining University of Michigan Publishing, Taylor & Francis, Punctum Books, LibLynx, JSTOR, Longleaf Publishing Services, EBSCO, and OAPEN. Acting as data providers and/or data recipients, these organizations will be the first to send and receive usage data via a data space environment for scholarly communications.
Sustainability Model Development
Through in-person workshops, online focus groups and web forms, from 2023 to 2024 the OAEBUDT team gathered community feedback to understand which cost recovery mechanisms book stakeholders would support for our sustainable growth and operations. This work built upon six years of research that identified stakeholders, value propositions, user requirements, potential solutions, market dynamics, and pricing considerations. Community consultations led to three cost-recovery mechanisms (grants, membership and API-based fees) being recommended by stakeholders for operational fund generation. Recognizing API fees are only possible after the technical systems launch, the OAEBUDT is currently developing membership options to complement fundraising via research and development grant proposals. To finalise membership programme details, a community consultation is being prepared on proposed organizational and supporting membership fees and benefits for an expected public consultation period from October-November. Data collected from the 2023-2024 workshops and consultations was published in Zenodo, while drafting began for a companion synthesis report.
Additionally, in August, the OAEBUDT Board of Trustees voted to launch an immediate pilot of Supporting Membership to allow interested stakeholders to financially support the OAEBUDT mission and vision while allowing the team to pilot administrative membership processes. Funds generated will be dedicated to OAEBUDT operations and infrastructure development, representing vital seed crowdfunding for technical development and staff retention as we finish our final year of current grant support. The Board authorized a specific Supporting Membership Fee per organization for the September to December 2024 Supporting Member pilot. Any organization interested in becoming a Supporting Member can read more details here and contact Ursula for further discussion if the amount or pilot timeline presents a barrier to support.
IDS Extensibility for Open Journal and Open Data Usage and Impact Metrics Exchange Research
A US National Science Foundation (NSF) funded research project was completed, with outputs available to inform future conversations related to the OAEBUDT data space’s extensibility. Building on a 2023 workshop co-hosted by Charles Watkinson and Christina Drummond in partnership with the Coalition of Networked Information (CNI), NSF funded work to understand the similarities and differences between open book, journal, and dataset usage and impact related vocabularies and supply chains. Through this support, Laura Ricci and Michael Clarke (Clarke & Esposito) followed up on their OA Book Supply Chain report by documenting the supply chains for Open Journals and Data and Jennifer Kemp (Stratos Consulting) documented usage and impact data related vocabularies across output types while generating a vocabularies crosswalk. This information will be shared with the OAEBUDT Board to inform strategic directions.
______________________________________________________________
Raising Awareness:
In this quarter, the OAEBUDT was represented at three in-person conferences (LIBER in July, OASPA and ALPSP in September) as well as two online events (IFLA in August and NISO+ Global in September) with presentations, posters and panels. Looking ahead, a Charleston Library Conference panel session has been confirmed for November. Further information can be found on our events page.