April - August 2025 OAEBUDT Update
Christina Drummond
Greetings everyone,
First off, I’m thrilled to share that this summer our partners made history by exchanging data via the first live dataspace for scholarly communications!
In June, JSTOR, University of Michigan Publishing (UoMP) and Punctum Books were the first to share data assets via our open-source minimum-viable dataspace
In August, Ubiquity Press and Liblynx exchanged data with UoMP, wrapping up the direct data connector pilots.
In six months, dataspace experts Think-IT leveraged existing open source code maintained by the Eclipse Foundation, to develop and document a dataspace specifically to support distributed usage data in scholarly communication’s first proof-of-concept (POC) dataspace. OPERAS piloted and streamlined the provisioning of verified credentials and execution of participant agreements, piloting the standard contractual clauses derived from our participant rulebook with guidance from project Co-PIs at OPERAS and OpenAIRE. We thank our Technical Advisory Committee and pilot partner staff for guiding the process and Mellon Foundation for the foundational financial support.
Keep reading below to find out more about the dataspace and gain updates on key staffing transitions and sustainability planning.
-Christina
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The Proof of Concept (POC) Minimum-Viable (MVP) Dataspace for OA Metrics Exchange
The scholarly communications community now has access to a stable cloud-based infrastructure built to the Dataspace Protocol specifications. Publishers, repositories, aggregators and other book discovery services can explore how to connect their APIs or locally hosted files to the dataspace to dynamically control the delivery of their data assets to trusted partners at scale. While user interfaces were not developed in the MVP, the functional dataspace provided a single interface for organizations to manage usage data provisioning or access. We have now successfully piloted:
Open source code for the cloud-native infrastructure published in Github. This code leverages the Eclipse Data Connector. This “infrastructure-as-code” POC was deployed in Kubernetes following Helm best practices, leveraging Terraform scripts via Amazon Web Services (AWS) following best practice.
A minimum viable distributed cloud-based dataspace architecture that allows pilot partners to understand how data connectors can be provisioned and deployed for trusted, secure data exchange between data providers and data recipients. Postman Collections are available to simplify the manual processes in this POC and can replaced by user interfaces in the next release.
Detailed user guides that our pilot partners successfully used to independently configure and connect to the dataspace.
Walkthrough videos to inform cloud architects, data scientists and developers and allow our community to add questions, ideas, or functionality requests directly in our open source community’s Github Discussion page. Videos showcase:
How Data Provider organizations authenticate to configure data flows for specific recipient organizations or groups: https://bit.ly/OAEBUDTPOC_DP
How Data Recipient organizations authenticate to search the catalogue of privileged data that has been shared with them, to then initiate secure data exchange: https://bit.ly/OAEBUDTPOC_DR
Sandbox accounts are now available upon request for scholarly communications stakeholders that want to explore using the dataspace. Interested parties can contact Christina for more information.
Understanding the Benefits and Cost-savings Potential of Dataspace Participation
Laura Ricci and Michael Clarke of Clarke & Esposito are completing interviews with the technical pilot partners to explore the potential returns, value propositions, and challenges related to data space participation by scholarly communications stakeholders. A report with case studies informed by the pilot is forthcoming.
Staffing Transitions
During this period, Ursula Rabar transitioned out of her role as Community Manager on the OAEBUDT research project. We are very grateful for her expert facilitation and support of our committees and community consultations since 2023, made possible through Mellon Foundation's support. We wish her continued success at OPERAS as she shifts her focus to other scholarly infrastructure research projects such as GRAPHIA. During the OAEBUDT's transition period off Mellon project funding to sustainable community support, Christina and our Trustees are the primary points of contact for questions regarding all things OAEBUDT. OPERAS will continue to provide IT and administrative support as the fiscal host to the effort; accordingly, questions about these functions can be directed to Christina or Yannick Legré.
Sustainability Planning for 2026 and Beyond
Research and development to date has been made possible through support from The Mellon Foundation, University of Michigan Publishing, Project MUSE, and the DeGruyter eBound Foundation. The OAEBUDT Board of Trustees is now working to diversify financial resources to support the dataspace infrastructure and coordinating office.
In April, the Board reviewed three budgetary scenarios for 2026-2027 development and staffing to launch and operate the OAEBUDT’s dataspace infrastructure. These included:
pausing development and sunsetting the current Board of Trustees, so another entity could pick up and lead the dataspace launch after Mellon grant conclusion, slowing the “time-to-launch” for the stable POC due to a loss of momentum and knowledge
fundraising to bridge from research project to user-supported infrastructure, at three different levels of staffing:
minimum staffing (.75 FTE) supported by contractors, resulting in a low price point and increased risk of dissatisfaction with communications, coordination, community engagement, and speed of development.
optimal staffing (3.0 FTE) plus contracted dataspace expertise, resulting in the highest cost, most capacity to scale, and additional functionality with robust community input
mid-range staffing (1.5 FTE) plus contracted dataspace expertise and funds to develop and launch the dataspace as a service.
The board elected to pursue Scenario B3. Consultants from Invest in Open Infrastructure informed the development of a capital campaign to raise 1.74 Million Euro of bridge funding from scholarly communications stakeholders to support the next phase of technical development, a year of operations and a year of operational reserve (i.e. Scenario B3). The board is now in the initial stages of a “Founders Campaign” to secure funds to launch this dataspace as community infrastructure that extensively supports cross-organizational data sharing in scholarly communications beyond OA book usage. Organizations interested in participating in the campaign should directly contact one of our Trustees.
Raising Awareness
Between April and August, OAEBUDT staff and partners presented this research and development at the Research Analytics Summit, SSP, the Data for Policy conference, LPC Forum, AUPresses, and the COUNTER Metrics conference.The OAEBUDT was also featured in a very well-attended UKSG webinar on May 13th.
In September, Christina will present on the rulebook and dataspace approach to trusted data sharing on a panel organized by OPERAS for the Science Summit at the United Nations General Assembly.
In October and November, Christina will be presenting in-person at: SSP New Directions, the Research Data Alliance Plenary, and the Charleston Library Conference.
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