January - March 2025 OAEBUDT Update

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Ursula Rabar

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Apr 24, 2025, 2:19:29 AMApr 24

to Announcements about "Developing a Data Trust for Open Access Ebook Usage"

Greetings everyone,

2025 has started on a strong note for the OAEBUDT community: we kicked off the data space technical pilot with six organizations taking part and finalized the last community consultation for the draft sustainability model. We’re excited to share updates on these activities as we look forward to transitioning from governance development and sustainability pilots to the launch of our membership program and technical MVP operations.

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) | January - March 2025 Update

Technical OAEBUDT data space infrastructure proof of concept build begins

Thanks to a grant budget reallocation approved by the Mellon Foundation, the technical development and piloting of a minimum viable data space began this quarter. Data space architecture and open-source Eclipse Data Connector experts Think-IT were selected last year by our Board through an RFP process to lead our Proof of Concept build. Development is underway in a dedicated OAEBUDT GitHub repository that is open to the public to follow.
The OAEBUDT Technical Advisory Committee is advising the build, meeting with Think-IT representatives on a monthly basis.
Michigan Publishing, LibLynx, JSTOR, Punctum Books, Knowledge Unlatched, and Paradigm Publishing Services / Ubiquity Press are working with Think-IT to pilot the proof of concept dataspace for COUNTER metric exchange and aggregation. Laura Ricci and Michael Clarke of Clarke & Esposito are interviewing these pilot partners to learn about the potential returns, value propositions, and challenges related to data space participation in scholarly communications.
Video walkthroughs of the proof of concept are expected to be shared in Q2 of 2025.

Sustainability model development and implementation

Treasurer onboarding occurred, including a walkthrough of current revenue sources and budget planning tools such as the five year projection and annual budget worksheets.
The Board established an ad-hoc Transition Committee to steward the transition from our governance development focus to the launch of our membership program and data space infrastructure.
Transition tasks and budgetary/staffing scenarios at high/medium/low staffing levels were developed in partnership with the Finance and Fundraising and Transition committees.
After 2023-2024 consultations indicated membership, grants and scalable infrastructure-usage related fees were the most trusted methods of cost-recovery for our open infrastructure, the organizational membership rates and benefits consultation closed receiving 29 responses. Collected data will be reviewed by the Membership and Sustainability Committee and Board, prior to the adoption of a rate schedule.
A summative sustainability model development report is being drafted for publication to Zenodo in Q2.

Support us campaign: Thanks to our first Supporters!

To refine membership administration processes prior to codifying them in our rulebook, our Board authorized OPERAS to launch a “Supporting Membership” pilot to provide a way for organizations to support future work directly.
- Thank you to the University of Michigan Publishing, Project MUSE, and the eBound Foundation for leading the way and contributing!
- DocuSign was launched and successfully piloted with two of these organizations to support efficient esignature routing for pilot participation agreements and invoicing.

Give: Contact me (Ursula) to become a founding Supporting Member and help us launch our infrastructure.

Extensibility research partnerships forming

The Board voted to support future research into the extensibility of the OAEBUDT data space infrastructure to other areas of sensitive data exchange among scholarly communications stakeholders. Potential use cases so far include data exchange related to: knowledge graphs, funding models, and collections development.
- The European Commission awarded the three-year GRAPHIA project, which includes a use case that explores how a data space could support knowledge graph data provision. OPERAS, OAPEN, and Taylor and Francis will be involved in this work from 2026-2027.
- Christina Drummond is actively developing research partnerships to seek 2026-2028 funding in line with shared aims. While US federal funding applications are on hold, private foundations and Horizon Europe calls are actively being considered.

Partner: Contact Christina if your organization is interested in partnering to explore how the data space can streamline other types of sensitive data exchange in scholarly communications.

Raising Awareness:

OAEBUDT staff, trustees and board committee members presented in person at IDCC (poster) and R2R (lightning talk) in February; UKSG conference (poster) end of March and at the Research Analytics Summit (panel) in April.
Looking ahead, staff will be presenting in person in May at SSP (poster) and in June at the Data for Policy conference (presentation). Online representation has also been confirmed for LPC Forum in May (presentation).
A free UKSG webinar featuring OAEBUDT will take place on 13 May.