April - September 2023 OAEBUDT Update
Ursula Rabar
Greetings all,
In June 2023, the OAEBUDT team closed out the first of three years for the Advancing to Launch – Governance Building Blocks grant from the Mellon Foundation. Additionally, staff hosted two key workshops in April and numerous Board of Trustees activities to develop community governance mechanisms, all while engaging stakeholders at various conferences.
It’s my pleasure to share more details on the above in our Q2/Q3 update below. Feel free to reach out to either me or Christina with questions and comments using the contact info below.
Ursula
Ursula Rabar, Community Manager | OA Book Usage Data Trust
ursula.rabar at operas-eu.org
Christina Drummond, Executive Director | OA Book Usage Data Trust
christina.drummond at oabookusage.org
OA Book Usage Data Trust (OAEBUDT) | April to September 2023 Update
Highlights:
This term, OAEBUDT staff hosted two high-level stakeholder events after months of planning:
21-22 April 2023 Brussels Rulebook Workshop: this in-person event brought together 22 diverse OA book stakeholders to generate a first draft of high-level OA book usage data sharing and reuse requirements and principles. Outputs include:
The workshop proceedings, participant packet, and pre-event survey report,
A first draft rulebook crosswalk document that maps workshop outputs to rulebook sections defined by the IDSA models for data space rulebooks.
2 April 2023 Denver Exploring National Infrastructure for Public Access Usage and Impact Reporting Workshop: supported through an NSF Conference Award granted to OAEBUDT Board Treasurer, Charles Watkinson at the University of Michigan (PI) and Christina Drummond (Co-PI), a US-focused stakeholder workshop was hosted in conjunction with the Coalition for Networked Information’s Spring Member Meeting. As described in the workshop summary, this event brought together thought-leaders to: a) identify challenges to cross-platform public and open impact analytics at scale, b) explore open infrastructure opportunities to improve the FAIRness of usage data, and c) identify what’s needed to scaffold America’s national infrastructure for scholarly output impact reporting in light of the Nelson memo and the European Open Science Cloud Core and Interoperability Framework. Multiple short video presentations on the current state of usage and impact metrics were recorded and published CC-BY through this event along with the proceedings and agenda.
After the Brussels Rulebook Workshop, a Rulebook Task Team formed of stakeholders from the publishing, library, service providers and infrastructure communities. Through October, the task team is drafting rulebook language for community consultation. Ursula Rabar and Christina Drummond are co-facilitating Rulebook Task Team efforts. Task Team participants include: James Watson of Taylor and Francis, John Lenahan of JSTOR, Jon Elwell of EBSCO, Niels Stern of OAPEN/DOAB, and Pierre Mounier of OpenEditions.
As sections of the Rulebook are ready, community feedback will be sought via webform. The first set of draft data provider principles are now open for public comment. Language related to OA Book Usage Data recipients, data quality, data sensitivity and data trust participant accountability will be shared over the remainder of 2023. Individuals wishing to be notified of forthcoming community consultations are welcome to subscribe for notifications.
Both the data and a summary report of community feedback gathered from January to July 2023 has been published on Zenodo.
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In other news:
The 2022-2025 Advancing to Launch project, funded by the Mellon Foundation to support the creation of “governance building blocks” for the OAEBUDT data space, is actively advancing two work packages. Updates on each follow:
WP1. Establish and Develop Formal Governance Mechanisms, Operational Policies, and Procedures
Resources were developed by the OAEBUDT Board of Trustees in partnership with the Executive Director, and through the Board Policy and Governance Committee:
Board of Trustee Policy Statements, including:
a Disclosure and Conflict of Interest Policy to reduce the potential for conflict and/or duality of interests. In 2023, all staff and trustees disclosed relationships according to the policy in good faith as it awaits legal review.
Roles and responsibilities documentation, including:
Charters for two forthcoming OAEBUDT Board Committees, which will be forming in Q4 2023:
Note: these committees are forming to complement previously chartered committees for: Finance and Fundraising, Board Policy and Governance, and Fiscal Sponsorship. Individuals interested in serving on any of these board committees are encouraged to submit their information for board consideration or contact the Executive Director (Christina) or Board Chair (Sharla Lair) directly for more information.
Resources under development through Q3 include policies on Voting Procedures, Transparency, Environmental Impact, Code of Conduct, and Board Policy documentation and approval.
WP2. Create an OA Book Usage Data Exchange and Stewardship Rulebook.
As mentioned in the highlights, in April the Rulebook workshop took place in Brussels, to generate a first draft of OAEBU data sharing and reuse requirements and principles. After documenting the workshop outputs and mapping them to the Rulebook models published by the International Data Spaces Association, staff launched a Rulebook Task Team to further progress the development of the OAEBU data sharing and reuse requirements and principles by the end of September 2023. Mentimeter was used at conference presentations and poster sessions to solicit community feedback on the Rulebook Workshop outputs. Feedback data was analyzed and published alongside analysis.
Plans were made for future online consultations via webforms, starting with Data Providers. If you are interested in being doirectly contacted with community consultation announcements, please contact Ursula Rabar (ursula...@operas-eu.org). Additionally, online consultations will be advertised at Q3 conferences, virtual focus groups scheduled for 15 November, listservs and social media. Focus group announcements are planned for late September.
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Technical news:
To advance workshop recommendations related to the extensibility of the OAEBUDT data model through NSF support, Drummond will collaborate with members of Clarke and Esposito and Stratos Consulting. Through 2024 they aim to understand the usage data supply chain for other scholarly outputs and document shared vocabularies for publicly accessible scholarship impact metrics.
While the OAEBDUT is considering various funding options to support the technical development, preliminary discussions have begun on mechanisms for community stakeholders to directly contribute to the effort:
The OAEBUDT technical pilot planning is underway for data exchange through a certified data space instance, leveraging the International Data Space Association (IDSA) data space sandbox and experienced IDS system integrators (2024-2025 pending funding). So far eight institutions have committed to participating in the technical IDS pilot.
Providers for data space ‘Software as a Service’ and IDS systems integrations have been identified to allow the technical pilot to rapidly configure an IDS to reflect the principles within the OAEBUDT rulebook, including trust and data quality indicators, and data licensing and reuse limitations.
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Raising awareness:
As displayed on the OAEBUDT website, staff continue to present at library, publisher, OA and open infrastructure conferences to raise awareness of this effort and solicit feedback. Examples include:
Library Publishing Forum, May 2023 - active session ‘Book usage metric sharing and use guardrails’ led by Community Manager Ursula Rabar
SSP, May/June 2023 - Executive Director Christina Drummond joined Jill Emery - Portland State University; Tim Lloyd - LibLynx and Tricia Jo Miller - Annual Reviews at the panel discussion ‘Unpacking OA Usage Reporting - What Do Stakeholders Want?’ while Community Manager Ursula Rabar presented a poster entitled ‘Book Usage Data Trust for Scholarly Publishing’
OR2023, June 2023 - Executive Director Christina Drummond joined Andrew Joseph - Wits Univ. Press / Publishers Assoc. of South Africa; Jo Havemann - AfricArxiv and Liz Krznarich - DataCite / ROR at the panel discussion ‘Supporting Trusted OA Usage Data Reporting and Analytics through Shared Infrastructure’. She also presented a poster entitled ‘Supporting equity, economies of scale, and interoperability by applying the International Data Space model to open science usage and impact reporting’.
AUPresses meeting, June 2023 - Community Manager Ursula Rabar joined ten other speakers in the panel ‘Opportunities and Challenges for Transitioning Books to Open Access’.
LibPMC, July 2023 - Community Manager Ursula Rabar joined Charles Watkinson - Michigan University Press, Jon Elwell - EBSCO and Tasha Mellins-Cohen - COUNTER at the panel discussion / active session ‘Book usage metric sharing and use guardrails’.
LIBER, July 2023 - Community Manager Ursula Rabar attended the event to raise awareness amongst the library community.
So far, OAEBUDT representatives are confirmed to be present at in Q3 and Q4 2023:
PUBMET (September, in-person, poster presentation)
OAI2023 (September, online, poster presentation)
OASPA (September, online, poster presentation)
- Make Data Count Summit (September, in-person, raising awareness)
Charleston Library Conference (November, in-person, workshop and panel discussion)
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Interesting reads:
Ever want to tell someone about the work we’re doing, but you don’t have all of the references handy for International Data Spaces, the OA Book Usage Supply Chain Report, or the OAEBUDT value proposition? The preprint discussion paper shared with rulebook workshop participants can be accessed in Zenodo while we are submitting it for peer-reviewed publication.