January - March 2023 OAEBUDT Update
Christina Drummond
Greetings all,
It has been a busy start to 2023 for the OAEBUDT team. It is my pleasure to share our updates and introduce our halftime Community Manager for OAEBUDT, Ursula Rabar, who will be sending these updates going forward. She is funded through the Advancing to Launch by Developing IDS Governance Building Blocks grant from The Mellon Foundation and is hosted by OPERAS-EU, the European infrastructure consortium focused on Open Scholarly Communication in the European Research Area for Social Sciences and Humanities.
We hope you will find the below information useful. Feel free to reach out to either of us with questions and comments using the contact info below.
Christina and Ursula
Christina Drummond, Executive Director | OA Book Usage Data Trust
christina.drummond at oabookusage.org
Ursula Rabar, Community Manager | OA Book Usage Data Trust
ursula.rabar at operas-eu.org
OA Book Usage Data Trust (OAEBUDT) | January to March 2023 Update
Highlights:
Two new trustees were elected to three year terms on the OAEBUDT Board of Trustees:
Jo Lambert, Head of Licensing Intelligence and Analytics - Jisc
Tasha Mellins-Cohen, Project Director - COUNTER
Wendy Queen, Director of Project MUSE, was reelected to serve a second three-year term on the Board.
We recognized the efforts of our former founding trustees and project principal investigators who rotated off the Board of Trustees: Kevin Hawkins and Cameron Neylon. We wouldn’t be where we are without the work of these individuals and are thankful for their continued engagement through Board committee work and community consultations.
As part of the CNI (Coalition for Networked Information) Pre-Recorded Project Briefing series, in 14 minutes Christina provided an overview of the effort’s history and future. You can watch it online via CNI here.
We’re listed as a data space on the International Data Spaces Association's Data Space Radar under the Cross Domain within the Case Committed maturity level and Use Case type.
Ursula presented and received feedback from the OAEBUDT ’s Board of Trustees and the Advancing to Launch Project Advisory Board on our 2023 community engagement strategies, which build upon our 2020-2022 successes.
Presentations and community consultations are occurring at a number of conferences, allowing us to engage libraries, publishers, and platform and service providers. Details on where to find staff are posted to our website.
The initial phase of data space technical development has been scoped with potential partners identified to conduct a technical gap analysis for core IDS services and IDS compliant systems integration work. Fundraising is in progress to finance this work.
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In other news:
A. 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
The OAEBDUT Board, led by its Policy and Governance Committee and supported by Christina, is developing policy statements and committee charters. Drafted content is expected to be incorporated into an OAEBUDT Policy Manual and referenced from the OA Book Usage Data Trust Rulebook, while also informing staffing requirements for data trust sustainability planning.
The Board approved charters for three OAEBUDT Board Committees:
Fiscal Sponsorship Committee Charter (Ad-hoc)
While a board development process was developed to increase diverse representation on the board, any individual interested in serving on a committee is encouraged to contact the Executive Director (Christina) or Board Chair (Sharla Lair) directly, as the Board is actively seeking additional, diverse perspectives from non-Trustees.
The Board developed 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.
An OAEBUDT Code of Conduct, Transparency Policy, and Consent Agenda policy are slated for development in Q2 of 2023.
WP2. Create an OA Book Usage Data Exchange and Stewardship Rulebook.
The project team is collaborating with a professional facilitator to design virtual consultations and an in-person working session for 22 diverse OA book stakeholders to generate a first draft of OA book usage data sharing and reuse requirements and principles. After the April 21-22 in-person working session, the draft will be circulated broadly for community feedback at conferences and virtual focus groups which will be advertised through listservs and social media for wide distribution.
B. US Meeting Exploring National Infrastructure for Public Access Usage and Impact Reporting
In February, an NSF Conference Award (NSF Award 2315721) was granted to OAEBUDT Board Treasurer, Charles Watkinson at the University of Michigan, and Christina as Co-PI, to host a US-focused stakeholder workshop on Exploring National Infrastructure for Public Access Usage and Impact Reporting with additional support from the Coalition for Networked Information. As described in the workshop summary, this event brought together thought-leaders on Sunday, April 2nd, in Denver, Colorado 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 perspectives on the state of FAIR usage and impact metrics were created and published CC-BY through this event. Conference proceedings will be developed and shared openly.
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Technical news:
The OAeBUDT has been preparing to engage service providers to provide core International Data Space (IDS) data intermediary and metadata clearing functions. Projects were scoped to:
Conduct an IDS service technical gap analysis to explore whether the IDS specifications for core services can be met by existing OA book ecosystem service providers (2023 pending funding)
Develop a technical research & development roadmap (2023 pending funding)
Pilot OA book usage data exchange through a certified data space instance, leveraging the IDSA data space sandbox and experienced IDS system integrators (2024-2025 pending funding)
Funding is needed to support this technical development, as the lack of financial resources is currently blocking technical research and development. Preliminary discussions have begun on mechanisms for community stakeholders to directly contribute to the effort.
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Raising awereness:
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 Christina speaking at NISO+ alongside an OA publisher, a research infrastructure, and an usage analytics service provider. Ursula represented the OAEBUDT at Researcher to Reader and IDSA conferences.
In Q2 of 2023, OAEBUDT representatives can be found at:
London Book Fair in April 2023 (UK)
The LPC Forum in May 2023 (Online)
The Society for Scholarly Publishing conference in May/June 2023 (US)
The Open Repositories conference in June 2023 (South Africa)
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Interesting reads:
If you are new to the OAEBUDT and would like to read the origin of our value proposition, we recommend this white paper prepared by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) as part of the the Mellon Foundation funded project, Understanding OA Ebook Usage: Toward a Common Framework. Primary authors are: Brian O’Leary (BISG) and Kevin Hawkins (University of North Texas).