Better Publishing Through Open Metadata: Strengthening Open Infrastructure for Open Access Books through the Thoth–OAPEN SWORD Workflow | Thoth Open Metadata

Hillen, H., Higman, R., Steiner, T., Wałek, A., Florian, W., Theodorakopoulos, V., & Varachkina, H. (2026, July 1). Better Publishing Through Open Metadata: Strengthening Open Infrastructure for Open Access Books through the Thoth–OAPEN SWORD Workflow. https://doi.org/10.70950/pbag9884

--

Open access (OA) books depend on more than open licences. They rely on the infrastructures that move publications across the scholarly communications landscape: from publisher workflows into repositories, catalogues, library systems, discovery services, and preservation platforms. When those infrastructures are open, community-governed, and mission-driven, they help reduce duplication, improve interoperability, and support a more diverse publishing ecosystem.

This is the context for the latest collaboration between Thoth Open Metadata, the OAPEN Foundation, and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB).

Together, we have developed a SWORD-based deposit workflow that enables OA book metadata and publication files managed in Thoth to be transferred into the OAPEN Library in a more structured, automated, and sustainable way. The workflow is one outcome of the COPIM (2019–2023) and Open Book Futures (2023–2026) projects, which brought together organisations including OAPEN, DOAB, Thoth, Open Book Collective, the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), and many others to strengthen the open infrastructure ecosystem supporting open access books. Both phases of this work have been generously supported by Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund / UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).