C&E Selected to Work on Mellon-funded Initiative Mapping the Supply Chain for OA Books
May 20, 2020
Clarke & Esposito is delighted to have been selected to work with the Book Industry Study Group, Curtin University, Educopia Institute, University of Michigan, University of North Texas, and others on mapping the supply chain for OA books. This effort is in support of the broader initiative, Developing a Pilot Data Trust for Open Access Ebook Usage, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The aim of the overarching project, which has brought together an impressive group of collaborators, is to create and manage an international data trust for OA electronic books (ebooks). The trust will store information about OA books, which will be made available to authorized participants. Storage and reporting on usage data related to ebooks range widely, making management challenging. The impetus for the data trust is to facilitate data sharing among different stakeholders in the publication of OA ebooks (who might have divergent and potentially conflicting interests) by creating a cooperative framework to allow aggregation, normalization/standardization, and accessibility of data about OA ebooks. These stakeholders include commercial publishers, university press publishers, scholarly society publishers, library publishers, ebook hosting platforms, aggregators, standards bodies, and other participants in the scholarly publishing system that support ebooks.
A white paper laying the groundwork for this initiative (“Understanding OA Ebook Usage: Toward a Common Framework“) was prepared by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and authored by Brian O’Leary (BISG) and Kevin Hawkins (University of North Texas).