Services

OAPEN works with publishers to build a quality controlled collection of open access books and provides services for publishers, libraries, and research funders in the areas of dissemination, quality assurance, and digital preservation.

OAPEN operates three platforms, the OAPEN Library, the OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit and - in partnership with OpenEdition - the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB).

The OAPEN Library is set up to host and disseminate OA books. Usage of the collection is reported following COUNTER-conformant usage statistics.

Deposit Service

We support OA mandates from funders and enable researchers and publishers to deposit publications that are covered by mandates.

The OAPEN Deposit Service supports open access policies of research funders and practitioners (research institutions, universities and their libraries). The Deposit Service provides an institutional uploading service for researchers and publishers and is adapted to the specific demands for academic books, making use of the existing metadata standards, classification schemes, and distribution channels for academic books.

Depending on the needs of institutions, the Deposit Service can consist of the following elements:

  • providing guidance and support to researchers and to publishers to comply with OA guidelines and requirements

  • aggregation and deposit of OA monographs and monograph chapters in the OAPEN Library

  • quality assurance of publications

  • hosting and full text retrieval

  • dissemination and digital preservation

  • usage reporting, grant reporting and compliance monitoring

Dissemination

We provide freely available metadata feeds in various formats and work with intermediaries to optimise dissemination of the collection.

  • OAPEN provides daily metadata feeds in various formats (ONIX 3.0, MARCXML, CSV) for libraries and their service providers.
  • OAPEN works with the main library suppliers, such as ProQuest (Serial Solutions), ExLibris (Primo Central) and EBSCO Discovery Service. The publications are integrated in WorldCat (OCLC) and BASE; OAPEN acts as aggregator for Europeana.
  • Libraries and aggregators can also harvest the metadata using the OAI harvesting protocol.
  • OAPEN.org is optimised for search engines (using the site map) and is indexed by Google Scholar.

How our metadata is used

Digital preservation

We work with partners to provide a stable repository infrastructure and digital preservation service.

  • The OAPEN Library is built on the DSpace infrastructure, hosted by Atmire. Using open source software helps to ensure a stable environment for the OAPEN collection.
  • OAPEN collaborates with Portico for digital preservation.

Discovery

We improve discovery in collaboration with DOAB.

In addition to the OAPEN Library, OAPEN also manages a dedicated discovery service for open access books in partnership with OpenEdition: the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB). DOAB contains the metadata of open access books, uploaded by publishers. Books in the OAPEN Library are automatically listed in DOAB, provided they have an open content licence (such as a CC licence).

Reporting

We provide regular usage reports based on the COUNTER standard.

OAPEN provides regular reports about publications, including COUNTER-conformant usage statistics (in collaboration with IRUS-UK).