About us

The OAPEN Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation based in the Netherlands, with its registered office at the National Library in The Hague. OAPEN is dedicated to open access, peer-reviewed books.

OAPEN operates three platforms:

OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) was developed as a 30-month targeted project co-funded by the EU in its eContentplus-program (2008-2010). The goal of the project was to achieve a sustainable publication model for academic books in humanities and social sciences and to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic research in Europe. After the close of the project, OAPEN continued its activities as a foundation.

OAPEN Foundation was established by the University of Amsterdam (UvA), the University of Leiden (UL), the University library of Utrecht University (UU), the Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW), the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) and Amsterdam University Press (AUP).

Projects

OAPEN is involved in various initiatives for open access books:

  • Open Access Books Network (OABN) - OAPEN is one of the coordinators supporting the OABN - a space for passionate conversations about open access books, creating an online community around open access books.
  • Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) - OAPEN participates in the COPIM partnership, building community-owned, open systems and infrastructures to enable open access book publishing to flourish.
  • Open Access eBook Usage (OAeBU) Data Trust pilot project - OAPEN serves on the Advisory Board for the (OAeBU) Data Trust pilot project. Participating in the development and testing of infrastructure, policy and governance models to support a diverse, global data trust for usage data on open access monographs.
  • SCELC & OAPEN Pilot Project - SCELC and OAPEN collaborate through this pilot project in an effort to amplify the usage of open access (OA) resources in SCELC member libraries.

Mission

OAPEN’s goals are:

  • to build a branded collection of open access peer-reviewed titles;
  • to increase the visibility and retrievability of high-quality publications;
  • to promote open access book publishing.

Board

The Board of Directors consists of the following members:

  • Bas Savenije (chair)
  • Kurt De Belder (secretary) – Leiden University
  • Reinier Groen (treasurer)
  • Lidia Borrell-Damián - Science Europe
  • Charles Watkinson - University of Michigan
  • Antia Wiersma – Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

Annual Reports

Introduction

In 2011 the OAPEN Foundation was founded as an open infrastructure service for open access (OA) books providing services to publishers, libraries, and research funders in the areas of hosting, deposit, quality assurance, dissemination, and digital preservation. Since then, the progress of the OAPEN Foundation has been documented in annual reports.

Archive

Older reports are available in the archive.