New Platforms for Open Access Book Distribution Presentation delivered during the workshop BEYOND APCS: ALTERNATIVE OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING BUSINESS MODELS Royal Library, The Hague, Netherlands April 5th and 6th, 2018

1. New Platforms for Open
Access Book Distribution
Julien McHardy Mattering Press
Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Punctum Books
Joe Deville Mattering Press
Janneke Adema Open Humanities Press
OpenAire Workshop 5-6 April, The Hague

2. Project Consortium
What is a book? Innovating through non-hierarchical,
non-competitive collaboration
Mattering Press
Open Book Publishers
Open Humanities Press
Mayfly Books
Meson Press
Punctum Books

3. Motivation: Scaling Small
Creating a community of presses to
• Pool resources
• Share expertise
• Multiply Karma
• Reduce reliance on intermediaries and BPC
Approach
Develop:
• Shared infrastructure
• A collective presence to funders,
authors, libraries, POD services and
readers (Ideal: An alternative OA
marketplace)

4. Process
Mapping the challenges to OA book distribution
Identifying possible platforms and solutions
Develop design specs, hire expert help, prototype platforms
Test and improve (ROA Conference)
Review and Dissemination

5. Key Challenges
• Discoverability Better meta data consistent across presses,
shared catalogue
• Library Access Better meta data, Bundle offers/Scale, Collaboration
with scholarly communication programmes,
Collective presence at library conferences.
• Direct sales Automatic upload of orders to POD, alternative
marketplace -> better metadata
• Marketing Shared catalogue, cross-press links, recommendations
and collective book bundle promotion,
shared marketplace

6. A threefold strategy
Total R&D Budget: €18,100
SP1: Shared Metadata Infrastructure and Standards
Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Punctum Books
Budget: 10,300 €
SP2: Library Integration
Joe Deville Mattering Press
Budget: 2,900 €
SP3: Consortium Conference Presence
Janneke Adema Open Humanities Press / Radical Open Access
Budget: 5,000 €

7. The Problem

8. The Solution
Metadata
Database

9. The Solution
Metadata
Database
• Single way of
recording/updating/synchronizing publication
metadata
• Harmonization of metadata across different
platforms:
• Publisher website/catalog
• Institutional repositories / University
libraries
• DOI registration agencies
• Open Access repositories
• Publishing platforms
• Metadata harvesters
• Exchange of metadata between OA publishers

10. Production Phases – WP1
Metadata Schema
Hosted on GitHub

11. Production Phases – WP1
Metadata Schema
Metadata Schema Validator
Hosted on GitHub

12. Production Phases – WP1
Metadata Schema
Metadata Schema Validator
Hosted on GitHub
Locally hosted
copy
Synchronization
Recording/Retrieving

13. Production Phases – WP1
Metadata Schema
Metadata Schema Validator
Hosted on GitHub
Locally hosted
copy
Synchronization
GUI
Recording/Retrieving

14. Production Phases – WP2
Metadata Schema
Metadata Schema Validator
Hosted on GitHub
Exporting/Synchronization

15. Subproject 2:
Achieving Better
Library Integration
The problem
• Getting Open Access
books into academic
libraries a long-standing
challenge
• Some successes
achieved by Open Access
presses, however
knowledge of how to
achieve this siloed within
particular organisations
& individuals
• Libraries prefer to order
books via standing
orders/predictable
packages
• Libraries not keen on
dealing with very small
presses

16. Towards a
solution
• Increase knowledge of library processes within consortium presses by (a)
researching state of existing knowledge within consortium members and (b)
setting up a consortium-wide advisory board featuring key supporters within
academic libraries
• Better understand possibilities for / barriers to creating a consortium-wide
standing order package for libraries
• Establishing the minimum required standards for the creation of MARC
records
• Explore possibilities for easier creation of MARC records
• Disseminate knowledge gained beyond consortium

17. Practicalities
• Employing Penny Andrews to undertake research into:
(a) existing state of knowledge amongst consortium
presses + compile into easily sharable format
(b) suitable members of library advisory board
(c) minimum standards for MARC record
(d) Different tools/solutions for creating MARC records
[Penny is a PhD student at the University of Sheffield,
researching how users perceive different kinds of
infrastructure for sharing research (e.g. Academia.edu
and ResearchGate)]
• Supported by Sherri Barnes from UC Santa Barbara
library - a long-standing collaborator with Punctum Books
& has extensive knowledge of challenges facing
integrating OA publications into library processes
• Feeding into a research grant (Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation) being worked on by Punctum Books -
includes work packages designed to help individual /
consortia of OA presses obtain institutional library
funding
Penny Andrews
Sherri Barnes

18. Subproject 3:
Consortium Conference
Presence
• Model for collaborative
conference stands
• Open source portable
pop-up stall
• Co-promotion
• Co-sales
• Promotion of OA & not-
for-profit publishing
• Events/lectures/talks
around the stand
• Ability to share and
download publications

19. Aims
• To create a portable conference pack
(in 3 versions: Print Out DiY
Information Pack, Flyers and
Promotional Materials Pack,
Publications Pack)
• To develop a simple system for taking
orders of each others’ books at
conferences
• To develop a model for setting up a
collaborative conference presence
which can be expanded beyond the
consortium, i.e. to the Radical Open
Access Collective
• To make a public and political
statement about the importance of
collaboration amongst scholar-led
OA publishers

20. Conferences
• Radical Open Access II – The Ethics of
Care (Coventry, June 26th-27th )
• EASST (Lancaster 25-28th July)
• Crossroads in Cultural Studies (Shanghai,
August 12th-16th)
• 4S (Sydney August 29th–September 1st)
• UACES conference (Academic Ass. for
Cont. Eur. Studies) (Bath 2-5th
September)
• AAA (San José, 14-18 Nov)

21. Dissemination beyond the consortium
• Presenting outputs at least three conferences (LIBER, EASST, RadicalOA)
• In the process of writing a position paper addressing key challenges of scholar-
led Open Access book publishing to be published on consortium members’
websites & distributed amongst Open Access publishing community
• Will author at least one blog post published on an external website (e.g. LSE
Impact Blog, OpenDemocracy)
• Beta versions of the platform will be circulated for comment beyond the
consortium
• Once a functioning version of the metadata platform is up and running will
create webcast aimed at introducing its functionalities to the Open Access book
publishing community
• Where possible, outputs to be shared on a copyright free (e.g. CC0) basis on
easily accessible platforms (e.g. Github)

22. In the spirit of collaboration
Thanks to OpenAire and
all participants for your
input and support