SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
EXPLORE +
  • About infoDOCKET
  • Academic Libraries on LJ
  • Research on LJ
  • News on LJ
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Libraries
    • Academic Libraries
    • Government Libraries
    • National Libraries
    • Public Libraries
  • Companies (Publishers/Vendors)
    • EBSCO
    • Elsevier
    • Ex Libris
    • Frontiers
    • Gale
    • PLOS
    • Scholastic
  • New Resources
    • Dashboards
    • Data Files
    • Digital Collections
    • Digital Preservation
    • Interactive Tools
    • Maps
    • Other
    • Podcasts
    • Productivity
  • New Research
    • Conference Presentations
    • Journal Articles
    • Lecture
    • New Issue
    • Reports
  • Topics
    • Archives & Special Collections
    • Associations & Organizations
    • Awards
    • Funding
    • Interviews
    • Jobs
    • Management & Leadership
    • News
    • Patrons & Users
    • Preservation
    • Profiles
    • Publishing
    • Roundup
    • Scholarly Communications
      • Open Access

June 30, 2022 by Gary Price

Educopia Partnering with Curtin University and OAPEN to Create a Community Governed OA Book Analytics Service for Publishers

June 30, 2022 by Gary Price

From an Educopia Announcement:

With more than AUD $1M in support from the Mellon Foundation, we at Educopia are excited to be working with collaborative partners at Curtin University  and OAPEN on the Book Analytics Dashboard Project (2022-2025) to support the creation of a community-governed OA book analytics service for publishers.  This service is needed to safeguard and support diversity in the voices, perspectives, geographies, topics and languages made visible through OA books. In addition to scaling workflows, infrastructure and customer support, this Demonstration Project is developing a long-term plan for housing, maintenance and funding of the analytics service as a sustainable community infrastructure.

Designed to inform and empower small-to-medium book publishers worldwide, the Book Analytics Dashboard Project will serve the diverse array of presses that serve scholarly communication and academic authors and audiences. The project is being led by Professor Lucy Montgomery and Professor Cameron Neylon from the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative within Curtin University’s Centre for Culture and Technology; Niels Stern and Ronald Snijder of OAPEN; and Dr. Katherine Skinner of Educopia. The Book Analytics Dashboard project builds on an earlier Mellon-funded pilot initiative: Developing a Pilot Data Trust for OA eBook Usage (2020–2022).

The project seeks to address a growing analytics capability gap that places the diversity of the scholarly book publishing system at risk. Digital usage of open-access books is recorded in radically different ways by each of the  numerous platforms publishers depend upon, making the tasks of gathering and interpreting the data time-consuming and technically complex.

“For small and medium publishers to effectively share underrepresented and marginalized voices, they need access to the latest technology that is available to the bigger competitors,” Project PI, Professor Lucy Montgomery said.

“We cannot afford to let consolidation and power differentials yield a publishing environment where giant conglomerates have great business intelligence and visibility while smaller, mission driven and community-based publishers struggle to gather, clean, and use data to inform strategy,” said Katherine Skinner of Educopia. “Building strong, community-owned book analysis infrastructure and making it available to all publishers is a way to counter the domination of large commercial, multinational players and create a much more diverse and fair publishing environment.”

Lead data scientist Dr Kathryn Napier, from the Curtin Institute for Computation, said the project had identified a compelling demand for shared services that would be useful to publishers across the globe. “While the most immediate calls for support are in Europe and North America, and predominantly English-language publishers, we are focused on ensuring this digital infrastructure project will address broader locations and users to prevent any further inequities in scholarship,” Dr Napier said.

“The analytics gap is not merely a technical gap, but also one of capacities and skills to interrogate information, including its completeness and quality, in making strategic decisions. We also developed the initial technical infrastructure and workflows needed to underpin these services with the ultimate aim of giving small and medium publishers the same level of digital competency.”

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation was established in 1969 to support exemplary and inspiring institutions of higher education and culture to build just communities where ideas and imagination can thrive.

For more information about the project please:

  • visit our website and our Zenodo repository
  • follow us on Twitter
  • join our mailing list
  • offer your comments and input on our draft technical roadmap

For more information about the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, visit here.

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Dashboards, Data Files, Funding, News, Open Access, Patrons and Users, Publishing

SHARE:

About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Job Zone

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Infodocket Posts

Collections: JSTOR is Introducing a New Archive Fee Model Option

From a Letter by Ithaka President Kevin Guthrie: I recently shared the 2023 priorities ITHAKA has set to help provide the infrastructure the academic community needs to support research, teaching, and learning ...

Funding: HathiTrust Receives 5-Year, $1 Million Grant From Mellon Foundation

Here’s the Full Text of HathiTrust Announcement: HathiTrust, a member-based organization hosted by the University of Michigan, has received a 5-year, $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to fund ...

Library as Publisher: "UMass Amherst Libraries Announce Publication of Open-Access Peregrine Falcon Curriculum

From UMass Amherst Libraries (Full Text): The University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries are pleased to announce the publication of The UMass Amherst Libraries Falcon Curriculum: An Open Source, Common Core PreK-12 ...

Report From Annenberg/UPenn: "Americans Don’t Understand What Companies Can Do With Their Personal Data — and That’s a...

From the Annenberg School of Communications/U. of Pennsylvania: In a new report, “Americans Can’t Consent to Companies’ Use of Their Data,” researchers asked a nationally representative group of more than ...

Fast Company: "Study: Over 50% of Academics Admit to Pirating Research Papers"

From Fast Company: More than 50% of academics have used piracy websites like Sci-Hub in order to bypass paywalls for research they want to access, according to a recent study published in ...

AI Models Spit Out Photos of Real People and Copyrighted Images; New Web Archives from Columbia University Libraries...

AI Models Spit Out Photos of Real People and Copyrighted Images (via MIT Technology Review) California: Orange Unified School District Reinstates Digital Library After Parent Concerns (via Voice of OC) ...

Journal Article: "Libraries Advancing Health Equity: A Literature Review"

The article linked below (full-text) was recently published Reference Services Review. Title Libraries Advancing Health Equity: A Literature Review Authors Amanda J. Wilson National Library of Medicine Catherine Staley National ...

Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board: "As Libraries Turn the Page on Bookmobiles, Something is Lost"

From the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board: Anyone who has spent time on a bookmobile has learned enough to know nothing withstands the change of time. Still, we lament the slow ...

LC's African and Middle Eastern Division Announces Release of the Africana Historic Postcard Collection

From The Library of Congress (via a 4 Corners of the World Blog Post by Anchi Hoh): The African and Middle Eastern Division is delighted to announce the rerelease of the ...

New From IFLA: "Marrakesh Monitoring Report - February 2023 Update"

From the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA): The chart [monitoring report]…is an updated version of previous monitoring reports. Where a country has been updated or added since ...

ROUNDUP: Research4Life Reaches 200,000 Resources; Majority of Research Papers Published by Cambridge University Press Now Open Access; &...

Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Seeks to Hire Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Developing a Globally Fair Pricing Model for Open Access Academic Publishing (via cOAlition S) Majority of ...

NY Times: "Turning Nairobi’s Public Libraries Into 'Palaces for the People'"

From The NY Times: In 1931, the first library in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, opened its doors — to white patrons only. Nearly a century later, Kenyans dressed in the slinky ...

ADVERTISEMENT

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

Tweets by infoDOCKET

ADVERTISEMENT

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • Programs+
  • Design
  • Leadership
  • People
  • COVID-19
  • Advocacy
  • Opinion
  • INFOdocket
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Booklists
  • Prepub Alert
  • Book Pulse
  • Media
  • Readers' Advisory
  • Self-Published Books
  • Review Submissions
  • Review for LJ

Awards

  • Library of the Year
  • Librarian of the Year
  • Movers & Shakers 2022
  • Paralibrarian of the Year
  • Best Small Library
  • Marketer of the Year
  • All Awards Guidelines
  • Community Impact Prize

Resources

  • LJ Index/Star Libraries
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies

Events & PD

  • Online Courses
  • In-Person Events
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Submit Features/News
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Careers at MSI


© 2023 Library Journal. All rights reserved.


© 2022 Library Journal. All rights reserved.