Accessibility, Archiving, and Open Metadata - A Copim Publishers’ Workshop

The Copim Open Book Futures project recently hosted an online workshop on 27 Nov 2024, looking into the interconnected worlds of metadata, archiving, and accessibility.This collaborative event brought together a diverse array of publishers including small, scholar-led, and university and library presses from the UK, Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, and the United States.Jointly organised by the Copim Open Book Futures groups working on Thoth Open Metadata, Accessibility, and Archiving/Preservation, the event was structured around three core themes, each representing a critical pillar in the OA book publishing ecosystem, and we'll be covering each of these themes in the following paragraphs. Archiving and Preservation: Safeguarding the Legacy of Open AccessParticipants engaged in a lively exchange on the multifaceted nature of archiving for open access books and connected resources.Conversation covered a wide spectrum of approaches, from print preservation to the innovative utilisation of institutional repositories and collaborative partnerships with national libraries.The complexities of ensuring the long-term provision of digital content, particularly in the face of the ever-present threat of link rot 1 , were rigorously explored.The workshop showcased the Thoth Open Archiving Network (TOAN) as a robust, community-driven solution to some of the challenges of OA book archiving.TOAN provides a streamlined and collaborative framework for publishers to archive their valuable contributions to the scholarly body of knowledge in a network of trusted repositories.Participants shared insights into their institutional approaches, highlighting the importance of factors such as different file formats, metadata standards, and the unique needs of different content types.