The COPIM project (Community-led Publication Infrastructure for Monographs) is building community-owned, open systems and infrastructures to enable open access book publishing to flourish. As part of this effort, COPIM is developing Thoth, a database currently in beta that assists open access book publishers in managing their metadata.

During this session, we will share more about Thoth’s journey so far, covering four initial use-cases that may be relevant for the Open Science community:

Publisher metadata management system – System to manage openly-licensed, standards-compliant bibliographic metadata for open access books.

Open Book Collective Platform (COPIM WP2) - Platform to support collective library funding for open access book publishers, infrastrucures and initiatives. Using Thoth to display information about the nature of publications across all participating publishers, infrastructures and initiatives - such as author institutions, subject areas.

Open Dissemination Service (COPIM WP5) - Dedicated Service supporting open access book publishers in the areas of dissemination and preservation. Using Thoth to disseminate metadata and files, in various formats (ONIX, CSV, MARC) to a large number of actors part of the open access book supply chain (see also the Thoth Wiki) - such as OAPEN, Project MUSE, JSTOR, Portico.

White label publisher website - Complete commercial website for use by scholarly publishers to display and retail their content. Developed and adopted by Open Book Publishers. Using Thoth by calling on its database to display rich book level metadata for a publishers’ content.

While the design of Thoth is focused on the immediate needs of publishers, the project is also keeping its eyes on the broader horizon of open & (FAIR) data. How might Thoth continue to serve stakeholders through the identified use-cases? And what other use-cases may be there?