About our Focus

About our Value for Book Stakeholders

Why focus on exchanging OA Book Usage Data? 

While many hundreds of publisher platforms deliver audited, trusted usage metrics through COUNTER-compliant reports, commercial organizations in particular are often unable to provide their raw usage data to competitors due to dynamics that cannot be resolved by trust alone. In this environment, multiple challenges exist for those who share generated usage data with others (data creators), and for those who rely on such data to provide reporting or analytics (data users). As described in this report, libraries, publishers, and their platforms and services have a wide variety of ways they wish to leverage OA book usage reporting statistics derived from web analytics, but across these organizations, staff carry the burden of managing and curating usage data across COUNTER-compliant and non-compliant reports, APIs, dashboards, and spreadsheets. By streamlining this process, the Data Trust effort hopes to save time and staff resources on data normalization, curation, and management for institutions that today individually manage, compile, and link usage-data metrics across sources. 

While many types of usage and impact related data support scholarly communications, research policy, and infrastructure development, the OAEBUDT effort is intentionally “scaling-small” to learn about data space applicability and benefits for the global research ecosystem. Through 2024, pilot cohorts will explore the value generated by IDS participation to inform how the OAEBUDT-IDS could be extended to support scholarly communications usage and impact data exchange more broadly. Funders interested in expediting or expanding such IDS research should contact our Executive Director.

How do you relate to COUNTER? 

The COUNTER standard provides a common approach to “counting”, normalizing, and aggregating usage data across web platforms and services. It is one of many standards that support platform and data interoperability. Based on stakeholder input, the narrow OAEBUDT-IDS pilot focuses on the multi-platform exchange of COUNTER-compliant usage statistics (views and downloads) associated with chapter and book titles. However, as a neutral data intermediary, the Data Trust could support additional, future standards and in line with the OAEBUDT-IDS core principle of extensibility, the exchange of other scholarship impact data that have standards of their own. 

What is the value of an OA Book Usage focused International Data Space?

The OAEBUDT effort is creating an international data exchange ecosystem to unlock multi-party usage data sharing across public, nonprofit and commercial organizations while minimizing time and resources spent preparing holistic impact data for analytics. While the term “usage data” is often used to support the reporting of page visits and file downloads, this effort works towards a near future where linked usage data analytics regularly inform book publishing and scholarly communications operations in a reliable, timely manner. 

How does your work relate to the OA Switchboard? 

While the OA Switchboard exchanges pricing and financial data, the OAEBUDT effort is focused solely on usage and impact related metrics exchange. Technical architectures also differ, as the OAEBUDT is expressly implementing an extensible International Data Space (IDS) model that meets the requirements of being certifiable in Europe as a neutral data intermediary service for scholarly communications. 

Why do we need to exchange usage data in a controlled way? Why can’t usage data about OA books be made fully open? 

In its raw, unprocessed form, web analytics include IP addresses which could be regulated as personal information depending on national or state policies. Other digital book “usage” data can reveal a reader’s environment, engagement, or behavior. As is described in the Data Trust’s Rulebook, care must be taken to ensure data is used ethically and in compliance with applicable laws and existing agreements to protect reader privacy or other unintended harms in the age of big data and AI. Accordingly, the OAEBUDT-IDS aims to support automated, controlled usage data exchange that supports a variety of data licensing, sharing, and use agreements between parties as is negotiated outside of the Data Trust. Controlled data exchanges in sectors like finance and healthcare show that controlled sensitive data exchange among public and private organizations can occur and lead to positive societal impacts by unlocking innovation and real-time decision-making. 

About our Community

How do I join the Data Trust community as an organization?

Our sustainability model is under development in 2024 through community consultations and informed by our Membership and Sustainability Committee. Benefits and details of membership will be announced in 2024. If your organization seeks more information about becoming a member of the OAEBUDT, let us know. To support trust through accountability, organizational membership will be required for organizations to exchange data via the IDS coordinated by the OAEBUDT. 

How can I support the Data Trust effort as an individual?

Individuals volunteer their time for our effort as Trustees, committee members, and participants in our community consultations. They help raise awareness of our work by following and sharing communications posted on our announcement list and social media and by sharing information about our work within their own organizations. 

Individuals who want to be involved can: 

• Subscribe to receive alerts and regular updates via the public OAEBUDT announcement list 

• Participate in community consultations advertised through the OAEBUDT announcement list and social media 

• Discuss opportunities with an OAEBUDT representative virtually or at an upcoming event 

• Nominate themself to volunteer on our community governance through our board committees or Board of Trustees. Note: nominations are assessed annually, usually in the third and fourth quarter of the year. 

About our Governance

Is the OA Book Usage Data Trust community governed?

Guided by the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI), our project stakeholders developed initial guiding principles and governance documentation for an elected inaugural Board of Trustees in 2021 to guide development through the research, pilot, launch, and ongoing operational periods of the Data Trust’s IDS. 

Does the Data Trust abide by the Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI)?

POSI alignment and adoption at time of launch has been a consistent goal of Data Trust project partners and leadership through-out research and development. Staff conducted an internal POSI assessment in 2023 but needed additional information that would be provided by the IDS technical pilots in 2024. The team aims to publish regular POSI assessments starting in 2025 post-launch, as a part of ongoing operations. 

Is the Data Trust a not-for-profit? 

As a neutral data intermediary serving the global research ecosystem, the OAEBUDT is developing to comply both with POSI and the EU Data Governance Act (DGA). In planning for a 2025 launch, the OAEBUDT Board of Trustees executed a Memorandum of Understanding with the international not-for-profit research infrastructure association OPERAS-AISBL (OPERAS) so that the OAEBUDT-IDS Coordinating Office staff, contractual agreements, and technical infrastructure would be managed through OPERAS. OPERAS itself is community governed as described in its governance framework. 

About our Technologies

What is an International Data Space? Is it a standard? 

The International Data Spaces Association (IDSA) facilitates the alignment and standardization of technical and policy related IDS protocols and standards through ISO, IEEE, W3C, the European Commission, CEN/CENELEC and others. As a member of the IDSA, we leverage these broader efforts and benefit from resource sharing across data space efforts as we adapt the IDS model for scholarly communications usage and impact data. For those new to the concept of data spaces, we recommend reading the Design Principles for Data Spaces developed by the Open DEI Task Force, which directly informed the standardization of data space elements in German DIN SPEC 27070 and continues to be clarified through the emerging Dataspace Protocol.

What is in scope for the OA Book Usage Data Trust Minimum Viable Product (MVP) pilot?

Through 2025, we are developing and piloting a minimum viable data space that is compliant with IDS standards and protocols to exchange COUNTER compliant usage data related to scholarly book titles and chapters. Research on the value generated through IDS participation will inform future roadmaps and IDS extensibility to other usage and impact metrics exchange. 

Is the International Data Space technology open source? 

An established open source technical stack and development community advancing the International Data Space Reference Architecture Model (IDS-RAM) is one of the reasons the OAEBUDT effort decided to adapt this developing European standard for scholarly communications instead of developing its own technological solution.  As the technical team within the OAEBUDT Coordinating Office develops, it aims to become active contributors to this global, industry-agnostic, interoperable framework. 

How can my organization pilot the OA Book Usage Data Trust data space as a usage data provider or usage data recipient? 

Organizations interested in participating in the OAEBUDT International Data Space pilot can learn more through this fact sheet.

About our Transparency

Will usage data in the OA Book Usage Data Trust be fully open?

That is a decision left to each Data Provider making usage data available through the OAEBUDT IDS. To support global diversity, the OAEBUDT IDS will facilitate data exchange between commercial, nonprofit, and public organizations as a neutral intermediary. It will do so through policies, processes, and guidelines that are open and transparent as possible, while the data transited will be as controlled as necessary to support trust and ensure that participation and/or data use does not harm data creators or linked data subjects including readers, scholars, institutions, and libraries. The algorithms, processes and source codes used in the IDS to support data exchange will be as open as legally possible to adhere to the OAEBUDT core principles and POSI. 

About our Sustainability

Will it be free to participate in the OA Book Usage Data Trust?

In line with the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure, the OAEBUDT effort aims to be a self-sustaining global infrastructure supported via a diverse set of cost-recovery mechanisms and an operational reserve. From 2023 to 2024, in-person and virtual workshops will solicit scholarly communications stakeholder input on revenue generation options for the neutral IDS data intermediation service. In line with the key principles of the OAEBUDT, tiered pricing and potential subsidy programs are expected to ensure that diverse organizational participation is possible.