Advancing to Launch by Developing IDS Governance Building Blocks

July 2022-June 2026

Sponsored by the Mellon Foundation

This project aims to formalize the scholarly communication data space infrastructure for the aggregation of OA book usage data from across platforms and services. Project outputs will pave the way for: 1) the transparent, trusted processing of open and privileged usage data, 2) streamlined usage data aggregation, and 3) ethical usage data benchmarking for scholarly communications. Specifically, this project will support teams to:

  1. develop the Data Trust effort’s community-governance to coordinate global infrastructure development and stakeholder engagement,

  2. facilitate community workshops and consultations to create a participant “rule book” that retains trust across infrastructure stakeholders,

  3. quantify dataspace participation benefits, and

  4. develop a diversified sustainability model with community input into trusted revenue generation resources and a scalable budgetary model.

Due to conservative event expenditures and administrative staffing changes, the PIs secured Mellon Foundation approval extend the project timeline until June 2026 and add two work packages to the project:

5. conduct an IDS Technical Gap Analysis to assess existing scholarly communications focused platforms and services capable of providing core functional IDS network services, and

6. develop a minimum viable data space that applies the Dataspace Protocol for data governance, and pilot it with live data connections between public and commercial OA book usage data providers and recipients.

View the project’s prospectus, announcements, and outputs in Zenodo and Github.

Mid 2025, the minimum viable dataspace for scholarly communications successfully supported data exchange among technical pilot partners. The resulting, state-of-the-art open source dataspace leveraged open source code, standards, and protocols managed by the Eclipse Foundation and the International Data Spaces Association. Consultants are exploring how an IDS can create internal value, economies of scale, and trust for entities seeking to better manage their cross-organizational data exchange.

Scholarly communications stakeholders can contact the team to explore the scholarly communications dataspace and evaluate how connecting data flows to this infrastructure can improve their organization’s data governance, provide transparency, and generate cost savings.

Principal Investigators

  • Christina Drummond, University of North Texas

  • Prodromos Tsiavos (2023-Current); Paolo Manghi, OpenAIRE (2022)

  • Yannick Legré, OPERAS

Project Staff

  • Ursula Rabar, OPERAS (thru August 2025)

Project Advisory Board Members

  • Brian O’Leary, Book Industry Study Group (BISG)

  • Charles Watkinson, University of Michigan Press

  • Jo Lambert, JISC Usage Statistics Portal and Institutional Repository Usage Statistics (IRUS-UK) (thru January 2025)

  • Jon Elwell, EBSCO

  • Maria Zucker, De Gruyter (thru August 2023)

  • Niels Stern, OAPEN and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)

  • Peter Potter, TOME Project then De Gruyter (after August 2023)

  • Tasha Mellins-Cohen, Project COUNTER (thru April 2024)

  • Vivian Berghahn, Berghahn Books

Consulting Team Contributors

Technical Pilot Partners

  • Michigan Publishing

  • Punctum Books

  • JSTOR

  • LibLynx

  • Knowledge Unlatched and Annual Reviews

  • Ubiquity Press and the De Gruyter eBound Foundation

While the technical pilot focused on exchanging distributed scholarly publication usage data, sustainability planning led the OAEBUDT Board of Trustees to approve extending the scope of this infrastructure to benefit other areas of scholarly communications operations. Rebranding is in progress as Trustees work with OPERAS to secure a baseline of funding for 2026 and beyond. Organizations interested in supporting this transition can contact one of our Trustees or Executive Director.

Research partnerships are already exploring how the dataspace and trust network emerging from this project can help organizations manage the data they make available for AI agents, knowledge graphs, analytics providers, and other services. Stakeholder networks are welcome to contact us to discuss how the dataspace can streamline their research and development so they can innovate more efficiently at scale.