Open Syllabus

OAR on January 4, 2022

Open Syllabus is a non-profit research organization that collects and analyzes millions of syllabi to support novel teaching and learning applications.  Open Syllabus helps instructors develop classes, libraries manage collections, and presses develop books.  It supports students and lifelong learners in their exploration of topics and fields.  It creates incentives for faculty to improve teaching materials and to use open licenses.  It supports work on aligning higher education with job market needs and on making student mobility easier.  It also challenges faculty and universities to work together to steward this important data resource.

Open Syllabus currently has a corpus of nine million English-language syllabi from 140 countries.  It uses machine learning and other techniques to extract citations, dates, fields, and other metadata from these documents.  The resulting data is made freely available via the Syllabus Explorer and for academic research. 

https://blog.opensyllabus.org

KOALA project

OAR on September 7, 2021

In the KOALA project, consortial solutions for financing open access are being established. Collaborative funding of open access journals and book series by academic libraries is an alternative to the dominant APC model (article processing charges), where articles are paid for individually by authors or their institutions. During the project period, the TIB will work with the Communication, Information, Media Centre (KIM) of the University of Konstanz to establish at least one corresponding consortium as a funding partner for open access periodicals. Within this framework, further analyses will be carried out and conversions of periodicals to open access will be accompanied. In addition, a central helpdesk for editors who need help with the transition to open access or with finding sustainable funding will be created. The infrastructure created by KOALA enables fair and sustainable financing of quality-assured open access publications. It contributes to removing financial hurdles for authors and thus facilitates participation in open access publications.

https://projects.tib.eu/koala/en/

Thoth

OAR on January 16, 2021

Open bibliographic metadata management and dissemination system.

Thoth (/θoʊθ, toʊt/, Greek Θώθ < Coptic Ⲑⲱⲟⲩⲧ < Egyptian ḏḥwtj) is an Open Dissemination System for Open Access books. Written purely in rust, it consists of:

  • A GraphQL API, implementing a data model specifically designed for OA books
  • An actions API to export metadata in formats like ONIX, MARC, etc.
  • A WebAssembly GUI to manage metadata records.

https://thoth.pub/

Introducing Pressbooks Directory

OAR on December 3, 2020

Enabling the 5Rs with a powerful tool for searching and sharing books

When Pressbooks educational product manager Steel Wagstaff heard from a long time client, “I wish there was a single place where all Pressbooks content could be found,” a proverbial apple hit him on the head. It would be really nice to have a directory of all public books created by the generous, smart, and resourceful faculty and librarians who use Pressbooks. The community of Pressbooks users is a powerful force that can solve many of the challenges facing higher education. What if we harnessed that power in one directory? And so the Pressbooks Directory was born.

The Pressbooks Directory is free for anyone to use. 

Instructors, librarians, administrators, and even students can search thousands public books created on the Pressbooks Authoring & Editing Platform. The Directory includes public domain literature, CC BY open textbooks, and a vast variety of open educational resources (OER) published all along the license spectrum. More resources are added every day as Pressbooks users continue to do the good work of open education. 

Source (Read More): https://pressbooks.com/2020/12/02/introducing-pressbooks-directory/

Pressbooks.Directory

OAR on December 3, 2020

Instructors, librarians, administrators, and even students can search thousands public books created on the Pressbooks Authoring & Editing Platform. The Directory includes public domain literature, CC BY open textbooks, and a vast variety of open educational resources (OER) published all along the license spectrum. More resources are added every day as Pressbooks users continue to do the good work of open education. 

The Pressbooks Directory works by collating public books created on PressbooksEDU networks and allowing users to search the metadata written by the authors of the books. Search by natural language and/or use faceted search to filter books by subject, license, network, language, publisher, word count, number of H5P activities, and more. Depending on the license chosen by the author of the text, users of the Directory can download books, and if they’re using the Pressbooks Authoring & Editing Platform, clone content and adapt it for any classroom. 

https://pressbooks.directory/

COPIM

OAR on November 24, 2020

COPIM (Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs) is an international partnership of researchers, universities, librarians, open access book publishers and infrastructure providers. It is building community-owned, open systems and infrastructures to enable open access book publishing to flourish.

Open access book publishing stands at a crossroads: one avenue leads to the monopolisation of open access by large commercial publishers and for-profit intermediaries, with infrastructures and funding systems set up to serve those businesses and their approaches; the other opens up a more diverse, scholar-led, community-owned, and not-for-profit publishing ecosystem that enables smaller and more community-focused presses to thrive and multiply.

https://www.copim.ac.uk/

OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit

OAR on September 30, 2020

The OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit covers specific topics related to open access books. Each article offers a quick and brief introduction to a particular aspect of open access book publishing. The toolkit also serves as a signposting tool: articles include a list of sources referenced, further reading and links to definitions of key terms.

For authors
This toolkit aims to help book authors to better understand open access book publishing and to increase trust in open access books. You will be able to find relevant articles on open access book publishing following the research lifecycle, by browsing frequently asked questions or by searching with keywords.

https://oabooks-toolkit.org/