DOAB

DOAB
Name	Directory of Open Access Books
Abbreviation	DOAB
Type	Non-profit service
Established	2012
Headquarters	Netherlands
Languages	Multilingual
Parent organization	OAPEN Foundation

DOAB

DOAB is an online discovery service that aggregates peer-reviewed open access monographs from academic publishers, university presses, and scholarly societies. It aims to increase the visibility, interoperability, and discoverability of academic books published under open licences, enabling scholars, librarians, and students to find works across disciplines and languages. The service collaborates with major library initiatives, research infrastructures, and international organizations to support open scholarship.

Overview

DOAB aggregates metadata for peer-reviewed academic monographs from participating publishers such as Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Springer Nature, Palgrave Macmillan, and University of California Press. It interoperates with infrastructures like Crossref, OCLC, ORCID, SCOPUS, and DOAJ to enhance metadata quality and citation linking. The platform indexes works by authors affiliated with institutions such as Harvard University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Toronto, and University of Melbourne, and it includes titles relevant to projects at organizations like the European Commission, UNESCO, World Bank, Wellcome Trust, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

History

The service originated from collaborations among the OAPEN Foundation, national libraries such as the British Library and Koninklijke Bibliotheek, and initiatives in the Netherlands and United Kingdom during the late 2000s and early 2010s. It formally launched in 2012 with metadata harvesting protocols aligned to standards promoted by JISC, SPARC, and the OpenAIRE project. Over time, it expanded through partnerships with university presses including MIT Press, Princeton University Press, Yale University Press, and Columbia University Press, as well as commercial publishers adapting open models like De Gruyter and Taylor & Francis in specific imprints. Major milestones included integration with Crossref DOI registration services, endorsement by funders such as Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK, and adoption by consortia including LIBER and the Association of Research Libraries.

Structure and Governance

The service operates under the stewardship of the OAPEN Foundation with advisory inputs from stakeholders including representatives from IFLA, SPARC Europe, national research libraries such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and major university press associations like the Association of American University Presses. Governance includes editorial and technical committees that liaise with cataloguing authorities like DNB and metadata aggregators such as HathiTrust. Policy frameworks reference best practices from organizations like ISO standards bodies and align with licensing regimes promoted by Creative Commons and funding mandates from bodies such as the European Research Council and National Institutes of Health.

Content and Coverage

The indexed corpus spans humanities and social sciences, law, and STEM fields, with contributions by scholars including those associated with Stanford University, Princeton University, University of Chicago, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and Peking University. Titles cover major works and monographs addressing subjects connected to events and cases like Treaty of Versailles, Partition of India, French Revolution, Cold War, and Climate Change Conference (COP). The collection includes classical editions, new scholarship, doctoral monographs, and edited volumes from presses such as Routledge, Bloomsbury Academic, Brill Publishers, and Johns Hopkins University Press. Metadata fields capture identifiers used by services including ISBN, DOI, and authority records from VIAF and Library of Congress.

Access and Usage

The platform provides open metadata and links to full texts available on publisher platforms, institutional repositories like HAL, Zenodo, DSpace, and national repositories such as National Institute of Informatics (NII) Japan and Digital Public Library of America. Users discover content via library catalogues integrated through Zotero, discovery layers from vendors like Ex Libris and EBSCO, and academic search engines including Google Scholar and BASE. The directory supports machine harvesting via APIs and OAI-PMH to facilitate use by consortia such as COAR and research infrastructures like OpenAIRE.

Impact and Reception

Scholars and librarians from institutions including Columbia University, University of Cape Town, University of São Paulo, National University of Singapore, and McGill University have cited the service as improving discoverability and citation of open monographs. Research funders such as Wellcome Trust and the European Commission have referenced aggregated open book metadata in policy discussions about open access prevalence and the economics of scholarly publishing. Critics and commentators in venues associated with The Guardian, Times Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed have discussed limitations concerning metadata consistency, multilingual coverage, and long-term preservation, prompting enhancements in partnerships with preservation initiatives like CLOCKSS and Portico.

Category:Open access