OAPEN Foundation
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| OAPEN Foundation | |
|---|---|
| Name | OAPEN Foundation |
| Formation | 2008 |
| Type | Non-profit foundation |
| Headquarters | Amsterdam |
| Region served | Europe |
| Focus | Open access scholarly publishing, monographs, peer review, digital preservation |
OAPEN Foundation The OAPEN Foundation is a European non-profit organization that supports open access publishing of scholarly monographs and edited volumes. It provides a central repository and services for quality-controlled research monographs, focusing on humanities and social sciences, while interacting with academic libraries, university presses, and research funders across Europe and beyond.
History
The foundation was established in 2008 following pilot projects funded by the European Commission and initiatives involving organizations such as the SPARC Europe, Knowledge Exchange, JISC, Wellcome Trust, and the Max Planck Digital Library. Early collaborations included publishers from the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy and drew on experiences from the Directory of Open Access Journals and the HathiTrust model. Subsequent projects connected OAPEN work with large-scale efforts like the OpenAIRE infrastructure, the European Research Council, and national libraries such as the Royal Library of the Netherlands. Major milestones included the launch of a dedicated repository, adoption of quality assurance workflows influenced by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers and the Committee on Publication Ethics, and integration with preservation services such as CLOCKSS and Portico.
Mission and Activities
OAPEN's mission centers on promoting open dissemination of monographs to increase accessibility and scholarly impact, engaging stakeholders including European University Association, Dutch Research Council (NWO), Swiss National Science Foundation, and disciplinary societies like the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association. Activities encompass curating a vetted collection, developing metadata standards aligned with Dublin Core, ONIX and ORCID identifiers, and advocating policies compatible with funder mandates such as those from the Horizon 2020 programme and the Plan S initiative coordinated by cOAlition S. The foundation also conducts research on sustainability models involving library consortia, university presses such as Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, MIT Press, and case studies with publishers including Palgrave Macmillan and Brill.
Governance and Funding
Governance structures feature a board of trustees and advisory boards drawing expertise from institutions like the University of Amsterdam, the University of Cambridge, the Leiden University, and the European University Institute. Funding models have combined project grants from entities such as the European Commission and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with support from national initiatives including the SURF cooperative and memberships from library consortia such as LIBER and UK Research and Innovation. Financial sustainability discussions have engaged stakeholders including the Library of Congress, De Gruyter, and the Norwegian Research Council while exploring transformative agreements similar to deals negotiated by Jisc Collections and the Big Deal negotiations.
Services and Platforms
OAPEN operates an online repository and discovery platform compatible with protocols like OAI-PMH and integrates with aggregators such as the Google Books corpus, institutional repositories at universities including UCL, and national catalogues like Europeana. Services include a peer review and editorial workflow informed by standards from the Committee on Publication Ethics and technical support for file formats including PDF/A with metadata enriched by Crossref DOIs and DataCite practices. Preservation partnerships with CLOCKSS, Portico, and the National Library of the Netherlands underpin long-term access, while analytics and usage reporting align with metrics frameworks such as COUNTER and Altmetric.
Partnerships and Collaborations
Collaborations span international consortia, research infrastructures, and major academic publishers. Notable partners and collaborators have included OpenAIRE, DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books), SPARC, Knowledge Unlatched, university presses like University of California Press and Cornell University Press, and funders such as the Wellcome Trust and the European Research Council. Engagements with library networks like LIBER and national initiatives in Germany (e.g., the German Research Foundation), Netherlands (e.g., SURF), and Finland (e.g., the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies) enabled pilot projects and national service rollouts. Technical collaborations have involved standards bodies including Crossref and identifier services such as ORCID.
Impact and Reception
The foundation's repository has been cited in policy discussions by organizations including cOAlition S, the European Commission, and national research councils, and its models have informed initiatives at institutions like the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the German National Library. Reception among academic librarians, editors at presses such as Indiana University Press and researchers in disciplines represented by the American Political Science Association has emphasized benefits for discoverability and reuse, while critiques from some publishers and stakeholders have focused on funding sustainability and peer review standards, echoing debates similar to those surrounding Plan S and transformative publishing models. Metrics from aggregators and citation databases such as Scopus and Web of Science have been used to assess reach alongside altmetrics reported via services like Altmetric.