The success of OAPEN and DOAB in Primo and Summon

The OAPEN Library and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) aggregate open access books and chapters, and make them globally available through several channels. We work together with many organisations, among them Ex Libris.

Ex Libris – a subsidiary of Clarivate – is a provider of library services. One of their products is the Central Discovery Index (CDI) describing many scholarly and academic sources. When the same content is available through several platforms, CDI deduplicates these records into one unified merged metadata record. It is available for libraries using Primo and Summon. The metadata of the OAPEN Library and DOAB are indexed in CDI.

Recently, we received a usage report from Ex Libris, describing how libraries worldwide interact with DOAB and OAPEN through their catalogues. We are happy to see that more than 1,500 libraries or library consortia have been using the open access books and chapters we provide. To better understand the global impact, we used the Open Alex API to find the countries where the libraries reside, and we found organisations in 118 different countries.

Of course, most libraries did not just check one title in DOAB or the OAPEN Library. According to the data, the combined libraries reached our platforms 1,251,743 times in the last 12 months. DOAB – with its larger collection – saw 75% of that number.

Below an overview of the 50 most active libraries:

In conclusion, the integration of OAPEN and DOAB metadata into the Ex Libris platforms has worked well for many libraries. This is just one example of the integration of open access books data into a platform. We have made our metadata available to the public domain, and we have made sure it is available in several formats (OAPEN, DOAB), which allows many stakeholders to use it to their advantage. Hopefully, this will inspire even more ways to make open access books globally available.

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