Posted also as News item on 1 January 2024
On the first day of 2024, we’re excited to share our plans for the new year, which should continuously provide improvement for our participants.
OA Switchboard is fully operational and has been ‘live’ for three years now (see our 1-minute video animation in 6 languages). We’re building on the successes and lessons learned from previous years, and the 2023 year-end statistics proudly shared on 31 December. It should be no surprise that our overarching focus will continue to be on authoritative data from source, interoperability of existing systems, and connecting the dots of existing PIDs. All, in our characteristic, well established, collaborative spirit.
As we’re starting to deliver on the promise, with more and more participants, and more ‘messages’ and data to look at, we identified some bumps in the road last year that require attention: publication (meta)data quality and completeness. The Data Quality Challenge launched in October 2023 is the answer.
The Data Quality Challenge will be our primary focus for 2024. It calls on the community to revolutionise publication (meta)data management by standardising information provided by publishers and allowing stakeholders to consolidate and process data efficiently. By enhancing data quality and completeness research funders, institutions, consortia, and publishers will be empowered to make informed decisions based on accurate and robust information. This initiative is enabled by OA Switchboard and builds upon community-wide lessons learned and best practices and is based on the core values of the OA Switchboard of Trust, Collaboration, and Efficiency.
As we’ve known from day 1, the OA Switchboard - central information exchange hub - grows stronger with every participant, becoming a better tool for all. In 2024, with very high priority, we will therefore continue to put great efforts in achieving wider adoption and widespread usage. We have a wonderful Advisory Group supporting us in this goal, and organise monthly training sessions (free to all).
As we’re scaling OA Switchboard in 2024, increasingly as integrated solution for our participants, it needs to remain technically stable and connect with all stakeholders’ workflows and systems. The 2024 priority for our development roadmap is continuous incremental improvements to support this, with further features to further improve the user (admin) experience.
Above are our plans for the OA Switchboard journals solution for 2024.
As OA Switchboard, in line with guiding principles, aims to support all types of scholarly output, we’ve started the OA Books Pilot in 2023. A dedicated OA Books prototype is being developed and will be available for testing with pilot users in January 2024. Research institutions, funders, and academic book publishers are invited to join for testing.
We look forward to continuing the journey with you all in 2024, and sharing our joint story broadly!