Blog posts
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31 January 2025
Update on OA Books Pilot - OA Switchboard assesses next steps as the pilot completes in 2025
In the summer of 2023, we announced that OA Switchboard had kicked-off a project, with a Working Group, to explore an OA Books solution to simplify the sharing of information between stakeholders about OA book publications throughout the whole publication journey. In this blogpost we are happy to report on preliminary findings, initial conclusions to the key questions tested, and our next steps.
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31 December 2024
31 December 2024 statistics
On this last day of the year we celebrate that in 2024 we reached the milestone of 1 million messages sent, further built the Data Quality Challenge with the community and have been conducting the OA Books Pilot. We proudly share our 31 December 2024 statistics with you.
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26 September 2024
Our Data Quality Fall 2024 Campaign has officially begun!
Join our Data Quality Challenge - Let’s take action together
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Let us be clear - poor and lacking metadata affects us all: publishers, funders, consortia, libraries, researchers, and the broader academic community. So, let’s take action together!
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31 January 2024
New Collaborations for 2024
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As we shared in our plans for the new year on 1 January, we're continuing to put great effort into achieving wider adoption and widespread usage. We've seen from day one that the OA Switchboard grows stronger with every participant, becoming a better tool for all. We are therefore delighted to report that five new publishers have connected to OA Switchboard, bringing the total of ‘live’ publisher participants to 31.
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1 January 2024
The 2024 OA Switchboard story
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Wider adoption, incremental tech development and revolutionised publication (meta)data management. And a pilot for OA Books!
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31 December 2023
31 December 2023 statistics
On this last day of the year we celebrate that it's been it's been five years since the idea for the OA Switchboard was born and that we’ve been fully operational for three years. We proudly share our 31 December statistics with you.
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1 December 2023
OA Switchboard OA Books pilot starts in January
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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.
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21 August 2023
OA Switchboard kicks-off project to explore an OA Books solution
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In line with guiding principles, OA Switchboard aims to support all types of scholarly output and plans for a dedicated OA Books prototype to be tested with pilot users.
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28 July 2023
Mid-summer reflections on our five years’ journey…
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It's been almost five years since the idea for the OA Switchboard was born. A good moment for some reflections on where we are today versus where we were aiming to go.
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18 July 2023
OA Switchboard research funder pilot successfully completed
Group of 25 research funders and publishers collaborated in experimental project to get ‘hidden’ research funding information out of publications and shared
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7 March 2023
OA Switchboard facilitates new pilot to get ‘hidden’ research funding information out of publications and shared
Group of 25 research funders and publishers collaborate in experimental project to unlock funding information to progress open access
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OA Switchboard Updates Core Router,
21 February 2023
OA Switchboard updates core router to deliver more relevant information to consortia.
Consortia participants now also receive, for their member institutions, alerts and metadata on publications from non-corresponding authors and in case of non-primary affiliations.
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How the OA Switchboard fits into the ecosystem (PART 5), 9 December 2022
Following on from our initial post on the ‘intermediary’, the second on the ‘institution’, the third on the ‘publisher’ and the fourth on the ‘funder’ in the series, in this last post in this series we cover how we work together with others.
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How the OA Switchboard fits into the ecosystem (PART 4/THE FUNDER), 2 November 2022
Following on from our initial post on the ‘intermediary’, the second on the ‘institution’ and the third on the ‘publisher’ in the series, in this post we focus specifically on the relevance of the OA Switchboard to the stakeholder group ‘funders’.
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A Commitment to Collaboration: Delivering Open Access Efficiencies, 28 October 2022
In the Spring of 2022, CCC and the OA Switchboard announced a collaboration to automate the standardized exchange of Open Access payment details between publishers, institutions and funders. Today, we are thrilled to report that five publishers are already using the connection to simplify reporting for their institutions and funders.
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How the OA Switchboard fits into the ecosystem (PART 3/THE PUBLISHER), 16 October 2022
Following on from our initial post on the ‘intermediary’ and the second post on the ‘institution’ in the series, in this post we focus specifically on the relevance of the OA Switchboard to the stakeholder group ‘publishers’.
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Quality of Metadata and Identifiers
How the OA Switchboard fits into the ecosystem (PART 2/THE INSTITUTION), 12 September 2022
Following on from our previous post, here we focus specifically on the relevance of the OA Switchboard to the stakeholder group ‘institutions’.
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How the OA Switchboard fits into the ecosystem with collaboration and transparency built-in (PART 1/THE INTERMEDIARY), 15 August 2022
As research funders and institutions are expanding open access requirements, and business models become increasingly complex and diverse, how do stakeholders navigate the open access research and publishing maze?
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Who are these stakeholders, systems and identifiers, and how do we fit into the overall open access (OA) publishing ecosystem?
This post, the first in a series to answer that question, is about the ‘intermediary’ concept.
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OA Switchboard 2022 mid-year review: Collaboration drives growth and progress, 27 May 2022
We’re happy to report on the huge amount of progress made so far as we reflect on how things are looking halfway through the second year of our 2021-2022 launch phase.
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OA Switchboard reaches milestone
17 March 2022
The OA Switchboard reached an impressive milestone at the start of this month: 100,000 exchanges of OA article metadata from publishers to research funders, institutions, and consortia.
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Why is this important? By reaching this milestone, OA Switchboard proves that it performs as it was designed to, and that it reduces OA workflow complexity for all parties involved.
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OA Switchboard one year live: Community, collaboration, and delivering on the promise of PIDs, 8 December 2021
In this year-end post, we’re delighted to share how, together with our founding partners, launch customers and other stakeholders, we have built a community of like-minded spirits on a mission.
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We thank everyone for an amazing year. Special thanks to our founding partners and launch customers, the members of our Working Groups, Advisory Group and Client Advisory Board, our sponsors, our tech partner ELITEX and our strategic partner OASPA.
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OA Switchboard’s self-assessment of the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI), 7 October 2021
We referred to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) throughout 2020 while we were designing a sustainable governance and funding set-up for OA Switchboard, not just because of the guidance POSI gives on areas to address, but because POSI is also a leading example of garnering the trust of the broader scholarly community. During this time we also talked with numerous stakeholders, expert legal advisors in various countries, and founders and leaders of other industry initiatives to define our own core principles.
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This post is a reflection on how we are honouring POSI since we moved to the operational stage as Stichting OA Switchboard from 1 January 2021.
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Matching Publication Costs with Publication Funds, 14 September 2021
Authoritative data from source & connecting and complementing existing systems and solutions
As we see the growth in OA output, the need to develop infrastructure to streamline communication between research funders, institutions/libraries and academic publishers becomes a priority. One of the challenges is matching publication costs with publication funds for which stakeholders have a number of aspects to deal with.
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What are 'publication costs' and 'publication funds'? What is an example of a 'business model'? What is a 'publication funder'?
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Engagement with the community is building the OA Switchboard, 28 June 2021
The activity and engagement has been non-stop!
The OA Switchboard is live and we're well on track in the first year of our 2021-2022 'launch phase'. If you want to read more, view a recording or are looking for something specific, we have now made it easy for you to review our content at a new dedicated resources page on our website.
The most recent video animation on ‘Reporting Made Easy’ by the OA Switchboard is there as well.
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Reporting Made Easy - Our partners share their insights on the rationale behind the need for reporting, 4 May 2021
Read their views and experiences!
We took a step back to speak with some of our partners and asked them to answer five questions:
What is the underlying need for ‘reporting’?
What is the minimum set of metadata required?
What sources (systems) capture and manage these (meta)data? Is it possible to extract the data?
What makes a ‘standard’?
How does the OA Switchboard make reporting ‘easy’? How does it work, end-to-end and real-time?
OA Switchboard Working Group probes support for OA Books, 30 March 2021
Participate in the next meeting!
Last week members of the OA Switchboard Books Working Group got together for the third time since its inception last year, to continue dialogues on how OA Switchboard can deliver on its ambition and commitment to support all types of scholarly output. read full article >
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In this and the next meeting: special attention to the point of view of research funders and institutions.
OA Switchboard Update, 4 March 2021
Join us!
Our objects are both practical and mission-driven. What does that mean and why does it matter? read full article >
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OA Switchboard - central information exchange hub - a mission-driven practical solution, that thrives on collaboration
OA Switchboard Update, 28 January 2021
We're live!
The OA Switchboard moved to the operational stage on 1 January 2021 and we’re happy to be well underway.
We’ll continue to keep you informed this year via regular updates and in this first blog of the year, I’ll tell you about our plans and priorities and how we continue to shape the collaborative nature of the initiative... read full article >