Accessibility, Archiving, and Open Metadata - A Copim Publishers’ Workshop

The Copim Open Book Futures project recently hosted an online workshop on 27 Nov 2024, looking into the interconnected worlds of metadata, archiving, and accessibility. This collaborative event brought together a diverse array of publishers including small, scholar-led, and university and library presses from the UK, Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, and the United States.

Jointly organised by the Copim Open Book Futures groups working on Thoth Open Metadata, Accessibility, and Archiving/Preservation, the event was structured around three core themes, each representing a critical pillar in the OA book publishing ecosystem, and we’ll be covering each of these themes in the following paragraphs.

Archiving and Preservation: Safeguarding the Legacy of Open Access

Participants engaged in a lively exchange on the multifaceted nature of archiving for open access books and connected resources. Conversation covered a wide spectrum of approaches, from print preservation to the innovative utilisation of institutional repositories and collaborative partnerships with national libraries. The complexities of ensuring the long-term provision of digital content, particularly in the face of the ever-present threat of link rot1, were rigorously explored.

The workshop showcased the Thoth Open Archiving Network (TOAN) as a robust, community-driven solution to some of the challenges of OA book archiving. TOAN provides a streamlined and collaborative framework for publishers to archive their valuable contributions to the scholarly body of knowledge in a network of trusted repositories.

Participants shared insights into their institutional approaches, highlighting the importance of factors such as different file formats, metadata standards, and the unique needs of different content types.

Accessibility: Ensuring Inclusivity and Equity in Open Access

While most attendees noted they are generally aware of existing and newly-incoming accessibility mandates and guidelines such as the European Accessibility Act (June 2025), many articulated the practical hurdles they face in achieving and maintaining compliance, particularly when dealing with extensive backlist titles.

Participants expressed a clear need for comprehensive guidance and resources to effectively prioritise accessibility efforts and navigate the often-complex landscape of compliance requirements. The Copim Accessibility Work Package’s drive to develop practical tools and resources to empower publishers in their accessibility journeys was widely welcomed.

Key takeaways from this discussion included agreement on the lack of clarity of the application of digital accessibility legislation to the context of small open access book publishers, and while this is essential to engage with, publishers are more strongly motivated by linking accessibility with open access. Attendees expressed a desire to ensure this is all part of the wider work of removing barriers to access, be they paywalls, systemic and power structure issues or barriers to perceiving, operating and understanding academic content. These are new innovative links that go beyond equitable treatment of print disabled users, and into ensuring the usability and readability of all content is maximised.

Participants discussed the help required with technical aspects of creating born-accessible content, and remediating existing content to become accessible. On examination of the requirements of the standards named within legislation, participants began to consider how complicated or simple each of these were. While tagging entire files with the correct language and choosing reflowable file formats are “easier” fixes, aspects such as ALT text optimisation or ensuring charts do not convey meaning through colour alone can require iterative changes to editorial processes between multiple stakeholders within the publishing workflow.

Publishers also need to build their own understanding in order to hold conversations with all stakeholders about accessibility, during the publishing process, when negotiating with external remediation experts, and when creating metadata about books that communicates accessibility information to the end user.

The workshop underscored the critical importance of proactive integration of accessibility considerations into workflows from the very inception of a publishing project.

Thoth Open Metadata: Improvements in metadata management, new services, and an outlook of upcoming in-development features

The third part of the workshop provided a valuable platform for publishers to share their experiences and challenges with metadata workflows.

Participants highlighted key pain points such as the labour-intensive nature of manual data entry, ambiguities in metadata schemas, additional platforms that Thoth might want to reach out to (including SCOPUS, Apple Books, and others), and the ongoing pursuit of improved metadata quality and consistency. The feedback received will also be instrumental in shaping the future development of Thoth.

Towards the end of the workshop, a showcase of the ongoing improvements of Thoth Open Metadata’s functionalities was provided, highlighting recent updates as well as new features that the team is working to implement.

Recent updates within Thoth include:

• Improved handling of linked data sets. Enhancing accuracy and efficiency in metadata management, ensuring that OA book metadata is enriched, interconnected, and readily discoverable.

• Optimised performance. Implementation of Redis caching to accelerate metadata queries and enhance platform responsiveness, providing users with a smooth and efficient experience.

• Opening up publishing silos. Seamless integration with Public Knowledge Project’s popular Open Monograph Press (OMP) platform via a dedicated OMP-Thoth plugin to help streamline metadata workflows and reduce administrative burden, enabling publishers to effortlessly manage and improve their metadata across platforms. Recent updates are addressing issues that have been raised by beta-tester publishers, and we are getting close to a first full release version.

• Ensuring Transparency and Version Control via Crossmark. Full integration of Crossmark, a Crossref service, in Thoth’s Crossref XML outputs. This enables publishers to track changes and updates to research outputs and ensure transparency and version control throughout the publication lifecycle.

• Expanded Service Portfolio: Thoth Hosting. Rolling out Thoth File Hosting, Thoth Website Hosting (incl. catalogues), and Thoth Usage Statistics. These provide a comprehensive suite of services to support content management, dissemination, and analysis, enabling publishers to focus on their core mission of producing high-quality OA content. Thoth File Hosting is being provided for free for publishers on the Thoth Plus dissemination service.

The workshop conveners also outlined a number of areas that will see further engagement in the coming months, leading to further enhancement of Thoth’s capabilities within the Copim Open Book Futures project. Key areas of work include:

• Accessibility resources and guidance: Development of comprehensive resources and guidance to empower publishers implementing accessibility good practice and achieving compliance with relevant standards.

• Thoth Open Archiving Network expansion: Considering additional institutional repositories, and an increase of publisher participation.

• Safeguarding the future of open access content: Ongoing exploration and development of mechanisms to proactively identify and address potential link rot issues, and expanding Thoth’s coverage of work types towards an inclusion of reports, theses, and conference proceedings.

• Expansion of Thoth’s metadata schema to accommodate accessibility and archiving-specific information, and implementing additional metadata fields to cover reporting needs as mandated by the European Union, such as the EU’s new General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), EU Deforestation Act, and Accessibility Act legislations.

• Thoth user interface enhancement: A major UX redesign is planned for 2025/26, incorporating a multilingual data schema to enhance usability and accessibility for a global community of publishers and users.

• Expansion of Thoth services, to roll out streamlined file hosting for participating publishers, and establishing Thoth Usage Statistics as a cost-effective service affordable particularly for small, scholar-led, and university and library publishers.

Come join us!

We invite all stakeholders interested in the topics discussed across the Copim Open Book Futures work packages and in fostering a more equitable OA book publishing ecosystem more broadly to actively participate in and contribute to our collaborative pursuit of a more sustainable, and accessible future for scholarly communications.

By embracing open infrastructure and community-led initiatives, we can collectively ensure that knowledge remains freely available to all, fostering an interoperable open infrastructure ecosystem. Copim partners Open Book Collective and Thoth Open Metadata are involved n a variety of international networks including OASPA and OPERAS.

Particularly within the OPERAS network, we are excited to be involved in launching an Open Infrastructures for Books working group as part of the newly-established OPERAS Open Access Books SIG – so if you’d like to learn more about these, do make sure to watch the OPERAS space and mailing lists for upcoming announcements, or be directly in touch with us here at Thoth.

To keep up-to-date with all the latest developments happening within the Copim community and with Thoth Open Metadata, we encourage you to visit the project website and connect with us on social media.

Header image by Tima Miroshnichenko