As outlined in more detail in an accompanying blog post, both the expansion of our team and interconnections with other open infrastructures require an equitable and accessible sustainability model in line with Thoth’s ethos. We previously announced a two-tiered pricing model (cf. Gatti et al., 2022) and have been developing this model in recent months with the extensive input from our stakeholder community.
Fig. 1: Differentiation between the “Free” and “Plus” tiers of Thoth’s business model.
Basic functionality of the platform will remain accessible to all account holders under Thoth Free, giving access to the full metadata management and import/export functionalities via the user interface and open APIs. This will allow users to create and update metadata, and disseminate it to an ever-increasing number of repositories, aggregators, and indexes.
Thoth Plus comprises two different subscription packages (A and B) covering the automated distribution of publisher metadata to a variety of platforms, as well as a number of bespoke publisher-facing services.
DOI registration
Content & Metadata Platforms
Metadata Aggregators
Archiving Platforms
A
CrossRef
OAPEN or Zenodo
DOAB
Internet Archive
B
CrossRef
Package A + JSTOR*, Project MUSE*, RNIB Bookshare, Library Genesis, Google Books, EBSCOHost*, ProQuest*, Clarivate WOS Book Citation Index
With Thoth Plus Package A, Thoth will register DOIs for a given book (including chapters, if applicable) with Crossref on behalf of a publisher, while also facilitating the submission of that book to either OAPEN or Zenodo so as to have a dedicated venue where the book will be hosted. In addition to that, we will also cover the archiving of that book by providing an easy upload route to the Internet Archive.
Thoth Plus Package B includes all of Package A plus a submission of books to JSTOR*, Project MUSE*, RNIB Bookshare, Library Genesis, Google Books, EBSCOHost*, Clarivate WoS Book Citation Index, Jisc Knowledge Base, ProQuest Ebook Central*, EBSCO Knowledge Base, OCLC Knowledge Base. With regards to archiving, books in Package B will be included in the Thoth Archiving Network.
At this stage, submission to all of the above platforms is contingent upon specific platform criteria and any agreements that will need to be signed between the Thoth user and the respective platform (i.e., a publisher-specific account might be required by some of those platforms). As Thoth is developing, we hope to achieve increasingly seamless integration with all these platforms.
Pricing
Thoth Plus Packages A and B are priced on the basis of a per-book fee.
Per-book fee
Discounted per-book fee
A
£ 75
£ 37.50
B
£ 125
£ 62.50
N.B. Thanks to the Open Book Futures project funding provided by Research England and Arcadia, we are glad to be able to offer a 50% discount on all fees through to April 2026 for any publisher signing up before December 31, 2024.
Platforms marked with an asterisk (*) may incur additional per-platform fees which are not covered by the Thoth Plus Package fees. Publishers wishing to have their metadata submitted to those platforms will need to have existing agreements with those platforms (or establish such agreements), and would be responsible for covering those additional per-platform fees.
Bespoke Services
There are also a number of additional services that we are able to offer to publishers, including
Metadata creation: Creating book- and chapter-level metadata from PDFs provided by the publisher. This can also include improving the quality of existing metadata.
A per-book fee of £ 50 will be applied (discounted fee: £ 25)
Data check & ingest: This includes bespoke services to publishers with larger backlists to ingest in Thoth, incl. check-ups and recommendations regarding potential improvement of data quality
Due to the huge variety of factors involved in determining a fair price, we will be able to provide you with custom pricing upon request.
Dissemination: We are in principle able to submit content to a large number of content and metadata aggregator platforms: see an indicative overview here.
With the per-platform criteria and corresponding complexity of work involved to submit to these platforms, we will be able to provide you with a bespoke quote upon request.
The option of a 50% discount under the conditions described above also applies to these bespoke services.
Get in touch
If you are a publisher and would like to get in touch with us regarding the use of Thoth Free, or our variety of metadata, dissemination and archiving services under Thoth Plus, please don’t hesitate to send a quick email via [email protected].
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)
