This webinar explores the work of three organisations working to support Diamond open access book publishing: Open Book Collective (OBC), the Open Journals Collective (OJC), and Thoth Open Metadata (Thoth). These organisations work with publishers on a global scale, and this includes in Germany. For example, OBC’s members include meson press, Verfassungblog, and Verlag Barbara Budrich. OJC supports German-language journals, including Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung. Thoth hosts metadata from OBC publishers alongside many others, including Mohr Siebeck Universitätsverlag Kiel, and Universitätsverlag Potsdam.
In this context, the session examines how collaborations between these contexts could be relevant to and potentially more deeply connect to existing Diamond Open Access collaborations in Germany and other German-language contexts.
Earlier this year, the Open Book Collective (OBC) and the Open Journals Collective (OJC) announced that they had signed a Memorandum of Understanding signaling their formal collaboration. In a joint statement, the OBC and OJC stated that “at a time when the open access landscape can feel fragmented and crowded, this partnership is a reminder that Diamond open access will only thrive if the infrastructures underpinning this model of equitable open access work together, share knowledge, and exemplify the values they stand for – collaboration, not competition”. This collaboration exemplifies the spirit of ‘scaling small’, featuring “intentional collaborations between community-driven projects that promote a bibliodiverse ecosystem”(Adema and Moore, 2021).
- In the first part of this webinar, Caroline Ball (OBC) and Tom Shaw (OJC) will each introduce their initiative and provide concrete examples of where collaborations with the other initiative is shaping their work.
- In the second part, the focus will shift to collaborations undertaken by an infrastructure developer. Toby Steiner (Thoth) will introduce the work of Thoth Open Metadata and use the case of Thoth’s collaborations with OBC to explore the wider potential of collaborations between open infrastructure providers, publishers, and libraries that come together within the context of the two Collectives.
- The webinar will conclude with a collective discussion about the potential concrete collaborations might have to change current academic publishing and financial models within universities.
Informations:
- Time: 11.06.2026, 11:00-12:00 (CEST)
- Link: Cisco Webex ( Registration is not required)
Read more: oa.talk am 11.06.2026