What is it?
Thoth Oasis is a free, self-service open-source platform for managing and sharing open metadata for books and chapters. It enables open access book publishers to create structured, standards-based open metadata once, and then to reuse it across multiple systems, platforms, catalogues, repositories, and discovery services.
Tool ID card
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Main purpose: To help publishers create, manage, enrich, and export rich openly-licensed metadata for books and chapters in multiple industry standards and platform-specific configurations thereof.
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Who is it for? Book publishers, especially small-to-medium, scholar-led, university, institutional, and library presses publishing (Diamond) Open Access titles. It can also be used for closed titles, and will be useful for publishing platforms, repositories, libraries, infrastructure providers, digital scholarship projects and consortia working in long-form open access publishing.
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Skill level: Beginner to intermediate. Publishers can use Thoth’s one-stop web interface for easy self-service metadata management to create and manage rich, high quality metadata for their books and chapters, while more advanced users can also explore usage of Thoth’s APIs and integrations (e.g. with PKP’s Open Monographs Press (OMP)).
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Access: Thoth Oasis | Thoth.
Thothally free for self-service use of the open-source platform and multiple CC0 exports in ONIX, MARC21, KBART, etc (a fair use policy applies). Optional paid service extensions are available via Thoth Obelisk, Sphinx, and Pyramid for publishers who are looking to streamline their in-house metadata, dissemination and archiving work, or want to have a performant website and integrated book catalogue ready at their fingertips.
Key features
- Free metadata management for books and chapters through Thoth’s open-source platform (optional upgrades are available for a fee)
- Free CC0 metadata exports; support for multiple formats including ONIX, MARC, KBART, Crossref XML, CSV, BibTeX, and JSON
- Metadata can be openly accessed through Thoth’s open APIs
- Support for DOI deposit metadata (Crossref XML) for books and chapters
- Integrations with third-party platforms such as PKP’s Open Monograph Press available
What can I do with it?
You can create and maintain rich metadata records for open access books and chapters in one place. You can then export that metadata in the formats required by different parts of the book supply chain, including libraries, catalogues, repositories, metadata aggregators, discovery services, and DOI registration workflows. Thoth’s metadata schema helps publishers to implement good metadata practice such as the inclusion of various PIDs (ORCID, ROR, DOIs), and subject classifications (e.g. BISAC, Thema) that are relevant for downstream dissemination to international third-party aggregatators such as OAPEN, DOAB, JSTOR, or Project MUSE, and knowledge bases such as ProQuest’s Alma community zones, EBSCOHost, and OCLC Knowledge Bases. More details on good metadata practice and the variety of platforms that are covered via Thoth’s data schema are available in the 2026 report International Metadata Recommendations, and Platform-Specific Requirements for Open Access Books and Chapters.
Good to know
Thoth Oasis is the free one-stop self-service part of Thoth’s wider open metadata infrastructure.
It gives publishers direct control over their metadata, allows them to generate a multiplicity of standards-based outputs themselves, and enables them to embed good metadata practice (such as the inclusion of several PIDs, controlled vocabularies such as Thema, or chapter-level data) into their day-to-day publishing workflows.
Oasis is designed to remain free. The upgrade paths are fully optional, and are for publishers who want Thoth to take on additional work such as managed dissemination, usage analytics, or hosted catalogue and website services. This means publishers can start with Oasis and only move to Obelisk, Sphinx, or Pyramid if their needs grow.
The platform is especially relevant for open access books, edited volumes, textbooks, reports, proceedings, and other long-form scholarly publications that need to circulate across multiple metadata environments.
Try it if you …
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Publish open access books or chapters and want an easier one-stop way to manage your metadata
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Need to create and manage metadata in formats such as ONIX, MARC, KBART, Crossref XML, CSV, BibTeX, or JSON
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Want your metadata to be openly reusable under CC0
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Are looking for a free, standards-based community-led non-profit alternative to maintaining separate spreadsheets or platform-specific records
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Work in or with library publishing, scholar-led publishing, digital humanities, open access infrastructure, or long-form open scholarship in more general terms
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Want to get started with future-proofing your metadata and dissemination workflows by implementing established good metadata practice across multiple standards (ONIX, MARC, KBART, etc.)
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Want to improve the discoverability, interoperability, and reuse of your book and chapter metadata across the wider scholarly communications ecosystem
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Are thinking about streamlining your metadata management, dissemination, archiving, usage statistics, or publisher website and catalogue hosting through Thoth Obelisk, Sphinx, or Pyramid (additional fees apply)
Thanks to @TSteiner for writing this post - get in touch with him if you’d like to find out more!
