IReL, the Irish e-resources licensing consortium, is very pleased to announce that it is supporting the following SCOSS-endorsed initiatives:
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) & OAPEN
- Sherpa Romeo
Much of the infrastructure needed to make open research possible must be openly available without user-facing or institution-facing charges. This presents a challenge in sustainably funding it. One way of making this work is for libraries, library consortia and other stakeholders to commit ongoing funding on a voluntary basis.
IReL and its member libraries recognise that these infrastructures are of long standing benefit to libraries and their users and are crucial to open research globally. Therefore we agree that it is in our interests to help sustain them.
IReL is committed to supporting these initiatives for three years, from 2022 to 2024.
“These initiatives are essential to our work in managing and preserving OA content as well as enabling discoverability and access. It’s great to see IReL’s support for securing such important OA resources, tools and services into the future.”
Ellen Breen, Associated Director, Research & Teaching, DCU Library
“The addition of these services will help our researchers to make informed choices on open access publishing”.
Liam Cleere, Senior Manager, Research Analytics and Impact, UCD Research
“In keeping with Maynooth University’s long-standing support of open access, we are delighted to see IRel’s commitment to supporting these important initiatives and ensuring that they remain accessible to our research communities going forward.”
Fiona Morley, Head of Digital Programmes and Information Systems, Maynooth University Library
What is SCOSS?
Established in 2017, SCOSS is a network of organisations committed to helping sustain open access and open research infrastructure. SCOSS provides the framework and funding structure, vetting potential candidates based on a defined set of criteria. The most eligible of those that pass the evaluation are then presented to the global community of stakeholders with an appeal for monetary support in a crowdfunding-style approach. To date, 283 institutions have pledged funds via SCOSS, supporting eight infrastructures, raising a total of over 3.3 million euro.
What SCOSS initiatives is IReL supporting?
Directory of Open Access Journals
The mission of Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is to “increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, open access scholarly research journals”. DOAJ is an essential service in integrating OA journals with all the major discovery tools and aggregation services. Even if you have never heard of DOAJ, if you search for academic literature you are probably already benefiting from it.
Directory of Open Access Books
The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), is a trusted online resource for finding OA book publishers and for the discovery of OA books. DOAB runs on the open source DSpace 6 platform and all information is openly and freely available to all stakeholders, and widely used by publishers, research libraries, and their suppliers. As such, it is a central discovery service integrating OA books into the wider ecosystem of academic book publishing and distribution. DOAB is a service of DOAB Foundation, a non-profit legal entity established by OAPEN Foundation and OpenEdition.
OAPEN
The OAPEN Foundation is home to the OAPEN Library, a publication platform of freely accessible academic books running on the open source DSpace 6 platform. OAPEN works with publishers and research funders to build a quality-controlled collection of Open Access books while providing premium services to different stakeholders. OAPEN is also responsible for the free-to-access OAPEN OA Books Toolkit which helps book authors to better understand OA book publishing.
Sherpa Romeo
Sherpa Romeo is an online resource that aggregates publisher open access policies from around the world and provides summaries of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis. Across the academic library sector it is the only trusted, central source of such information, and is an essential tool for IReL members’ institutional repositories of open access works.