Draft:Thoth Open Metadata

Thoth Open Metadata (for suggested spelling, see Thoth) is a non-profit initiative and platform for managing and distributing open-source metadata, initially developed as part of the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project. As of 2022, Thoth has been registered as a nonprofit Community Interest Company in the UK.

Thoth Open Metadata's platform is designed to meet the specific needs of small to medium-sized academic publishers that release works in open access. Its development is based on open-source principles, with the code made publicly available and data accessible through open APIs. The metadata generated are made available under the CC0 dedication, allowing free and unrestricted re-use.

Thoth's objectives include:


 * to support small-to-medium-sized publishers in adhering to to good metadata management practice for open access books.
 * Promoting the inclusion of open access books in the wider book supply chain.
 * Making metadata openly available in various formats, such as MARC21 and MARC21XML, KBART, ONIX for Books, JSON following industry standards and under a CC0 public-domain dedication.

Thoth operates on a non-profit model, offering its platform and API services for free to publishers. Additionally, it offers paid metadata management services through its Thoth Plus programme. Academic Libraries can volunteer to support the infrastructure through a membership programme facilitated by the Open Book Collective.

Partnerships and collaborations
Thoth is a member of various infrastructure organisations relevant to open access books such as Crossref, the OPERAS network, the the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) Trusted Partner Network, and OASPA. It participates in the Open Book Futures project and collaborates with platforms and institutions such as the Public Knowledge Project's Open Monographs Press, the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI), and SciELO Books to enhance the integration of metadata (incl. usage data) for open access books in other open platforms.

Thoth Open Archiving Network (TOAN)
TOAN aims to address preservation issues faced by small academic publishers by providing means to easily archive their publications in repositories such as the Internet Archive, Zenodo, Github, DSpace, and Figshare.