Open Access Toolset Alliance

After an invigorating discussion at the JISC Collections and OAPEN-UK organised conference "Open Access Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences" the OLH met up with various open access stakeholders – including publishers, software programmers and academics – to discuss an affiliated group that could work together to share resources. After ensuing discussion the Open Access Toolset Alliance (OATA) was agreed upon as a commuity space in which to continue discussion. 

The mission statment states that:

The Open Access Toolset Alliance is a loose group of organizations and individuals who share several core goals. The aims and goals of the alliance are:

 .    The creation of an open source toolset for open access scholarly publishing.

 .    The facilitation of synchronous and asynchronous discussion and collaboration.

.    A locus point for the showcasing of otherwise distributed projects.

 

More specifically, as per the initial discussion, the group wishes:

.    to create a culture of exchange where innovations & solutions can be discussed

.    to ensure that the various tools under development will/can be compatible

.    to keep abreast of developments that explore alternative routes.

The first meeting of OATA was held on 31st July (you can view the itinerary here). Current partners on the project include Ubiquity Press, Open Book Publishers, the University of Heidelberg, the Public Knowledge Project, the Public Library of Science, the Open Library of Humanities and Hybrid Publishing.

For more information on how to join OATA see here.

OATA website: http://www.oatools.org

OATA on Twitter: @OpenAccessTools

OATA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oatools

 

Image by Ivan Dervisevic under a CC BY-NC-SA license.