OpenAIRE and OAPEN partner on OA book usage data and discovery
The OAPEN Foundation and OpenAIRE have announced a new partnership to deliver COUNTER-conformant usage data for the OAPEN Library through OpenAIRE PROVIDE, while also strengthening interoperability between open scholarly communication infrastructures.
Under the collaboration, COUNTER-conformant usage data for open access books in the OAPEN Library and metadata records in the Directory of Open Access Books will be aggregated and delivered by OpenAIRE to support the OAPEN Library Dashboard. The service is designed to provide publishers, libraries, and funders with insights into the reach and use of OA books and metadata.
According to the organisations, OpenAIRE PROVIDE will allow stakeholders to continue benefiting from personalised dashboards and usage insights, while supporting OAPEN’s efforts to promote the global reach of high-quality open scholarly research.
The partnership follows the retirement of the IRUS-UK service in April 2026 and is intended to ensure continuity for the Dashboard. The OAPEN Library currently hosts more than 40,000 OA books from over 500 publishers, with usage data relied upon by publishers, libraries, and funders pursuing Open Science objectives.
Alongside usage reporting, the collaboration will also focus on improving the visibility and discoverability of OA books across the wider Open Science ecosystem. This includes exploring enhanced metadata exchange and interoperability between the two infrastructures, including the integration of OAPEN metadata and usage information into services powered by the OpenAIRE Graph.
The organisations said this would help improve connections between books, book chapters, research projects, funders, institutions, datasets, and other research outputs through persistent identifiers and enriched scholarly metadata.
The collaboration reflects a shared commitment to community-driven infrastructure supporting the discoverability, accessibility, and monitoring of scholarly books.
Anna Wałek, Head of Technology at OAPEN, said: “This partnership reflects OAPEN’s belief that open access can only thrive on robust, interoperable, and community-governed infrastructures. Working with OpenAIRE enables us to ensure continuity and quality in usage reporting while embedding OA books more deeply into the wider open science ecosystem, where data, services, and standards are shared rather than siloed.”
Paolo Manghi, Chief Technology Officer at OpenAIRE, added: “Books have always been central to scholarly communication, but in research information systems they are still too often treated as isolated records. The OpenAIRE Graph offers a different approach: it connects books and book chapters with the people, organisations, projects, funders, datasets and publications that surround them. Working with OAPEN is an opportunity to bring open access books more deeply into this open knowledge graph, making them not only easier to find, but easier to understand, monitor and reuse as part of the broader research landscape.”