OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) has announced the launch of the Directory of Open Access Books, a discovery service for peer reviewed books published under an Open Access license. OAPEN is a collaborative initiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
DOAB provides a searchable index to the information about these books, with links to the full texts of the publications at the publisher's website or repository. The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. Academic publishers are invited to provide the metadata of their Open Access books to DOAB. These metadata will be harvestable in order to maximise dissemination, visibility and impact.
At the start of the service there are just over 20 publishers participating with about 750 Open Access books. New publishers and books will be added in the next few days. DOAB is being launched in a Beta version to enable feedback from users and to further develop the service.
The Directory of Open Access Books is provided by OAPEN Foundation in cooperation with SemperTool. OAPEN Foundation is an international initiative dedicated to Open Access monograph publishing, based at the National Library in The Hague. DOAB was developed in close cooperation with Lars Bjørnshauge and Salam Baker Shanawa (director of SemperTool), who were also responsible for the development of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
