About Us
Thoth is a non-profit, community interest company (CIC) dedicated to advancing open access publishing and supporting the scholarly community by providing innovative metadata management and distribution solutions tailored to tackle the problems of getting Open Access works into the book supply chain, ensuring their long-term sustainability and accessibility.
We are focused on:
- creation, curation, and dissemination of high-quality metadata records which are essential for the advancement of public knowledge;
- promoting openness in scholarly communications such as open access, open licensing, FLOSS, open data, open metadata, and open standards and protocols;
- embracing infrastructural and platform diversity as an inherent component of a flourishing scholarly communications landscape;
- providing high-quality solutions and services for metadata creation, management, dissemination, archiving and preservation.
Our Governance
Thoth Open Metadata (WP4) has been set up as a UK Community Interest Company (CIC) limited by guarantee, to ensure that the community’s interest are being met, no private gain (such as paying out dividends to its membership) is sought, and any surplus or assets are used principally for the benefit of the community. Thoth has been formed as a “large membership” CIC, which means that the members have ultimate control over the activities of the CIC. It also requires there to be more members than Directors and allows for the membership to grow as the company grows. These members collectively decide when and how the overall membership will grow. Another key feature of a Community Interest Company is the Asset Lock, which guarantees transfer of resources to a predefined set of organisations in the case of the CIC facing insolvency. The Membership approves the appointments of Thoth’s Board of Directors, which is responsible for proper management of the company’s business. Directors are held accountable by the company’s wider Membership of stakeholders. With regards to financial transparency, Thoth makes its annual accounts publicly available via Companies House. Any entity from Thoth’s larger community can become a Member of the CIC, and thus actively engage in Thoth’s community governance.
Our Commitment to Openness
At Thoth, we believe in the power of openness and collaboration. All our software is open source, allowing for transparency, community contributions, and continuous improvement. We are committed to fostering an open ecosystem where publishers can freely access and leverage our tools through open APIs, enabling seamless integration with platforms and publisher workflows to meet their specific needs.
Open Metadata
All metadata records generated by Thoth are licensed under a CC0 license, ensuring maximum flexibility and interoperability. By licensing our metadata in this way, we empower publishers, libraries, and researchers to freely use, share, and build upon the wealth of metadata generated via Thoth.
Open Access
Thoth is uniquely designed as a metadata management and distribution platform to address the complexities and hurdles involved in integrating Open Access works into the book supply chain.
Our main goals are:
- To lower the entry barrier to good metadata management and practices for small/medium OA publishers who are currently struggling to produce their metadata to all the various different specifications that each distributing platform requires;
- To help distribute Open Access books, which have been systematically excluded from a book supply chain that was created for closed books;
- To expose quality and first-hand metadata, using industry standards, publicly for anyone to consume.
No Platform lock-in
At Thoth, we firmly believe in providing publishers with the freedom to choose their own path. Our commitment to openness ensures that publishers are not locked into any specific platform or service. Thoth's open architecture and APIs empower publishers to integrate seamlessly with other platforms and workflows, allowing for greater flexibility and adaptability. Thoth enables publishers to retain full control over their data and operations. With Thoth, you're not just accessing a platform – you're joining a community-driven ecosystem built on the principles of openness, collaboration, and innovation.
