Thoth Open Metadata

Thoth Open Metadata 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.

Thoth emerged out of the collaborative efforts of the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project. Thoth's founding members comprise the Open Book Collective, ScholarLed, Open Book Publishers, and punctum books.

Together with nearly two dozen partners from the academic and open publishing world Thoth is a key stakeholder in the Copim Open Book Futures project funded by the Research England Development Fund/UKRI and Arcadia.

Thoth Open Metadata is increasingly integrated with other platforms such as the Open Book Collective, PKP’s OMP, OAPEN, and the Internet Archive. Moreover, Thoth actively engages with like-minded open infrastructures to foster partnerships enabling small-to-medium-sized publishers to participate in the wider book supply chain. Thoth also is a Crossref Sponsor and a member of OPERAS, and OASPA.

In Q1/2026, the team conducted a self-assessment against POSI v2, with the results documented at https://doi.org/10.70950/sllm9969