Data Spaces and their Potential for Next Generation Publishing, Discovery, and AI Innovation

Join leading experts from across publishing, data infrastructure, and AI for an engaging introduction to data spaces—a rapidly emerging approach to secure, scalable, and collaborative data sharing.

A data space is a system-level solution that global industrial supply chains are implementing to streamline data connections across enterprises.

Featured Presenters:

• CHRISTINA DRUMMOND (OA Book Usage Data Trust Executive Director; Co-Chair, RDA Dataspaces IG): A leader in scholarly data governance and AI policy
• SYLVAIN LE BON (Co-Founder, Startin’blox; Architect & Strategist, Trusted European Media Dataspace): An expert in decentralized data infrastructure and GDPR-compliant data sharing
• VIVIAN BERGHAHN (Managing Director, Berghahn Books): A seasoned publishing executive and innovator in open access models

Together, they bring deep expertise from across academia, publishing, and cutting-edge data systems.

This webinar is ideal for publishers, technologists, policy leaders, and anyone interested in how data, governance, and AI intersect to shape the future of scholarly communication.

As AI transforms scholarly communications, the need for trusted, interoperable, and policy-aware data sharing has never been greater. This webinar explores how data spaces—already used in global supply chains—can help publishers and stakeholders:

• Control and audit real-time data flows across organizations and borders
• Make licensing and legal agreements machine-actionable
• Reduce risk, ensure compliance, and manage cloud costs
• Enable new forms of collaboration and data-driven innovation

This webinar will introduce the concept of data spaces while highlighting two major initiatives shaping the future of data spaces in publishing:

• OA Book Usage Data Trust (OAEBUDT) – a collaborative pilot involving publishers, aggregators, and infrastructure providers to build a trusted, open-source data space for usage analytics
• Trusted European Media Dataspace (TEMS) – a European Commission-backed initiative developing GDPR-compliant solutions for cross-border content sharing, monetization, and AI-driven services

Following Q&A, attendees will have the opportunity to inform how the scholarly publishing industry should build upon such efforts to bring a data space to market.

Background (Optional Reading)

Prior to the event, attendees can benefit from reading this primer post on data spaces in The Scholarly Kitchen. (link available soon!)

The data space efforts presented in this webinar include: 

The OA Book Usage Data Trust (OAEBUDT) brought together scholarly book publishers, content aggregators, and their business partners to develop trusted data intermediation governance mechanisms for a pilot data space. They developed a minimum viable, extensible open-source data space in partnership with Think-It, to pilot with a governance authority hosted at OPERAS-EU, in line with a community-developed data space participation rulebook and accompanying legal agreement. The initial OA book usage data focused data connector aimed to simplify the aggregation and benchmarking of distributed usage data. 

BISG’s Executive Director, Brian O’Leary, served as a project advisor on the global project team that complemented thought leaders on the OAEBUDT Board of Trustees, Board Committees, and staff. Representatives shaping this work hailed from commercial publishers (Berghahn Books, DeGruyter, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis), not-for-profit and university presses (University of Michigan Publishing, UNC Press, Wits University Press, Ubiquity Press, Punctum Books), content aggregators (EBSCO, JSTOR, Project MUSE), standards bodies and infrastructure supporters (COUNTER, DOAB/OAPEN, OPERAS-EU, OpenAIRE) and service providers (Longleaf Services, Knowledge Unlatched, Liblynx). Recognizing book usage was too narrow a focus to sustain a data space among such players, the OAEBUDT governance and brand sunset in April 2026 so that a broader scholarly communications data space effort could form in its place.

More info:

• OAEBUDT website: https://www.oabookusage.org/  
• OAEBUDT dataspace MVP OSS and documentation: https://github.com/OAEBUDT/oaebudt-dataspace/wiki  
• OAEBUDT participation rulebook: https://zenodo.org/records/11163158  

The Trusted European Media Dataspace (TEMS), is one of the Common European Data spaces supported by the European Commission. It aims developed multiple data connectors to support news media across multimodal content including books. Objectives of the effort aim to increase operational efficiency by supporting improved audience analysis, digital transformation, and the adoption of AI and virtual reality. Of specific interest to publishers, they have developed and trialed GDPR compliant solutions for cross-border content syndication, monetization, personalization services, and personalized advertising. 

More info:

• The TEMS website: https://tems-dataspace.eu/
• The TEMS dataspace open deliverables: https://tems-dataspace.eu/deliverablesd/

Featured speakers include the following members of the OAEBUDT and TEMS teams:

• Christina Drummond, OAEBUDT Executive Director and Co-Chair of the Research Data Alliance’s IG on Dataspaces in the Research Ecosystem

As Executive Director of the OA Book Usage Data Trust effort, Christina has led the development of an extensible scholarly communications focused International Data Space (IDS) through an OA book usage data focused proof of concept. Prior to her current role, Christina held library faculty, research administration, and leadership positions at UNT, the Educopia Institute and ACLU of Washington. She holds professional certifications in AI governance, data stewardship, information privacy and design thinking.

• Sylvain Le Bon, Co-Founder Startin-Blox, Architect and Use Case Strategist TEMS

Sylvain is a cofounder of Startin’blox, a company specializing in decentralized data infrastructure and dataspace solutions. Along with other data space implementations, Sylvain has been instrumental in designing and implementing GDPR-compliant data connectors for the Trusted European Media Dataspace (TEMS). His work focuses on enabling secure, interoperable data sharing across industries, including media and publishing, to support content syndication and advertising analytics. Sylvain’s expertise lies in bridging technical innovation with practical business applications, ensuring that dataspace frameworks meet the evolving needs of enterprise-level data governance and AI integration.

• Vivian Berghahn, Managing Director, Berghahn Books

Vivian is the Managing Director of Berghahn Books. Her responsibilities include advancing a range of companywide initiatives, such as open access, and the strategic development of its overall publishing program. With 25 years of experience in academic publishing, Vivian has served on the AAP-PSP Committee and ALPSP Council and is currently on the Board of Trustees for the OA Book Usage Data Trust. Committed to exploring innovative and equitable models in publishing, she is a founding member of the Subscribe to Open Community of Practice.