The OA Switchboard initiative is a not-for-profit collaboration between funders, institutions and publishers to provide essential infrastructure to facilitate the fulfilment of open access strategies across business models, policies and agreements. The OA Switchboard is the independent intermediary, connecting parties and systems, streamlining communication and the neutral exchange of Open Access related publication-level information, and ensuring a financial settlement.
ELITEX won the OA Switchboard RFI in early 2020 in a competition with 20 other applicants, providing the best answer to the immediate requirements and showing the best experience in the scholarly information or solutions space, and evidence of competency in developing and delivering open source solutions
After being selected as the tech partner, ELITEX put together a development team for the OA Switchboard and began work on the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) immediately. The MVP was delivered in 6 iterations, total 13 weeks, within budget and timelines. After go-live with the MVP, the next stage of the project commenced, which was the Pilot phase bringing onboard publishers, institutions and funders. Throughout 2020, the project (overseen by OASPA) ran to prepare for the OA Switchboard to go live as an operational solution
The OA Switchboard moved to the operational stage on 1 January 2021, now run from an independent foundation (Stichting OA Switchboard) with ELITEX as their tech partner