Open Archives Initiative (OAI)

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is a collaborative effort that enables digital collections, like academic papers, research datasets, and other scholarly materials, to be shared and accessed efficiently across different platforms. By establishing technical standards—particularly the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting—it allows libraries, repositories, and institutions to easily gather metadata (descriptive information about content) from multiple sources. This enhances discoverability, interoperability, and access to scholarly resources worldwide, supporting researchers, students, and educators in finding relevant information more easily.