Shaping the Parameters of Offsetting
1st ESAC Workshop in Munich | 7-8 March 2016
Directly affecting the existing corpus of scientific journals, “offsetting” agreements seem to be a promising approach when it comes to achieving a substantial switch to open access. Unlike with many other open access strategies, researchers -for the first time- won’t have to leave their natural publishing habits in order to comply with open access. Instead of many minute and often isolated efforts at persuading researchers and establishing alternative infrastructures for scientific publishing, the principles of offsetting provide a simple redefinition of the underlying business model with the potential of bringing the desired breakthrough.
Currently, the number of offsetting pilots is manageable: only a few library consortia have adopted or negotiated such models yet. With regards to its huge potential for open access it seems to be a timely moment to start the discussion about shaping the parameters of this new business model.
To this purpose, the Max Planck Digital Library within the scope of the ESAC initiative and in cooperation with the Austrian Academic Consortium and Open Access Network Austria hosts a two-day workshop on agreement models currently known as “ofsetting”. Contract experts and negotiators as well as practitioners who are or will be involved in the operative implementation of such agreements have been invited to participate and to contribute to the workshop.
The aim is to exchange experiences with the different mechanisms that are currently in place, while focusing especially on both publisher’s business processes and institutional workflows. Building on the “Principles for Offset Agreements” recently published by JISC , the event wants to explore ways and means to strengthen international cooperation on this subject.