| GENERAL INFORMATION | |
| Publisher | PLOS |
| Agreement ID | plos2025tib |
| Agreement labeling | Publishing Services Order Form |
| Is the agreement document publicly available? | No |
| Agreement period | 1/1/2025 – 12/31/2026 |
| Consortia / Institution | TIB Consortium |
| Country | Germany |
| COST | |
| How do the costs of the agreement relate to the previous agreement with the publisher? | Cost increase |
| Comments on cost development | Cost increase due to coverage of the entire portfolio (Flat Fee, Community Action and Global Equity) and adjustment to “true” publication output (compared to beneficial terms of (tiered) pilot agreement 2023-2024) |
| Describe how the cost model has changed from the previous agreement (e.g., move from subscription to R&P / from capped to uncapped / from single APC payments to flat fee, etc.) | Continuation of a previous agreement (2023-2024) covering the whole portfolio |
| PUBLISHING-RELATED TERMS | |
| Publication output
What is the approximate number of annual corresponding author publications from your institution/consortium with the publisher (in closed, hybrid and fully OA journals)? |
180 |
| Is the agreement’s provision for OA publishing capped (e.g., limited to a specific number of articles per year) or uncapped? | Uncapped |
| Coverage
Are all journals relevant to your affiliated authors (i.e., journals in which you expect them to publish) eligible for OA publishing under the agreement? |
Yes |
| Are APC-based full open access journals covered by the agreement? | Yes, the agreement only covers APC-based fully OA titles (publishing-only agreement) |
| Are journals operating under other business models (S2O, Diamond OA, etc.) covered by the agreement? | No |
| Article types
Eligible article types |
Original research articles, Review articles |
| Risk sharing
What risk-sharing mechanisms exist in cases of exceeding or not reaching the anticipated number of OA publications under the agreement? |
No risk-sharing mechanism |
| Comments on publishing-related terms | This agreement covers the entire portfolio (Flat Fee, Community Action, and Global Equity titles) |
| OA WORKFLOW | |
| Author workflow and verification
The date for articles’ eligibility is based on: |
Acceptance date |
| Describe the mechanisms used by the publisher for matching authors with an eligible institution: | PIDs (Ringgold, ROR, ORCID, etc.) |
| How do consortia or institutions verify author eligibility and approve OA funding? | Via publication reports (post-publication) |
| Does the agreement include mechanisms to correct mistakenly approved, missed, or not approved publications (e.g., retrospective OA conversion of closed articles or refunding paid APCs)? | Yes |
| Does the publisher’s reporting on publications satisfy the needs of your institution (frequency, metadata fields, data quality, etc.)? | No |
| Comments on publisher reporting | Data quality in the reports is not consistent, and reports are arriving late (or not at all) |
| May authors be charged additional publication fees (such as page charges, article development charges, etc.)? | No |
| How would you assess the practical implementation of the agreement? | Deficient |
| Comments on workflows | There is a lot of manual correcting / re-assigning / re-imbursement and long response times on the side of publisher. Reports are not satisfactory (lacking in accuracy, completeness, timeliness and validity). |
| PUBLISHING LICENSES | |
| Author’s licenses
Open access license types included |
CC BY mandatory |
| Has the author workflow been customized to direct authors to a certain license (e.g., by making the option for CC BY the preselected default)? | Yes |
| If the agreement covers licenses more restrictive than CC BY, do the License to Publish agreements (LtPs) offered to authors differ from the publisher’s standard LtP? | Not part of the negotiations/not discussed |
| OVERALL ASSESSMENT AND COMMENTS | |
| Please share your overall assessment of this agreement with the community. Were negotiation goals (such as open access, cost development, etc.) reached? Which elements would have to be adjusted in future agreements? | The benefit of this agreement for consortium members is its coverage of the entire portfolio (FF, CAP & GE) at one negotiated annual fee. This makes a modest surcharge acceptable. Improvements in reporting/data quality, workflow and customer support are needed. |
Request contact to the licensee: contact@esac-initiative.org
