Many countries have set up open access policies and mandates over the past years. To put political strategies into practice, consortia around the world have started to negotiate transformative open access agreements replacing their former subscription licenses. Principles, guidelines, checklists, and recommendations have been developed locally and in cooperation with ESAC to guide the negotiations and implementation. This overview collects the resources available in order to support the library and consortia community in developing common principles as well as implementation standards.
LIBER Five Principles for Negotiations with Publishers
LIBER, Europe’s leading association of research libraries, set up Five Principles for libraries to use when conducting Open Access negotiations with publishers:
Licensing and Open Access go Hand-in-Hand – The world of subscription deals and APC-deals are closely linked. Nobody should pay for subscriptions and pay APCs at the same time (‘double dipping’). Each new license agreed on should therefore contain conditions about both sides of the coin. Increased spending on APCs should result in proportionately lower spending on subscription fees.
No Open Access, No Price Increase – There is enough money in the system already. Libraries have paid annual price increases of up to 8% for years, supposedly to allow publishers to innovate. A key feature of innovation for the research community is that research outputs are freely available. Therefore if an agreement with publishers on Open Access cannot be reached in our contracts, future price increases should not be accepted.
Transparency for Licensing Deals: No Non-Disclosure – The practices of libraries should fully reflect their commitment to Open Access. Licensing agreements should therefore be openly available. Society will not accept confidential agreements paid for with public money in the form of non-disclosure agreements, as recent developments in Finland and The Netherlands have shown.
Keep Access Sustainable – To avoid putting more money in the system, and to strengthen Open Access, some libraries have given up their rights to perpetual access in license agreement. Perpetual access is, however, critical in a quickly-changing publishing environment. Libraries must secure sustainable access to content.
Usage Reports Should Include Open Access – Although APC-buyouts are becoming more common, reporting about Open Access is still rare. Just as libraries receive reports about downloads and usage in the subscription world, they should also receive reports on Open Access publications. It is normal to receive insight into what we pay for.
Building on the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities and on the progress that has been achieved so far, we are pursuing the large-scale implementation of free online access to, and largely unrestricted use and re-use of scholarly research articles.
We recognize and endorse various ways of implementing open access (OA), including the development of new OA publishing platforms, archives and repositories. In scholarly journal publishing, OA has gained a substantial and increasing volume. Most journals, however, are still based on the subscription business model with its inherent deficiencies in terms of access, cost-efficiency, transparency, and restrictions of use.
To gain the full benefits of OA and enable a smooth, swift and scholarly oriented transition, the existing corpus of scholarly journals should be converted from subscription to open access. Recent developments and studies indicate that this transition process can be realized within the framework of currently available resources.
With this statement, we express our interest in establishing an international initiative for the OA transformation of scholarly journals, and we agree upon the following key aspects:
We aim to transform a majority of today’s scholarly journals from subscription to OA publishing in accordance with community-specific publication preferences. At the same time, we continue to support new and improved forms of OA publishing.
We will pursue this transformation process by converting resources currently spent on journal subscriptions into funds to support sustainable OA business models. Accordingly, we intend to re-organize the underlying cash flows, to establish transparency with regard to costs and potential savings, and to adopt mechanisms to avoid undue publication barriers.
We invite all parties involved in scholarly publishing, in particular universities, research institutions, funders, libraries, and publishers to collaborate on a swift and efficient transition for the benefit of scholarship and society at large.
Specific steps and milestones for the transformation process shall be outlined in a roadmap to be further developed in the course of this initiative. We see the initiative as one element of a more profound evolution of the academic publishing system that will lead to major improvements in scholarly communication and research evaluation.
Open Access 2020 – FINAL CONFERENCE STATEMENT, 14th Berlin Open Access Conference
Participants from 37 nations and five continents, representing research performing and research funding institutions, libraries and government higher education associations and rectors’ conferences, associations of researchers and other open access initiatives gathered at the 14th Berlin Open Access Conference held 3-4 December 2018 in Berlin. They affirmed that there is a strong alignment among the approaches taken by OA2020, Plan S, the Jussieu Call and others to facilitate a full and complete transition to open access. The statement that follows represents the strong consensus of all of those represented at the meeting.
We are all committed to authors retaining their copyrights, We are all committed to complete and immediate open access, We are all committed to accelerating the progress of open access through transformative agreements that are temporary and transitional, with a shift to full open access within a very few years. These agreements should, at least initially, be cost-neutral, with the expectation that economic adjustments will follow as the markets transform.
Publishers are expected to work with all members of the global research community to effect complete and immediate open access according to this statement.
Nordic Countries – Nordic consortia open access commitments
Consortia from Europe’s Nordic countries Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland have developed a joint checklist intended for the use of consortium or library staff negotiating open access agreements with publishers addressing the following principles:
To ensure a successful transition to open access, the following guiding principles apply to all negotiations:
* Articles with corresponding authors from Norway shall be openly available at the time of publishing
* Publishing open access shall not increase total costs
* License agreements, costs and business models must be fully transparent
* Perpetual access to content published in subscription journals must be granted
* Agreements should demonstrate a move towards models where costs are related to the volume of Norwegian article output
In July 2018 Universities Norway (UHR) gave their full support to Unit’s negotiation principles and nominated representatives from the rectorates at the universities of Oslo and Bergen to participate in the negotiations with Elsevier.
Southern European Libraries Link (SELL) – Statement
In May 2018, consortia from Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Israel, members of the SELL group, reiterate their full support to open access and their commitment to speed up the transition. Sharing the analysis that “there is currently enough money in the (publishing) system” and that the money spent on subscriptions is now to be considered as an investment to support open access, SELL consortia agree on the following principles:
Journal subscription current spending must be used to fund the transition to open access at no cost increase, because we invested already enough money in the system
All journal subscription agreements with scientific publishers should include an open access component, based on green road, gold road, or both– at no extra cost
When reaching such agreements reveals not to be possible, standard subscription agreements not including any open access component should be concluded at a reduced cost. This cost reduction will thus generate savings available to be invested in open access, alternative publishing roads or alternative publishers.
Immediate open access should be the norm. As a first step towards full and immediate open access, we could temporarily and transitionally accept a delayed open access, in any case no longer than 6 months after publication (12 months in Humanities).
Science publications and research results being a part of the world heritage of mankind, the long-term preservation of research output is a crucial issue; public institutions and libraries have a responsibility for long-term preservation of research publications. Consequently, all agreements with publishers must include archival rights for all the subscribed content and long-term preservation with a local hosting option. Archival and local hosting rights must be granted by the publisher at no extra cost, as a standard component of any subscription or “publish and read” deal.
Cost transparency being a key-issue, because science information publishing is funded by public money, we are willing to make public our data concerning science information subscription and publishing costs; we highlight the interest of the European University Association (EUA) Big Deals survey and encourage EUA to make public the aggregated data concerning Europe science information expenditure.
HEAL-Link (Hellenic Academic Libraries Link), in the framework of its activity to strengthen Open Access in Greece, explores systematically the ways and means for the transition to a new scientific publication landscape, which will be sustainable and beneficial to the public academic and research institutions. In this process, HEAL-Link participates in international initiatives, evaluates the developments and weighs them, taking into account the benefit for the Greek scientific community. HEAL-Link’s Declaration on Open Access in Greece expresses its concerns about the inadequacy of the current scientific publication model and explicitly states the direct initiatives that it undertakes. The Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs, through Minister Kostas Gavroglou, supports the “Declaration on Open Access in Greece”. The Minister’s assent to the text of the Declaration was expressed after a meeting with the Chairperson of HEAL-Link, Professor Theodora Ioannidou, on the 31st of May 2018, at the Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs.
The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) developed a strategy comprising five pillars of open access. Negotiations with publishers on open access agreements is one key element of the five-pillars-strategy. As a principle, the Dutch universities want to transform their former subscription contracts to open access agreements at no extra costs.
On June 2018, the University of California’s Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee (SLASIAC) issued a Call to Action in which they announced their intent to embark on a new phase of activity in journal negotiations focused on open access to research.
In the Call to Action, seven strategic priorities for journal negotiations have been formulated:
We will prioritize making immediate open access publishing available to UC authors as part of our negotiated agreements.
We will prioritize agreements that lower the cost of research access and dissemination, with sustainable, cost-based fees for OA publication. Payments for OA publication should reduce the cost of subscriptions at UC and elsewhere.
We will prioritize agreements with publishers who are transparent about the amount of APC-funded content within their portfolios, and who share that information with customers as well as the public.
We will prioritize agreements that enable UC to achieve expenditure reductions in our licenses when necessary, without financial penalty.
We will prioritize agreements that make any remaining subscription content available under terms that fully reflect academic values and norms, including the broadest possible use rights.
We will prioritize agreements that allow UC to share information about the open access provisions with all interested stakeholders, and we will not agree to non-disclosure requirements in our licenses.
We will prioritize working proactively with publishers who help us achieve a full transition to open access in accordance with the principles and pathways articulated by our faculty and our libraries.
The Call to Action appeared alongside discussion of another recently-released University of California document, the Declaration of Rights and Principles to Transform Scholarly Communication.
USA – Iowa State University: University Library’s Principles for Advancing Openness through Journal Negotiations
On October 15, the Iowa State University Faculty Senate unanimously passed a resolution that supports the University Library’s Principles for Advancing Openness through Journal Negotiations.
The journal negotiation principles, adopted this summer, help the University Library advance openness and achieve financial sustainability and greater transparency. The principles and the support they have received will provide useful guidance to the library in its current and future negotiations, helping to inform journal publishers about what is most important at Iowa State.
The resolution’s three main points are:
Prioritize openness through open access sources
Reject nondisclosure language in agreements with publishers
Pursue financially sustainable journal agreements
The University Library Advisory Committee, representing faculty, students, and staff, has also written a letter of endorsement for the principles. These actions demonstrate strong support for the library in managing journal costs and advancing open access.
China – OA2020 Mainland China Signatory Libraries Discussed a Response To Plan S Guidance on Implementation
Mainland China signatory libraries of OA2020 Initiative Expression of Interest held a meeting March 26, 2019, at the National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, to discuss a response to Plan S Guidance on Implementation.
The followings are the discussed response to Plan S Guidance on Implementation:
1.We are in broad support of Plan S and its goals to ensure immediate and complete open access to journal articles resulting from publicly funded research to the world. We applaud the effort of Plan S to provide strong incentives to make research open access. We support an international effort to achieve this goal worldwide as soon as possible.
2.We fully recognize that the need for forceful and accountable policies by public funders in research, education, and libraries, to facilitate open access against various entrenched interests or the inertia of the status quo. We urge all in research, education, publishing, platforms, repositories, and libraries to engage diligently in transformative efforts abreast with time to meet the challenges.
3.We support the Final Conference Statement of the 14th Berlin Conference on Open Access with its commitments. We urge all the publishers to work with the global research community to effect complete and immediate open access according to the Statement.
4.We support the principles and roadmaps of OA2020 Initiative which aims to transform a majority of today’s scholarly journals from subscription to OA publishing, while continues to support new forms of OA publishing. We believe the transition process can be realized within the framework of currently available resources.We see no legitimate reasons for, and will object to, any attempts to increase spending from the original subscribing institutions in the transformation.
5.We support that authors retain copyrights of their publications in open access publishing through journals or open access platforms.
6.We support that open access publications are made under open licenses. We support the use of the CC-BY license as the preferred one but recommend that other CC licenses also be allowed as compliant to Plan S.
7.We recognize the strong need for compliant requirements, agreed by the research communities, for open access journals and platforms. We agree that infrastructural instruments like DOAJ and OpenDOAR can be utilized to help identifying and signaling compliance, but we urge that cOAlition S and other funders recognize and support other appropriate mechanisms for the purpose and require any such instruments are put under international oversight by the global research community to ensure their no-for-profit nature, inclusiveness, objectiveness, integrity, and efficiency.
8.We commend the recognition by Plan S that there exist different models of financing and paying for Open Access publication. We support an inclusive range of immediate open access publishing approaches. We support the transparency and monitoring of open access publication costs and fees.
9.We urge that cOAlition S and other funders, through Plan S or other means, provide financial support for no-fee OA journals. The wide range of support approaches tono-fee OA journalsshould be encouragedto enhance the diversity of open access publishing and competiveness of publishing market, and to avoid the perverse effect of giving no-fee journals an incentive to start charging fees. While the support can start with general term statements, measures can be timely designed and tested to encourage quality, integrity, transparency and openness, and increasing host investment and other diverse and appropriate income.
10.We support that where article processing charges (APCs) apply, efforts are made to establish a fair and reasonable APC level, including equitable waiver policies, that reflects the costs involved in the quality assurance, editing, and publishing process and how that adds value to the publication.We hold it very important that any such effort should take into consideration of the diversity in the world to ensure applicability and affordability of any such measures across countries and disciplines.
11.We commend the support and requirements of Plan S for financing APCs for open access publication in subscription journals (‘hybrid Open Access’) only under transformative agreements. These agreements should be temporary and transitional, with a shift to full open access within a very few years.
12.We understand the purposes and the benefits of using ORCIDs in journal publications. Considering different paces of adopting ORCID in different regions and disciplines, we recommend that it is implemented as a preferred condition, at least in the short beginning years. We recommend the same treatment for using DOI.
13.We support the Plan S recommendation that “all publications and also other research outputs deposited in open repositories.” We recommend that Plan S make full acknowledge and use of the full range of capabilities of open repositories to support open access, long-term preservation, research management, and re-use.
14.We encourage that Plan S takes the transformative green OA mechanism as one of venues to implement open access, as long as the embargo period of compliant green OA repositories should be reduced to zero in a short time.
15.We understand the purposes and the benefits of automatic ingest of publications, JATS XML format, Open API to allow others (including machines) to access, QA process to integrate full text with core abstract and indexing services. We support the efforts to work toward adapting to these or equivalent techniques for more efficient processing and better use of open access content. We call on publishers and libraries to strive for this. However, at the beginning, we recommend that these are implemented as preferred measures. Other means of ingest, different machine-readable publication formats, alternative Open APIs or even temporarily lacking of Open APIs, and other means of QA should be allowed as compliant. At the same time common best practice guidelines and infrastructural support should be developed with international consultation to make the best and easy use of these or other equivalent methods or techniques.
16.We recommend that Plan S add as a requirement that, either by national laws or regulations, or by grant contract requirements, that funded authors retain sufficient and non-exclusive rights to deposit their publications into open repositories.
17.We commend and support the intention of cOAlition S and other public funders to support mechanisms for establishing Open Access journals, platforms, and infrastructures where necessary in order to provide routes to open access publication in all disciplines. We encourage efforts by funders to increase the innovation and competitiveness of open access publishing and open access infrastructural instruments.
UK – JISC Collection’s requirements for transformative Open Access agreements
UK academic institutions and sector agencies, working alongside Jisc Collections, have established the requirements for 2019 which set out the measures required to accelerate open access in the UK:
that the agreement will enable the UK to publish 100% of its UK research output OA on publication
a commitment to a transition away from the subscription model / hybrid model within an agreed timescale
how the model will break the link between legacy pricing models, such as historic print spend, and enable the implementation of new models more appropriate in an OA environment and thus overcome the need for a hybrid model
The UK is a first mover in OA and has invested heavily in supporting the transition to OA. We expect publishers to recognise the investment of first movers and incentivise a rapid global transition through agreements that do not place all risk or penalise first movers and which do not deter other institutions, consortia or countries from adopting transitional agreements.
2: Agreements must constrain costs
The agreement must:
enable institutions to publish 100% of their research OA and continue to access paywalled articles for a similar total cost to that being paid previously to the publisher under the subscription model
continually reduce the cost of access to subscription content in recognition of the commitment to a transition as in the requirement above. offer affordable and sustainable fees for publishing – whether that be through APCs or simple discount mechanisms
commit to constraining price increases for all elements of the agreement (10) , including APCs – any increases should be fair and affordable and linked to economic indicators, for example CPI
Access costs to subscription content for UK institutions and elsewhere should reflect on an article level the amount of funded OA within a journal title. Agreements with illusory or complicated discount mechanisms, such as the application of discount codes, add costs and inefficiencies to the system and should be avoided. We are of the view that ‘Read and Publish’ models covering all UK research output for one fee are currently the most efficient in terms of article processing and payment.
Agreements should recognise that institutions are diverse and need different options that recognise differing levels of publishing output and that institutions are at different stages of OA adoption.
3: Agreements must aid compliance with funder mandates
The agreement must enable institutions and authors to comply with funder mandates by:
committing to funder embargo periods as a maximum (11) to support open access via the green route.
implementing processes that assign the specific licensing terms required by the funder, such as CC BY, and make clear to the author that this is a requirement of funding
committing to join the Publications Router to reduce amount of time taken to deposit papers into repositories and to make compliance via the green route less onerous for institutions and researchers
4: Agreements must be transparent
It is in the public interest, not only that publicly funded research has the widest possible reach but that the costs and details of the transition to open access and its progress be openly available so the sector can benchmark and better understand where investment or divestment is required and improve processes.
The agreement must:
allow details of all costs, pricing models and terms of the agreement to be made publicly available online
include a commitment by the publisher to openly publish on an annual basis: – a breakdown of how their global offset is calculated and what the offset is for each year of the agreement – details of which titles have ‘flipped to OA’ that were previously paid for through subscriptions – the number of articles published by each hybrid journal included in the agreement on an annual basis – the number of OA articles published in each hybrid journal on an annual basis – the number and details of all OA articles published in the hybrid journals included in the agreement by year, by corresponding authors of each institution.
Public funds and collective effort have assisted the transformation of titles to OA. OA titles should remain OA and not revert to paywall access under subscription models.
5: Agreements must support improvements in service and workflow for authors and administrators
The agreement must:
evidence a commitment to improving the processes and workflows associated with managing open access to leverage greater efficiencies (12)
include service and performance levels and provide a compensation mechanism should the agreed levels not be met
implement and meet the OA publisher services detailed in the ESAC recommendations
The agreement must:
include the adoption and implementation of ORCID
expose author ORCIDs in published articles and via A&I services, CrossRef, other discovery services to allow the identification publishing outputs from a given individual and institution.
register the article’s DOI on CrossRef. The publisher undertakes to register the article’s DOI with CrossRef upon acceptance, and inform all co-authors
The agreement must:
identify funders of institutional research by populating funding metadata, including funding body and grant number, in Funding Data (on CrossRef) and on the publisher’s site so institutions can report to funders and show compliance levels
The agreement must:
apply article level OA licensing terms to ensure institutional readers/users understand what they may do with a given article and repository staff and related services act upon the correct article licensing terms
include clear licensing terms at article level as soon as content is publicly exposed for each version of the article: Accepted Manuscript (AM) and Version of Record (VoR), ideally by populating the LicenseRef metadata on CrossRef for both the AM and the VoR, as well as in a human-readable form
Switzerland – Negotiating strategy of swissuniversities
Switzerland’s rectors’ conference of higher education institutions, swissuniversities, are revising the national contracts on access to academic journals with the major publishers Springer Nature, Wiley and Elsevier to include open access components. The negotiating strategy is based on an approach already used in numerous other European countries, e.g. Germany, and corresponds to the general principles of the European network LIBER. The strategy foresees that Switzerland expressly heeds its demands regarding licensing to achieve appropriate, transparent pricing for access to academic information and greater accessibility to publications in accordance with the open access standard.
A “read & publish” approach is favoured, aimed at compensating publishing houses for the articles published from Swiss universities plus a fee for access to the complete content in lieu of the classic subscriptions for accessing journals. The main idea is to transform publishing and establish a new business and price model geared towards the publications. The negotiation goals are based on the principles of LIBER:
Licences and open access are closely linked: No institution should pay licence fees for access to the contents and additional article processing charges (APCs; “double-dipping”). The payment of APCs should lead to a proportional reduction of the licence fees. This is to be regulated in the new licence contracts.
No open access, no price increase: Overall, the universities invest a lot of money in journal subscriptions, which are subject to annual price increases. On the academic publication market, however, the demand for open access publication models is on the increase. Providers must meet these needs. Therefore, price increases are no longer acceptable.Transparency of the licence contracts:
The licence contracts are paid from public funds. Accordingly, their contents should also be open access. Socially, confidentiality clauses are no longer accepted.
Guaranteeing long-term access to content that is already licensed: In order to prevent libraries from spending more money on licences and boost open access, some libraries have relinquished long-term access to licensed content in the past. However, this access is crucial in a rapidly developing market and must be guaranteed.
Usage data should contain open access: Although APC payments are becoming increasingly important, the quality of the reports on publications and paid services is unsatisfactory. Alongside usage figures with accesses and downloads, libraries should also be able to access automated reports on open access publications at any time.
Cost neutrality: Open access should not lead to higher costs in the medium and long term, even though additional costs may be incurred in the conversion phase.
Minimising administrative burden: While switching to a new model, the necessary administrative burden for researchers and libraries should be kept to a minimum.
Austria – Recommendations for the Transition to Open Access in Austria
In 2016, an expert Group “National Strategy” of the Open Access Network Austria (OANA) and Universities Austria (uniko) published 16 recommendations designed to bring open access to a large part of all scholarly publication activity in Austria by 2025. Regarding the negotiation of publisher agreements, the recommendations state:
(a) From 2016 onward, license agreements with publishers should be concluded in a manner that the research publications of authors from Austria are automatically published Open Access. (b) All contracts from 2020 onward should include this clause. (c) Contracts and prices should be made public. (d) In their negotiations with publishers, the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ) should be supported by the executives of the research organisations.
The essence of transitional Open Access (OA) agreements is to contain journal subscription fees and article processing charges (APC) within a single contractual framework. For the benefit of the research community, as well as for the efficient use of public funds, these agreements facilitate a swift and full transition to Open Access in a sustainable, cost-neutral way.
Principles for transitional Open Access agreements
1. Transition to Open Access should constrain costs of the current subscription model. These agreements must ultimately lead to a purely publication-based OA model. 2. Corresponding authors affiliated at consortium member institutions must be able to publish Open Access articles without further delay and without any additional costs. 3. Articles must be published under CC-BY licence. 4. Workflows of transitional agreements should follow the Recommendations for article workflows and services for offsetting/open access transformation agreements by Efficiency and Standards in Article Charges (ESAC) initiative, with special respect to the registration article-level metadata in Crossref and the standardised identification of authors. 5. Agreements must be transparent and publicly available, following the Hungarian legislation. 6. Perpetual access to content published in subscription journals must be granted to the consortium member institutions.
Declaration
The Programme Board mandates EISZ to sign national-level agreements for journal collections only in case the above principles are met and become apparent in the licences.
The Programme Board strongly supports the collaboration with the domestic and international communities to enable a rapid and efficient transition to Open Access.
The goal of Project DEAL is to conclude nationwide licensing agreements for the entire portfolio of electronic journals (E-journals) from major academic publishers. The underlying principles of the agreements to be negotiated are adequate pricing (within the range of the current spending level) and open access to the German article output (CC-BY).
Germany – Positions on creating an Open Access publication market which is scholarly adequate
In 2015, a working group of the German Alliance of Science Organisations published a position paper aiming at improving transparency and sustainability in the field of scholarly publishing and its transition to open access. It is directed at scholarly institutions dealing with aspects of Open Access publishing, and bundles and evaluates the requirements for contracts based on the publication cost model. .
EIFL principles for negotiating open access agreements with publishers
As a not-for-profit organization working with libraries in dozens of developing and transition economy countries in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America, EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) aims to advance and facilitate the sharing of scholarly content worldwide. Read their proposed basic principles for establishing negotiations of open access agreements with publishers here.
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