How to Handle Article Processing Charges: Introduction to Open Access Key

Editor's Notes

• #3: Hopefully you have all heard of OAK. The Outsell Open Access Report published last year ranked as one to watch / after we had successfully introduced services to reduce friction and create a more efficient marketplace. If not – hopefully I can provide you with a bit more information
• #4: Anthony has very astutely organised this session not to discuss or debate open access publishing, but to create a forum to discuss what you and your colleagues are managing today as a consequence on the growth of the gold oa publishing model At heart, OA publishing is to the benefit of the research community and beyond. The business model has been a great development for the academic publishing community. But like all good ideas -
• #5: Including the quasi OA publishing slash self promotion by Apple and U2 who deliveried their new album for free whether you wanted it or not! Sometimes new developments create new challenges in daily use!
• #6: Oak was created in 2011 and we spent a year talking to academics, universities, librarians, finance managers, research funders and publishers. What we could see at that time was obvious to all. The new apc fee micropayment model had heaped additional responsibility and burden onto authors and university administrators and the way it was being handled was not efficient or scaleable. Payments were restricted to credit cards, or single publisher members schemes. Data collection and reporting were reliant on researchers completing internal documents and remembering to send them. And reports were incomplete. Oh yes and the cost
• #7: We carried out time and motion studies with researchers and their universities. With the time and processing charges it was working out that on average the additional cost for processing an apc fee was $150 per publication fee. That is on top of the actual apc fee. And in most cases, this cost was hidden as librarians and finance managers were having to cope with the increase in oa publications from their existing resources. It was often the library who were taking charge over coordinating both payment and publication admin. It was clear to us, we had to build a worflow tool that was unobtrusive, flexible and could deliver control to administrators
• #8: I come from Ireland, and we have a common expression when asked for directions. Spent a full year analysing the market and collecting business requirements from all participants We discovered there was Little or no connection between publishers, authors, universities and funders in apc and metadata submission management Little or no oversight from universities and funders on OA expenditure Reporting was inaccurate and costly to perform For OA submissions to continue to grow, researchers should have minimal (if any) role in the apc management.
• #10: We had to start from scratch. We decided to concentrate on 4 key factors. The system had to be easy to use and accessible to all It had to connect individual researchers to their faculty, to their library, to finance, to their funders and to publishers Administrators had to gain control and oversight of costs and publication data And we had to do this and save all participants the costs of their current proccesses
• #11: Today if you logged into your university account, you would be able to browse, search, create reports in your browser and download to excel. You can set up budget and expenditure caps on faculty, departments and individuals. You can manage both publisher deposit accounts and your own direct payments You have access to all financial and publication metadata details in one place
• #12: From your OAK account it provided oversight and access for all levels at the university
• #13: And the OAK account brought all your publisher accounts into one system
• #14: How do we do it We receive an invoice from a researcher, a university, a publisher It is logged and registered and we add article metadata from the publisher – article title, doi, url etc We can tag or request further payment details from users We can then work via the author to his administrator or by pass the author completely Once the payment is approved – we make payment And report on it We can forecast expenditure And we have users logging articles even if there is no apc as it is a great way for faculty, library and repository managers to gain data from one location
• #15: We have processed payments in almost 70 countries for over 240 universities and to 90 publishers. We have staff based in Ireland, Uk, Norway, Denmark, France and USA
• #16: Set up is easy – select your workflow – create budgets, select the publishers and structure your reporting An annual fee is charged – starting from $2000.
• #17: OAK’s mission is to enable researchers to spend their time and money on research and not on administration
• #18: Future development/ new launches for 2015
• #19: Many thanks