INTACT – Collecting data on fee-based Open Access publishing

Abstract

See video of the presentation.

The transformation from a subscription based journal market to a fee-based Open Access publishing requires a monitoring of  APC expenditures. This is not only necessary to ensure price transparency on a developing APC market. In fact funding organizations, library consortia and other stakeholders need a valid data base to be able to evaluate Open Access funding policies or transformation strategies.

The presentation will give a short overview about existing initiatives to collect APC data and will then introduce the new project “INTACT  - Transparent Infrastructure for fee-based Open Access publishing”. The project, which is funded by the “German Research Foundation” (DFG) and supported by the “DINI working group Electronic Publishing” is a cooperation of Bielefeld University Library, the “Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science” (I2SoS) at Bielefeld University and the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL). The INTACT approach combines a bibliometric analysis of fee-based Open Access publishing in academic institutions with establishing a standardised reporting and open data service for APC data. By working together with the ESAC initiative (http://esac-initiative.org/), the project wants to increase the efficiency of Open Access publishing workflows in universities and research organizations together with leading Open Access publishers.

INTACT uses Open Science workflows for aggregation, use and reuse of APC data. Even before  the official start, 21 german universities and 5 research society funds are providing their data into a GitHub-Repository (http://openapc.github.io/), the datasets are available under a Open Database License. Due to DFG funding policy for Open Access publication funds in Germany, the whole dataset releases  currently information on more than 3.200 articles in real open access journals, which charge publication fees, and total expenditures for more than 4 million EURO. But information about Open Access articles in toll-access journals ("hybrid") are provided as well. Further more, the presentation discusses basic requirements for creating an international network for analyzing and monitoring fee-based Open Access publishing.