[GOAL] It’s the workflows, stupid! What is required to make ‘offsetting’ work for the open access transition

[Kai Karin Geschuhn]

++Apologies for cross-posting++

Dear colleagues,

May I draw your attention to a recent UKSG Insights article on the requirements for offsetting agreements in terms of their strategic goal and the necessary workflow improvements:

Geschuhn, K. & Stone, G., (2017). It’s the workflows, stupid! What is required to make ‘offsetting’ work for the open access transition. Insights. 30(3), pp.103–114. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.391

The paper makes the case for stronger engagement of libraries and consortia when it comes to negotiating and drafting offsetting agreements. Two workshops organized by the Efficiencies and Standards for Article Charges (ESAC) initiative in 2016 and 2017 have shown a clear need for an improvement of the current workflows and processes between academic institutions (and libraries) and the publishers they use in terms of author identification, metadata exchange and invoicing. Publishers need to invest in their editorial systems, while institutions need to get a clearer understanding of the strategic goal of offsetting. To this purpose, strategic and practical elements, which should be included in the agreements, will be introduced. Firstly, the Joint Understanding of Offsetting, launched in 2016, will be discussed. This introduces the ‘pay-as-you-publish’ model as a transitional pathway for the agreements. Secondly, this paper proposes a set of recommendations for article workflows and services between institutions and publishers, based on a draft document which was produced as part of the 2nd ESAC Offsetting Workshop in March 2017. These recommendations should be seen as a minimum set of practical and formal requirements for offsetting agreements and are necessary to make any publication-based open access business model work.

Best regards,
Kai Geschuhn


Ms. Kai Karin Geschuhn
Innovative Services & Open Access
Max Planck Digital Library
Amalienstraße 33 | 80799 München
Phone +49 (0) 89 38602 253
Fax +49 (0) 89 38602 290
geschuhn at mpdl.mpg.de<mailto:geschuhn at mpdl.mpg.de>
www.mpdl.mpg.de<http://www.mpdl.mpg.de>
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5849-8751

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