Dear PLUS Researchers,

It is recommended within the framework of the  Austrian Transition to Open Access project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Research and Science that all Open Access publication costs at a research institution/university be recorded and analysed in a structured manner [I]. This enables an analysis of the costs as a basis for decision-making by the Rectorate and can also serve as an empirically supported basis for publisher negotiations by the University Library Department (e.g. Springer, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, etc), in order to conclude needs-based Open Access contracts for PLUS researchers and to be able to provide the BM with information on real Open Access expenditure.

  • Currently, the PLUS can only provide information on Open Access publications (number, amount of funding) that are funded by the Open Access Publication Fund of the University Library Department or result from transformation contracts or OpenAccess agreements. In addition, there are also Open Access publications that are paid for directly, e.g. from a departmental budget or from third-party funds, etc. These invoices sent to the accounting system often do not allow any conclusion as to whether the costs are for an Open Access publication (journal article or monograph) or a conventional “closed access” publication. As a result, these costs are then booked by the central accounting system of the PLUS, for example, as printing costs or similar and not as Open Access publication costs.
  • In order to counteract this and to optimise future queries on Open Access publication costs, we kindly ask you on behalf of the Rectorate, to mark invoices for Open Access costs with the term “Open Access publication” in order to enable the PLUS accounting department to assign the correct type of cost.
  • Terms that indicate invoices relating to Open Access costs are e.g.: Open Access, APC, article processing charges, author processing charges, BPC, book processing charges, author fees …
  • Terms that indicate costs not related to Open Access charges are, for example: colour charges, page charges or submission charges.

Our colleague Linda Ohrtmann will be happy to assist you if you are unclear about the classification of Open Access publication costs:

Linda Ohrtmann, M.A.
Digital Library and Journals / Open Access
University Library of Salzburg
Email:

 

[I] Austrian Transition to Open Access. (2020). Recommendation for booking Open Access publication costs. Zenodo. DOI:  10.5281/zenodo.3945953