Arjan Schalken (UKB consortium) Read & Publish agreements are a main driver in the worldwide uptake of open access. More and more consortia and individual research organizations are closing deals with publishers. Despite the effort and expertise invested in the process of negotiation and drafting the contract, the real open access results are achieved during the execution of the agreement. Based on lessons learned from the consortium of Dutch University Libraries (UKB) five ways to optimize open access uptake will be presented.

1. Five ways to optimize open access uptake
after a signed Read & Publish deal
Lessons learned from the Dutch UKB consortium
Arjan Schalken, program manager UKB
a.f.schalken@vu.nl - @arjanschalken - linkedin.com/in/arjanschalken/

2. Introduction
➢About the Dutch UKB consortium
➢About me
➢About this presentation

3. 14 Universities 7 University Medical Centers
powered by
About the Dutch UKB consortium

4. Source: https://esac-initiative.org/market-watch/#country_shares www.openaccess.nl/en/in-the-netherlands/you-share-we-take-care www.openscience.nl
Read & Publish deals since 2015 - Repository strategy since 2019 - Part of OS strategy 2030
About the Dutch UKB consortium
2021: +/- 80% of the corresponding and co-author articles are published or shared in Open Access

5. About me
➢Program manager Dutch UKB consortium
➢Improve impact and efficiency
➢Realization of data warehouse to support decision making
➢Advise UKB on open access strategy
➢National project manager Implementation article 25fa Copyright Law
to support sharing publication in the repository (green open access):
You Share, We Take Care

6. About this presentation: 5 main topics
1. Transparency
2. Communication
3. Workflow
4. Data
5. Openness
➢Q&A

7. Happy with the new Read & Publish deal?

8. Five ways to optimize open access uptake
after a signed Read & Publish deal
1. Be transparent about the provisions of the contract

9. 1. Be transparent about the provisions
of the contract: challenges
➢Different stakeholders need different types of information
➢Increasing number of contracts (2022: 16, 2025: >25?)
➢Contracts are not standardized (even if you have a model license)
➢Contracts are legal documents so not easy readable
➢More and more library staff involved in open access services

10. 1. Be transparent about the provisions
of the contract: solutions
Key info publicly available

11. 1. Be transparent about the provisions
of the contract: solutions
Detailed info in compact knowledge base
➢ Publisher
➢ End year contract
➢ Participating institutes
➢ Type journals (hybrid / full OA)
➢ Portfolio dynamics
➢ License options
➢ Funder compliance attention points
➢ Article types in deal
➢ Cap (yes/no, amount)
➢ Eligible authors (description)
➢ Workflow filters eligible articles (Y/N)
➢ Current workflow issues
➢ Repair options for missed OA
➢ Reporting (dashboard, email)
➢ Other current issues

12. 1. Be transparent about the provisions
of the contract: solutions
Actual overview of all journals that are part of a consortium deal:
the SURF journal Catalogue

13. Five ways to optimize open access uptake
after a signed Read & Publish deal
2. Communicate to the author on the right
moment with the right information

14. 2. Communicate to the author on the right
moment with the right information: challenges
General overview pages are not useful enough
➢ Information not specific enough
➢information is not dynamic, especially with a capped deal
➢Authors also want historical info (what was the status when I
submitted my article)

15. 2. Communicate to the author on the right
moment with the right information: solution
Developed and hosted by
Consortium contract data provided by
➢ Since 2018
➢ 38.000+ journals
➢ Design: corporate identity
➢ Information: consortium & local deals

16. ➢ Participating institutes
➢ Eligible authors
➢ Eligibile article types
➢ % discount
➢ Start & end date
➢ Cap status (if applicable)

18. Five ways to optimize open access uptake
after a signed Read & Publish deal
3. Invest in talks with publishers about
workflow improvement

19. 3. Invest in talks with publishers about
workflow improvement: under performance
Underperformance is not solved by better marketing but by better workflow!
➢Survey: UKB asked 100+ eligible authors why they didn’t make use of a deal. Only
1 author stated that he was against OA deals. All others mentioned they were not
aware that there was a deal / thought they were not eligible, were afraid for costs
(for example when the OA request is rejected), etc.
➢Baseline when talking with publishers about a good OA workflow: 95% of authors
that are presented the option to publish OA make use of the consortium
agreement.
➢In practice, some publishers struggle to reach 80% uptake and some score
(almost) 100%.

20. 3. Invest in talks with publishers about
workflow improvement: challenges
What causes underperformance?
➢Information overload
➢Information not clear enough (consortium name not recognized)
➢Usage of trigger words (‘charge’, ‘costs’, ‘pay’)
➢To much administration tasks and open options (process not finished)

21. 3. Invest in talks with publishers about
workflow improvement: solutions (1)
➢Improving the email text: useful but not enough
➢Improvement of the workflow (examples)
➢OA as default. Opt-out preferably only by request
➢Tailormade ‘author friendly’ text

22. 3. Invest in talks with publishers about
workflow improvement: solutions (2)
➢Make OA repair agreements with publishers! Some UKB examples:
➢Repair link (Elsevier)
➢Opt-out email to author (OUP)
➢Opt-in email to author (CUP)
➢Publisher directs the publication to the OA workflow (T&F)
1% additional uptake represents an APC contract value of 300.000 euro

23. Five ways to optimize open access uptake
after a signed Read & Publish deal
4. Work data driven

24. 4. Work data driven
During the contract, data is needed for monitoring:
➢OA uptake
➢Missed OA
➢Cap status
➢Funder compliance
➢Quality of reporting (completeness, correctness)

25. 4. Work data driven: challenges
➢Metadata not complete (DOI, license info, funder info)
➢Metadata not standardized (1 institute, multiple names)
➢Metadata is wrong (status OA but published closed access)
➢DOI re-enters workflow multiple times

26. 4. Work data driven: solution
Prepare
Extract
Transform
Load
Publisher
rapports
Article List SCOPUS NARCIS
(CRIS systems)
Unpaywall
Consortia
Manager
Publications Journals
Publishers
Contracts
API
DOAJ
SURF
Journal
Catalogue
Data model Dashboard
Institutions
Crossref
issn.org
Publications Contracts Journals
Journals
Contracts
Contracts
Publications
Consortium datawarehouse: datamodel of the UKBsis datahub
OA
switchboard

27. 4. Work data driven: the UKBsis datahub
Metadata includes:
➢ DOI
➢ Article title
➢ Article year (UPW)
➢ Publisher
➢ ISSN
➢ Journal name
➢ Institute type
➢ Institute name
➢ Corresponding author
➢ Data source
➢ OA approval data
➢ OA status publisher
report
➢ OA status UPW
➢ Journal access type
➢ License
➢ Funder
➢ APC list price
➢ ….And more

28. 4. Work data driven: the UKBsis datahub
Monitoring potential issues

29. 4. Work data driven: the UKBsis datahub
Cap monitor: visualisation

30. 4. Work data driven: the UKBsis datahub
OA monitor deals including trends

31. 4. Work data driven: the UKBsis datahub
Missed OA: heatmap
P
U
B
B
L
I
S
H
E
R
S
INSTITUTIONS
Missed OA
• DOI in journal part of a deal
• Corresponding author affiliated with participating
institute
• DOI isn’t included in a publisher report
Additional manual check needed
• Corresponding author with multiple affiliations
• Multiple corresponding authors
• Cap was reached

32. Five ways to optimize open access uptake
after a signed Read & Publish deal
5. Make publications as open as possible

33. 5. Make publications as open as possible:
challenges
Dutch universities prefer open as possible. Plan S funder have license
requirements. In practice, publishers offer authors a variety of (funder
compliant) license options.
• Publishers and societies have their own license policies
• Workflow have different configurations and are not always flexible

34. 5. Make publications as open as possible:
solutions
➢Monitoring publisher scores, discuss
improvements in workflow
➢Track and repair non-compliant license
choices (Plan S)
➢Improve awareness: Guide to Creative
Commons for Scholarly Publications and
Educational Resources
https://www.nwo.nl/sites/nwo/files/media-files/Creative%20Commons%20guide_final.pdf

35. 5. Make publications as open as possible:
results

36. Five ways to optimize open access uptake
after a signed Read & Publish deal
Questions?
Arjan Schalken, program manager UKB
a.f.schalken@vu.nl - @arjanschalken - linkedin.com/in/arjanschalken/