Max Planck Society and Springer: Combining Subscription Costs and Open Access 10th European ICOLC Fall Meeting Munich, 19-22 October 2008 Dr Ralf Schimmer

Max Planck Society and Springer:Max Planck Society and Springer:Combining Subscription Costs and Combining Subscription Costs and Open AccessOpen Access

10th European ICOLC Fall Meeting10th European ICOLC Fall Meeting

Munich, 19-22 October 2008Munich, 19-22 October 2008

Dr Ralf Schimmer & Dr Antje Michel Dr Ralf Schimmer & Dr Antje Michel Max Planck Society, Max Planck Digital Library, Munich, GermanyMax Planck Society, Max Planck Digital Library, Munich, Germany

20 October 2008 Page 2Ralf Schimmer

Outline

Context: MPS and Open Access

Who we are

Approaching Springer: Falling Apart and Putting it Back Together

What we did

The New Agreement: Combining Subscription Costs and Open Access

What it is about


The Max Planck Society (MPS)

78 Institutes in 3 Sections:

29 ChemPhysTech

30 Biomedical

19 Humanities & Social Sciences

Highly distributed organization: One organization; but treated and operated like a consortium

74 local libraries & MPDL as central unit

Budget 1.4 Bill. EUR (public funding)

Staff 12,500 Total Employees

4,500 Researchers

large number of visiting scholars

The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is an independent, non-profit research organization - basic research- dedicated to scientific excellence


MPS and Open Access

Initiator & host of Berlin Conference & Declaration (Oct 2003) http://oa.mpg.de (currently 255 signatories worldwide)

Broad understanding of and approach to Open Access The serials crisis of course does matter…

…but the thrust for OA comes even more so from “eScience” and the requirements for the emerging new ways of scholarly communication

Interest in OA Green… MPS Institutional Repository eDoc since 2002

…but our true concern is with OA Gold Various MPS-wide Article Charge Agreements since 2004

Unified budget for subscription and publication costs since 2005

Our Springer deal fits in this framework.


Outline


Who we are


What we did


What it is about


Approaching SpringerAct 1: Sequence of Escalation

It started with growing concern about the performance of Springer over the years

Unhappiness with overall stagnation and very unfavorable cost and usage relation

When renewal of 3-year deal came up last year, we demanded a very significant reduction in price

In a series of meetings Springer turned out to be less responsive than we expected

Backed by our scientific boards, we saw only the way of escalation and cancelled our license agreement (to avoid automatic renewal) – at the end of September 2007

This act was accompanied by unilateral press release.


Approaching SpringerAct 2: Finding Back to Business

From the beginning, Springer had shown a two-fold strategy:

a) No (or little) compromise in terms of revenues

b) Attempt to make content package bigger and more attractive in order not to sacrifice income

Even after cancellation some contacts continued Particularly in the domain of Open Access/Open Choice, where we had

received early on a proposal similar to the Dutch universities

While we prepared ourselves and the entire Max Planck Society for the post-Springer period, new talks were initiated (late November)

Final agreement was reached 20 Dec 2008

Letter of intent signed 29 Jan 2008

Joint press release issued 4 Feb 2008

Complete license agreement signed 23 June 2008.


Outline


Who we are


What we did


What it is about


Essence of Agreement

The agreement combines subscription costs with Open Access

Compared with previous agreement, MPS could achieve: Significantly more content (journals, LB and books series)

More rights (perpetual access at no maintenance cost; hosting rights)

Reduced price for optional print incl. books

Contained total costs

No price increase within 2-year contract life-time

Full Open Choice component at no additional costs

Big deal got even bigger; but without increasing the price

Agreement set up as experiment for 2 years to be evaluated by the two parties in 2009


Open Choice Subject Terms of Contract

Open Choice publication for all articles by MPS Scientists (not limited to corresponding authors and not limited in number) in all Springer Journals at no additional costs According to acceptance date between 1 Jan 2008 and 31 Dec 2009

Pre-deal estimate: 500-700 articles p.a.

Transfer of the publisher PDFs and metadata of all entitled Open Choice articles to store in the institutional repositories of MPS Initial delivery in September 2008, satisfactory support by Springer

Improvement of the visibility of Open Choice @ SpringerLink Direct search capability for Open Choice articles announced by Springer

Combination of Open Choice and affiliation search requested

Creation of Open Choice article lists incl. download capabilities requested

OA tag in article metadata for CrossRef link resolving suggested

Regular meetings to set up workflows, to improve the cooperation and to identify and solve current challenges Third meeting projected for the end of October; good and open atmosphere;

sometimes the realization of requirements takes too long.


Central Challenges for Handling Open Choice Identification of the Institute affiliation of MPS authors

Standard solution: Modification of Springer’s Publication Form

Additional interventions: Post-processing and corrections on our request possible at any time

Monitoring of publication output Monthly reports by Springer

Data delivery Current solution: Monthly delivery of new content via FTP Server, issued

articles, monthly processed

Perspectives: Data harvesting via OAI interface

Data transfer into MPS repositories and data check Current challenge to be solved; internal working group established


Modificationof Springer‘sPublicationForm


Modificationof Springer‘sPublicationForm


Metadata Requirements of MPS as Stipulated by Mutual Agreement

Name of all Authors

Affiliation

Typ of copyright license

DOI

Title of the journal

ISSN of the journal

Full text URL of the article PDF

Date of acceptance

Date of publication (online)

Date of publication (print)

Volume of the journal

Issue of the journal

Pages of the article


Performance Monitor

Number of MPS Open Choice articles since 1 Jan 2008 227 articles identified through the Springer Publication Form

15 articles identified & processed through our intervention

?? articles yet to be identified & handled We expect creation of Yearbook 2008 to trigger further interventions

MPS’s and Springer’s initial assumptions of 500-700 articles per annum have yet to be met

Possible explanations for lacking behind: The wording in the publication form is not clear enough

Our information for the authors was not clear enough

Our authors are not that interested in using the Open Choice option

First-year experience with a complex new mode of organizing things


Information Activities @ MPS Concerning the Open Choice Agreement

Press release about the agreement for external and internal information

Information via mailing lists for MPS scientists and librarians

Information on various web pages and wikis

Dedicated contact person @ MPDL for author support

Information flyer for MPS scientists and librarians (print/online)


Conclusion

Interesting, challenging and perhaps path-breaking arrangement

New experience, new challenges, new workflows

Too early to call…

…but it will be interesting to evaluate next year

…and to see whether and how we can continue.


Thank you for your attention!

Dr Ralf SchimmerDr Ralf Schimmer

Max Planck Digital LibraryMax Planck Digital Library

[email protected]@mpdl.mpg.de

Documents

Max Planck Society and Springer: Combining Subscription Costs and Open Access 10th European ICOLC Fall Meeting Munich, 19-22 October 2008 Dr Ralf Schimmer