The openCost Project
The aim of openCost is to create a technical infrastructure enabling publication costs to be accessed freely via standardized interfaces and formats. This facilitates cost transparency at institutional and (inter-)national level.
To this end, a metadata schema has been developed to record publication costs in a structured way, to be exposed and harvested via OAI-PMH. Its implementation on OpenAPC, one of the largest aggregators of cost data, allows the Electronic Journals Library (EZB) to seamlessly integrate costs for display. Initially focusing on journal articles, the schema will now be expanded to cover additional publication- and cost types. The addition of a validator will facilitate seamless compliance checks. Another focus is the development of a generic openCost internal format that can serve as a blueprint for proprietary implementations. This supports institutions in local cost monitoring. In addition, the EZB will be expanded to include a contract registry. A dashboard will enable the evaluation of aggregated cost data from various sources.
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openCost Registry, powered by
The opencostid is a unique, machine-readable identifier for contracts and business models in the field of scholarly publishing. It enables agreements to be uniquely identified and furthermore, linked to participating institutions as well as the resources they contain, such as journals. In this way, the opencostid creates greater transparency and facilitates analysis, monitoring, and data exchange between systems.
The registry complements existing initiatives such as the ESAC Registry and enables the structured recording of additional contract models and contract components, such as bundles or collections. The goal is to provide as comprehensive and practical a representation of the current contractual landscape as possible.
The opencostid registry is managed within the context of the EZB, but is independent of EZB membership and is available worldwide free of charge.
To openCost RegistryRequesting an opencostid
As a logged-in user you can submit agreements to the openCost Registry, which have no opencostid assigned yet. Create an user account in the registry or login to your account here. After logging in, you will receive further information on submitting missing agreements and are able to manage your deposits.
As soon as a new contract is submitted, our editorial team will review the information and new opencostids are assigned automatically.