On September 19, 2025, the DFG-funded projects OA Datenpraxis, openCost, and Transform2Open jointly held the workshop “Practices and Infrastructures of Open Access Monitoring” at the Open-Access-Tage 2025 (Pampel et al. 20251Pampel, Heinz, Lisa-Marie Stein, Bernhard Mittermaier, Dorothea Strecker, Bianca Schweighofer, and Gernot Deinzer. 2025. “Praktiken Und Infrastrukturen Des Open-Access-Monitorings.” Konstanz. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17198826.).
After a brief presentation of the participating projects, more than 30 participants discussed current issues in Open Access monitoring in a World Café format. The following spheres of action were examined: (1) strengthening standardization in the field of monitoring, (2) promoting transparency initiatives in this sector, (3) further developing opportunities for the reuse of open data – also in the context of the Barcelona Declaration.
Standardization
At the “Standardization” station, participants discussed the challenges they face with regard to standardizing processes in their institutions. It became clear that, beyond traditional publication formats, other objects and forms are also becoming increasingly relevant. These included conference contributions that include publication fees in the participation fee, submission fees, contributions to diamond Open Access formats, and experimental long-form publications and books in the broader sense. For the latter, additional cost aspects such as layout, editing, video editing, programming (e.g., for publication websites), archiving, or dissemination fees were highlighted. This illustrates that, depending on the discipline, there are specific experiences and needs that must be taken into account for the further development of a metadata standard for recording publication costs.
With regard to cost data collection, it became clear that there is still a considerable need for support at many institutions. In particular, the challenge of reconciling data from different sources, the further development of existing systems or cost modules, and issues of rights management were mentioned.
The use of institution-specific tables and formats, for example in the context of delivery to OpenAPC, was also discussed, as was the need to develop community-led common standards for greater efficiency and comparability. The need for standardization was thus clearly identified as a means of facilitating individual work and overcoming common challenges. This also emphasizes the relevance of working more intensively on the internal cost management of scientific institutions in the further project phase of openCost.
Finally, the discussion addressed the question of how publications can be reliably identified as contract-financed. The Electronic Journals Library (EZB) was highlighted as a possible reference point for institution-specific contract information. The discussion focused on which existing systems are already in use, what synergies are possible, and how interfaces—for example, to LAS:eR, FOLIO, or via API comparisons—can be optimally designed in the future. Expectations for a future contract registry were also discussed, particularly with regard to functions, access levels, and integration into existing workflows.
Transparency
The “Transparency” station invited participants to discuss measures to promote cost transparency at their institutions. Participants emphasized that it was important to first define the target audience of the transparency initiative: For whom and for what purpose should transparency be created, and at which level? This can be used to derive requirements for the data basis, such as the level of aggregation.
The discussions revealed that transparency efforts vary across institutions. Their success often depends on the nature of the cooperation between the units involved, for example, whether the data collection department has access to the financial management system.
Participants reported that transparency is desired as a control tool by university management. Experience shows that a mandate from university management helps libraries to record decentralized costs; however, it can also cause tensions between the library and faculties. Participants emphasize that transparency is not only important for external communication—transparency about the distribution of costs within the institution is also important.
With regard to transparency on the part of publishers, participants noted that some publishers are already striving for transparency. However, prices alone are difficult to assess without also knowing and being able to estimate production costs, e.g., what marketing expenses are appropriate.
In negotiations, a complete overview of an institution’s information-related financial flows would be ideal, but Non-Disclosure-Agreements are an obstacle to this. Participants noted that Non-Disclosure-Agreements can be avoided if this is part of the mandate in negotiations, as an example from Switzerland shows.
Open data
The discussion at Station 3 focused on the use of open data sources for Open Access monitoring, particularly with regard to publication volume and costs. Participants exchanged experiences, challenges, and perspectives for future use. It became clear that open data is already being used in a variety of ways, but that its quality and reliability vary greatly. Some participants reported that open data sources are used at their institutions—for example, OpenAlex for publication monitoring. Experience shows that the use of OpenAlex has some limitations. For example, the coverage of disciplines varies. OpenAlex also records a large number of publication types, which can lead to “overreporting.”
Data quality is another challenge; for example, missing affiliation information makes effective use difficult. Participants also emphasized that OpenAlex only shows current publisher list prices, not the actual costs incurred. The service is therefore not suitable for cost monitoring. Other open data sources used include Unpaywall, Crossref, Sherpa/Romeo, DOAJ, Wikidata, DataCite, and DBLP (especially for computer science). Some institutions supplement open data by using publisher dashboards or administrative data to obtain a more complete picture.
Beyond the discussion on data quality, the variability of open data sources was also addressed: It was noted that updating data can be challenging. However, the potential of open data was emphasized. According to the participants, it can contribute significantly to transparency, comparability, and efficiency in Open Access reporting—provided that its quality, maintenance, and integration into institutional infrastructures are further improved. The participants identified several prerequisites for open data to play a key role in monitoring in the future: improving data quality and standardization, ensuring the traceability of changes and introducing versioning, enabling links to institutional data sources, transparent governance structures for data maintenance and further development, community-based quality assurance, and exchange between institutions on usage perspectives.
Conclusion
The discussions at the three stations demonstrated that the complexity of Open Access models and cost structures poses a key challenge for monitoring. Organizational and technical solutions—such as establishing suitable workflows, assigning roles, or connecting interfaces—must be implemented individually in each institution. At the same time, it became clear that all institutions face similar challenges, especially in the area of cost recording. This results in a clear mandate to further develop common standards and tools that can be adapted locally but still enable uniform and comparable solutions. The contributions of the participants also showed that the purpose and target audience of transparency initiatives should be defined so that measures can be planned in a targeted manner. The use of open data sources could be promoted by providing assistance in dealing with limitations and data cleansing.
For the three projects OA Datenpraxis, openCost, and Transform2Open, further areas of action for further work were identified during this very stimulating and informative workshop.
Note: This post is also published on infomgnt.org.
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Authors |
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Affiliations |
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Heinz Pampel |
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, | |
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Lisa-Marie Stein |
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY | |
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Bernhard Mittermaier |
Forschungszentrum Jülich | |
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Dorothea Strecker |
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, | |
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Bianca Schweighofer |
Universität Regensburg | |
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Gernot Deinzer |
Universität Regensburg |
- 1Pampel, Heinz, Lisa-Marie Stein, Bernhard Mittermaier, Dorothea Strecker, Bianca Schweighofer, and Gernot Deinzer. 2025. “Praktiken Und Infrastrukturen Des Open-Access-Monitorings.” Konstanz. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17198826.