All the Task and Finish Groups share the objective of reaching a consensus to deliver principles and documentation that can be adopted globally by libraries/consortia and smaller independent publishers. Each of the four groups has specific aims and objectives as follows:
Task & Finish Group 1: shared principles for transformative OA agreements
To review and revise these draft principles to underpin open access arrangements between consortia/libraries and smaller independent publishers:
- Overall institutional expenditure to the publisher to be neutral or lower than current subscription + APC and other publishing expenditure combined.
- Annual inflation-linked increases are ok after this base is established.
- If the agreement is with a consortium, the base should be cost-neutral or decrease total aggregated spend by members, but the consortium is free to allocate this total cost amongst members in whatever way it chooses.
- To allow agreements to evolve to reflect changes in author choices over time they should be based on actual article numbers from the preceding 2 years and not on estimated publishing volumes.
- The institution that employs the corresponding author will be responsible for the costs of publishing that article OA.
- Unlimited OA publishing with no article number caps in hybrid titles, or if there is a cap then authors, with consent of the publisher, need to be able to make their accepted manuscripts available publicly with no embargo under a CC-BY licence.
- Differential geographic pricing based on means.
- There should be a commitment that future pricing approaches will be transparent, equitable, and linked to services provided to authors, readers, institutions, and society.
- Content published OA to be open in perpetuity under a liberal CC licence.
- Archival content to be free to all in the institution or consortium to access and read.
- Post-termination access to be provided to read content if/when an agreement ends.
- There should be explicit acknowledgment that the OA agreement is a mechanism for transition with the aim for the publisher to shift to full Open Access over time.
- Authors to retain copyright, and their articles to be published under a CC-BY licence. [There are sometimes reasons, as acknowledged in Plan S, that CC-BY-SA licences could also be used, or CC-BY-ND may be agreed in exceptional circumstances by cOAlition S funders.] Third-party content such as images or graphics is often included under a separate form of licence and this should be clearly labelled.
- The publisher should comply with the Plan S price transparency requirements from no later than July 2022.
- The agreement should last for at least two years, and ideally longer, to minimise administrative burden on both sides.
- The agreement should be shared publicly via (amongst others) the ESAC Registry.
Task & Finish Group 2: model licence
Build on the principles agreed by Task & Finish Group 1.
Taking the SPA OPS Model License (available at: https://www.informationpower.co.uk/spa-ops-project/) as a starting point, review and revise this as needed to align with the principles and in order for it to be easy to implement.
To deliver by 31 January a model licence that can be implemented by key stakeholders
Task & Finish Group 3: data template
Build on the principles agreed by Task & Finish Group 1.
Review, revise and agree a data template that smaller independent publishers should present at the start of an OA agreement negotiation, building upon the SPA OPS Template (available at: https://www.informationpower.co.uk/spa-ops-project/)
Devise a glossary of key terms
To deliver by 31 January a template that can be implemented by key stakeholders
Task & Finish Group 4: minimum workflow requirements
Build on the principles agreed by Task & Finish Group 1.
To agree a set of minimum workflow requirements based on the current ESAC Workflows (https://esac-initiative.org/workflows/sample-workflow-terms-for-transformative-agreements/) which are achievable by smaller independent publishers)
To deliver by 31 January the workflow requirements for implementation by key stakeholders
Ways of Working
- Meetings will be held online every two weeks.
- A Google folder will be established for each group
