Price transparency project: Informing the development of Plan S

About the project

The principle of transparent pricing for Open Access (OA) publishing services has always been at the heart of Plan S principles:

When the very first iteration of Plan S was published, it had a strong focus on setting a maximum price that funders were prepared to pay. In the second iteration of Plan S price caps had been repositioned as a fallback and the focus was on paying fair and reasonable prices.

In recognition that additional information would be needed by customers to assess whether prices were indeed fair and reasonable a project was launched in September 2019. This was funded by Wellcome Trust and UKRI and commissioned on behalf of cOAlition S. The authors were appointed to lead a collaborative project with publishers, funders, and universities to develop a framework for these communications. The funders also appointed a project steering group made up of representatives from these stakeholder groups.

Approach

During the project we consulted widely with stakeholders to gain an understanding of concerns and needs and worked to gain the voluntary engagement and support of publishers. It was clear from the outset that mobilising this engagement and support would be crucial to success. It was also clear that this would be a challenge. While funders, libraries, and library consortia were broadly supportive of the work, many publishers – both mixed model and OA-only – expressed significant concerns about:

Throughout we worked to emphasise that this was an evolving framework driven by customers and open to influence by publishers. We were mindful of competition law and fiduciary duties and sought expert advice to ensure that the approach we developed would support competition and be aligned with competition law.

We used an iterative process during the project, alternating discussions with the development of a document or draft to then review and to build upon in further discussions. At each stage of the consultation process, we sought broad engagement and took stakeholder feedback to refine and improve the framework.

Our starting point was a 2018 blog post by Kent Anderson in the Scholarly Kitchen which outlined 102 things journal publishers do [1]. We felt it was important for publishers to see the full spectrum of their services acknowledged from the outset, and for other stakeholders to be aware of these services.

We next issued an online survey and invited participation from all stakeholders. This helped to make the project tangible and stimulated engagement and input. It also provided us with an opportunity to see whether or not customers were interested in having more insight into OA prices and services, and to test if there were any significant differences in the perceptions of publishers and their customers. What it did not shed much light on was the format any price transparency framework might take.

We then organised a workshop, hosted by the Wellcome Trust in London on 11 October 2019, for 28 invited participants including funders, librarians, library consortia, and publishers.

Following the workshop, we created a Strawman document and used it to engage publishers in discussion at the Frankfurt Book Fair, at the Charleston Conference, and by phone. We discussed the document with members during the second project Steering Group meeting. We worked through 3 drafts of the Strawman in total, building it to reflect 5 price transparency framework ideas and 2 validation service ideas.

A price and service transparency framework then developed through 12 drafts and evolved considerably with intensive, usually constructive, input and iteration. We received comments and suggestions through conversations, email, an online focus group, and webinars. In parallel, we discussed implementation with a range of potential service providers to explore ways by which the data could be obtained, used, monitored, and maintained.

This process and the feedback from it are described in detail in the full project report available online for free download [2].

Framework

The framework that emerged and which we recommended to cOAlition S is shown below in Fig. 1 and is also available online [3].

Fig. 1.

December 2019 version of price transparency framework.

To ease administration for publishers, these data could be provided one time per title or one time for a range of specified, similar titles. We envisaged that the data might be reviewed and, if necessary, refreshed annually or more often if prices change more frequently.

1.Basic title metadata

Fig. 2.

Basic title metadata.

Section 1 appears to be acceptable in principle to most stakeholders; however, there are some details that could helpfully be addressed in a pilot:

2.Contextual metadata

Fig. 3.

Contextual metadata.

Some feedback focused on the overall approach:

Each of the lines triggered some pushback:

3.Pricing information

Fig. 4.

Pricing information.

Pricing information is the area where there is most divergence in views between customers who are keen and some publishers who are absolutely not:

It is important to highlight that this is not intended to be a cost accounting exercise. This is an opportunity to give a sense of how you think about the proportion of effort or value you put into different elements of your publishing service.

It is perhaps also helpful to emphasise that this is the section of the framework that customers found most useful. Librarians, funders, and researchers are genuinely interested in understanding what publishers do in more detail. There are opportunities here for publishers, and it is more than just qualifying for access to cOAlition S money through Plan S. There are opportunities here to help your customers understand your services in a new, better, and clearer way.

Pilot launched

Where are we at today during the January 2020 APE conference in Berlin? Plan S says that no later than the 1st of January, 2020, in partnership with publisher representatives and other stakeholders, that it will define the price transparency requirements for Plan S. cOAlition S have not yet taken a final decision on what its price transparency requirements will be. In addition to our framework, you may also be familiar with work done in this area by the Fair Open Access Alliance [5]. In due course, cOAlition S might endorse one or both or neither of these frameworks. What they have agreed is to help us take our framework to the next level and to work to pilot it in partnership with stakeholders and to refine it further based on their input.

We will be doing a pilot during the first quarter of 2020 with ten publishers: Annual Reviews, Brill, the Company of Biologists, EMBO, the European Respiratory Society, F1000 Research, Hindawi, IOP Publishing, PLOS, and Springer Nature. We will continue to seek cross-stakeholder input. We will also continue to seek guidance on competition issues.