October 10th, 2023

SiQ Supports New NISO Working Group: Operationalising Open Access Business Processes

Against the backdrop of transition from journal subscriptions to open access (OA), the National Information Standards Organisation (NISO) has convened a working group to make recommendations on best practices for OA business processes.

SiQ COO Stuart Maxwell is delighted to be part of this working group. SiQ’s participation continues our ongoing commitment and support for working groups with entities such as NISO and COUNTER to further open standards and best practices for the knowledge community.

OA policies and mandates have shifted strategy and business practices within the scholarly publishing community. However, operations – whether financial transactions, compliance tracking or other  related processes – have yet to be normalised. The current landscape is  therefore an assortment of individual solutions, in libraries and publishers, that are dependent on publishers' workflows and systems.

As financial exchanges between libraries and publishers move from pay-to-read to a free-to-read paradigm, the workflow and data exchange has increased in complexity. As a result, there are significant impacts for each stakeholder, such as:

1. author uncertainty over qualification for deals, discounts or waivers of APCs;
2. large publishers may not have clarity on invoices, payments or charges; 
3. too much variation in the way data is exchanged and reported;
4. a lack of standardised reporting on publication metadata and transparency in pricing;
5. funding agencies and other stakeholders have trouble ensuring compliance with various OA policies and requirements.

The NISO working group’s proposal is to develop a NISO Recommended Practice on operationalising OA business processes. The group will have representation from diverse OA stakeholders including content creators; funding agents; OA publishers and other content providers; subscription agents and book jobbers; ILS providers; acquisitions, electronic resources, and OA information professionals; institutions; OA community initiatives;  financial standards groups; collections statistics entities, including COUNTER; OA advocacy groups; and legal departments.

The  working group will conduct a landscape analysis on current OA business processes and create a recommended practice on operationalisation. They will:

• identify current gaps in the infrastructure
• define standardised protocols for exchange of data about activities
• define terminology that describes these transactions
• incorporate analytics, evaluation and assessment tools and metrics
• acknowledge how gold OA perpetuates inequity.

The project is expected to last for 18 months with a public comment period in months 14–16.