The openCost project, which is funded by the DFG, has been approved for a second project phase and will be funded for a further three years.
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 allows the Electronic Journals Library (EZB) to seamlessly integrate costs for display. The extension of the EZB also includes information on publishing and funding options of publication costs.
Contents of the second project phase
The second project phase builds on these results. The technical infrastructure created for the free exchange of publication costs is to be further expanded. For this purpose, the openCost metadata format will be further developed and the automated exchange and open presentation of cost data will be optimized.
Initially focusing on journal articles, the schema will be expanded to cover additional publication- and cost types. A validator will enable seamless compliance checks and thus facilitates subsequent use. Another focus is the development of a generic openCost internal format. This format provides institutions with a blueprint for proprietary implementations and supporting 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.
In this second project phase, a central aspect of the project work is once again the exchange with the community. To this end, workshops and online events are planned. The events will be announced in advance on the project website and via mailing list.