An introduction to the opencostid
The opencostid is a unique, machine-readable identifier for contracts and business models in the field of scholarly publishing. It enables agreements to be uniquely identified and linked to the participating institutions and the journals involved. In this way, the opencostid creates greater transparency and facilitates analysis, monitoring, and data exchange between systems.
It complements existing services such as the ESAC Registry by mapping a wide range of business models, including transformative agreements, memberships or Subscribe-to-Open. The goal is to provide a representation of the current contractuallandscape as comprehensive and as practical as possible.
An overview of all opencostids already assigned can be found here.
Integration with the EZB
The opencostid registry is managed within the context of the Electronic Journals Library (EZB), but is independent of EZB membership and is available worldwide free of charge.
Requesting an opencostid
As a logged-in user you can submit agreements to the openCost Registry, which have no opencostid assigned yet. Create an user account in the registry or login to your account here. After logging in, you will receive further information on submitting missing agreements and are able to manage your deposits.
Once you have submitted an agreement for review, our editorial team will check the entries and automatically assign new opencostids.