Monitoring agreements with open access elements: why article-level metadata are important

Abstract:  Agreements with open access (OA) elements (e.g. agreements with APC discounts, offsetting agreements, read and publish agreements) have been increasing in number in the last few years. With more agreements including some form of OA, consortia and academic institutions need to monitor the number of OA publications, the costs and the value of these agreements. Publishers are therefore required to account for the articles published OA to consortia, academic institutions and research funders. One way publishers can do so is by providing regular reports with article-level metadata. This article uses the Knowledge Exchange (KE) and the Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges (ESAC) initiative recommendations as a check-list to assess what article-level metadata consortia request from publishers and what metadata publishers deliver to consortia. KE countries’ agreements with major publishers were analysed to assess how far consortia and publishers are from requesting and providing article-level metadata. The results from this research can be used as a benchmark to determine how major publishers were performing until early 2019 and prior to Plan S coming into effect in 2021. A recommendation is made that publishers use the article-level metadata check-list as a template to provide the metadata recommended by KE and ESAC.