Transparency is key to monitoring Open Access | Niels Stern | Pulse | LinkedIn

"A key word to take away from the workshop is transparency. Libraries, research institutions and funders should know what they pay for when they are charged Article Processing Charges (APCs) or negotiating off-setting deals with publishers. This is not an easy task but transparency and disclosure of financial information can be demanded at the contractual level.

Likewise transparency should be inherent in the models that are invented to monitor the progression and extent of Open Access. Models can be quite tricky because they typically are dependent on many variables. Thus, one should refrain from claiming the truth based on monitoring models and their derived statistics. Rather one should be open about the fact that such data are always conditioned by many factors. To foster openness and transparency it is thus highly recommended to share the monitoring data and the models for calculation."