cOAlition S starts building its Journal Comparison Service to help create visibility of publishing services and prices | Plan S

"cOAlition S is pleased to announce that work has commenced on building the Journal Comparison Service to help the research community better understand if the publishing fees they pay are commensurate with the services delivered and to gain better insight into the elements of those services.

After concluding the tender process, the European Science Foundation (ESF), on behalf of cOAlition S, has assigned to Cottage Labs the task to build and provide the technical support for the Journal Comparison Service. Cottage Labs, a UK data services and software company with solid experience in providing open access services for academia, will deliver the work in partnership with Antleaf consultancy.

Under the contract, Cottage Labs will build a secure, multi-factor authentication web-based service which will enable academic publishers to upload data in accord with one of the approved cOAlition S Price and Service Transparency Frameworks. At the same time, approved users will be able to determine what services are provided and at what price for a given journal or compare the services offered and prices charged by several journals. ..."