[GOAL] Announcement of the initiative ESAC- Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges

[Forwarded from GOAL]  " ... We are pleased to introduce the initiative ESAC to you. ESAC stands for 'Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges'. ESAC aims to · address the challenges associated with the management of Open Access article charges (APCs); · start the discussion on efficient workflows involving all parties such as funders, libraries, authors, standardization initiatives, and publishers; · propose good practices and proven workflows. As Open Access publishing is growing, libraries, funders, and open access publishers are faced with the need to establish administrative routines for the management of Article Processing Charges (APCs). Without past experience in managing, many institutions have turned to manual systems of processing payments and/or established routines that may not be scalable as the uptake of pure OA among their researchers grows. To encourage a thoughtful and constructive dialogue amongst stakeholders, the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Max Planck Digital Library, in cooperation with the Public Library of Science and Co-Action Publishing, held a Forum and Workshop on November 18th, 2013 in Berlin under the title 'Towards an Efficient System for Managing APCs '. The aim of the event was to take steps towards defining best practices for the administration of APCs across stakeholder groups, through sharing of knowledge and experiences, and a practical discussion on solutions. The ESAC initiative evolved from this workshop to communicate its results, to preserve the discussion and to establish a platform where practical solutions can be proposed. As a first step, ESAC suggests an improved data exchange between publishers and institutions in order to process invoices for APCs more efficiently and to enable institutions to generate reports on their APC budget expenses. Additionally, some ideas for the enhancement of workflows with regards to publisher's submitting systems are introduced. Learn more at www.esac-initiative.org"