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Towards Sustainable and Coordinated Methods for Estimating Open Access Costs at Canadian Higher Education Institutions Hare, Madelaine; Butler, Leigh-Ann; Savage, Stephanie

Abstract

Higher education institutions in Canada aim to provide access to knowledge through subscrip­tions and investments in OA publishing. As subscription and OA publication costs continue to increase, some institutions have established funds to support authors' payment of publication fees. Others have adopted models such as read-and-publish deals or "transformative agree­ments", where institutions pay publishers a lump sum for subscriptions and publishing fees for authors. As institutions continue to subscribe to journals, support authors with OA publishing, and negotiate agreements, accurately estimating institutional OA spending is imperative to determining the cost effectiveness of deals and necessary funding support for authors. Methods to estimate OA costs have largely developed in silos across the country. This commentary presents observations derived from work performed across Canada on the challenges accom­panying OA estimation and calls for a more coordinated approach to establish standardized, sustainable methods. Calibrating efforts across institutions can support the development of reliable methodologies and streamline resources helpful for the more efficient performance of the often onerous task of estimating costs.

Item Metadata

Title
Towards Sustainable and Coordinated Methods for Estimating Open Access Costs at Canadian Higher Education Institutions
Creator
Hare, Madelaine; Butler, Leigh-Ann; Savage, Stephanie
Date Issued
2025-04-22
Description
Higher education institutions in Canada aim to provide access to knowledge through subscrip­tions and investments in OA publishing. As subscription and OA publication costs continue to increase, some institutions have established funds to support authors' payment of publication fees. Others have adopted models such as read-and-publish deals or "transformative agree­ments", where institutions pay publishers a lump sum for subscriptions and publishing fees for authors. As institutions continue to subscribe to journals, support authors with OA publishing, and negotiate agreements, accurately estimating institutional OA spending is imperative to determining the cost effectiveness of deals and necessary funding support for authors. Methods to estimate OA costs have largely developed in silos across the country. This commentary presents observations derived from work performed across Canada on the challenges accom­panying OA estimation and calls for a more coordinated approach to establish standardized, sustainable methods. Calibrating efforts across institutions can support the development of reliable methodologies and streamline resources helpful for the more efficient performance of the often onerous task of estimating costs.
Subject
open access; scholarly publishing; scholarly journals; article processing charges; transformative agreements; journal subscriptions; higher education; academic libraries; collaboration
Genre
Article
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2025-06-05
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
DOI
10.14288/1.0449039
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/91281
Affiliation
Library, UBC; Non UBC
Citation
Hare, M., Butler, L.-A., & Savage, S. (2025). Towards Sustainable and Coordinated Methods for Estimating Open Access Costs at Canadian Higher Education Institutions. In The Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science (Vol. 48, Issue 1, pp. 91–95). University of Western Ontario, Western Libraries.
Publisher DOI
10.5206/cjils-rcsib.v48i1.22390
Peer Review Status
Reviewed
Scholarly Level
Faculty; Graduate
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International