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Open APC Sweden - documentation

Open APC Sweden is a project initiated by the National Library of Sweden together with Swedish higher education institutions (HEIs) in 2016. The main goal is to collect publishing costs (Article Processing Charges, APCs) researchers in the HEIs pay to publish their publications open access.

Open APC Sweden is built on the process developed by Open APC Initiative at Bielefield University in Germany.

Since many publishers now offer subscription and publishing deals (or transformative agreements) these costs are monitored at the Bibsam consortium. Open APC Sweden collects costs for publishers that are not currently part of Bibsam agreements.

The aim of the Open APC Sweden repository is to:

• release datasets on fees paid for open access journal articles by the Swedish HEI sector

• demonstrate how reporting on fee-based open access publishing can be made more transparent and reproducible across institutions. This is an important aspect in the preparation for a transition from a subscription-based market to an open access publishing infrastructure

• establish a valid empirical foundation which can only be realised by standardised reporting on APC costs

• meet the demands from stakeholders who need a valid database to be able to monitor and evaluate open access funding policies or transformation strategies: HEI, government, library consortia, research and funding organisations

• establish workflows for a transparent and efficient handling of APC costs

• facilitate open access analytics, eg. oa-funding, time of payment, paying agency

• enable the organisation of fee-based open access publishing in an efficient and sustainable way

• learn about the market for APCs and the development of both full open access journals and hybrid journals