Collection Development Policy Suite

Open Access Collection Development Policy

Purpose

Open access (OA) materials enhance and complement traditional resources that are owned, leased, or created by Chambers Library. We are committed to the advancement and promotion of open access content by:

• helping users discover OA materials in our collection.
• establishing a portion of the budget for support of OA content, publishing models, and initiatives.

The following policy outlines basic principles regarding the addition and support of OA content and infrastructure, in complement to the existing Chambers Library collection development policy. OA-related funds expenditures that would fall outside this policy will be brought to the Collection Development Committee for review. Supported OA content may be monograph or journal programs, models, or initiatives. The library will not pay for individual article/author fees.

Support of OA Collection Initiatives

Numerous new and innovative OA initiatives from established and new publishers and presses continue to be piloted and implemented. Novel financial models are also emerging in this area, but most require the library’s financial commitment in pursuit of making the resulting content openly available. Priority for funding will go to non-profit organizations and ventures. For-profit initiatives or those from for-profit organizations will undergo greater scrutiny.

Chambers Library will prioritize supporting OA content and initiatives that adhere to the following guidelines:

• The OA content should be within the library’s current collection development guidelines.
• Of particular consideration should be whether UCO has contributed content or whether UCO authors are represented.
• The OA initiative should have a sustainable and equitable business model that does not require exorbitant costs for either authors or the library. To mitigate unforeseen budgetary changes, multiyear commitments should include a clause allowing the library to exit the agreement in cases of financial exigency.
• The OA initiative should adhere to social justice principles, such as those established by the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications, in terms of content and business practices.
• The OA initiative should adhere to ethical principles in terms of content and business practices. Specifically, the company/organization providing the OA content should be reputable and follow the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association’s Code of Conduct and/or the Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines
• Library financial support will be based on a cost-to-content ratio (i.e., fees should be in proportion to the content received or produced) as well as any benefits accrued to contributors (e.g., advance access to content).
• The library should receive some benefit from contribution even if the OA funding goal is not met.
• The publisher/organization should have a robust policy and practice in place for the preservation of their OA titles or collections or will facilitate UCO serving as the preservation repository if we choose.
• The publisher/organization should have a metadata plan to enable and enhance discovery of OA materials it produces.

Initial OA assessments will be documented using the OA assessment rubric. Ongoing support of OA programs will be reassessed on a regular basis, in line with the Acquisition Department’s usual electronic resources assessment.

Beginning in the 2025-2026 fiscal year, the library will set aside the equivalent of 3% of the Acquisition Department’s Electronic Resources budget line in support of OA content and programs. Actual expenditures may come from either that or the Serials budget line, as appropriate to the overall budget picture.

Requests for OA collections should go through the Resource Acquisitions Manager, who will consult with the chair of DWIG, the Assistant Director of Metadata & Cataloging, and other members of the Collection Development Committee as needed for subject expertise.

The Acquisitions Department’s priorities for OA agreements are:

• subscribe-to-open and pure OA prioritized over read-and-publish
• non-profit vendors transitioning from closed to open
• not hybrid journals, nor for-profit vendors
• CC-BY or similar low-level licensing
• accessibility compliance
• no burden on library staff

Open Educational Resources

Chambers Library makes open educational resources (OERs) discoverable and available through the catalog. OERs are teaching and learning materials that are free of cost in digital form and openly licensed to allow users to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute them. Instructors benefit from OERs’ adaptability, and students benefit from OERs’ affordability. The latter is particularly beneficial to those from historically excluded and underrepresented populations. OERs equalize access to educational resources for students who might otherwise have difficulty purchasing or leasing traditional textbooks. OERs will be added to the catalog when large collections of them are made available (e.g., the Open Textbook Library) via the Alma Community Zone.

Support for Individual Faculty/Staff

The Chambers Library does not currently have the budget or staffing to support Article Processing Charges (APCs) directly. When the library enters into a read-and-publish agreement, we will inform applicable departments so that university authors may take advantage of any discount or waiver available.

Open Access Collection Requesting

The addition of OA content should comply with this policy and be given to the Resource Acquisitions Manager, along with a description and list of tags for use in the Resource Recommender. They will be added to our collections in the same way as purchased content, following the guidelines laid out in Metadata & Cataloging’s Procedure for creating local electronic collections with descriptive records.

Support for Transformative Agreements

Definitions come from the SPARC Glossary.

Transformative agreement (TA): “Contracts between institutions and publishers that transform the business model underlying scholarly publishing, where institutions repurpose former subscription expenditures to cover OA publishing costs.”

TAs are meant to be transitional—assisting a publisher to move their content from paywalled to open. Given this, the library will consider long-term objectives and incentives when evaluating them, especially in light of cOAlition S’s assessment that the agreements are not having the intended consequences: Transformative Journals: analysis from the 2023 reports.

Two models have emerged as the predominant types of transformative agreements: read and publish agreements and subscribe to open agreements.

Read and publish agreements (RAP): “A type of transformative agreement where a single fee covers both subscription access and open access publishing for affiliated authors, with the balance tilted toward subscription charges.” These agreements follow the typical subscription model, but instead of being based on FTE, they are generally calculated based on the university’s publication rates with that publisher. When considering this kind of agreement, the library should negotiate for a multi-year contract in order to fully evaluate the publication rate’s change as a result of the agreement.

Subscribe to open (S2O) agreements: “Method for converting subscription journals to open access by committing existing institutional subscriptions to OA memberships.” S2O is a preferred model for the library for open access transition, as it is generally a more equitable business model and does not depend on author-facing publishing charges.

Pure OA agreements: Born-OA content. This support allows authors affiliated with the parent institution of the library to publish in this journal(s) at no cost or with a reduced fee.

In addition to the general criteria noted above for the assessment and consideration of OA initiatives, which all apply to transformative agreements, the library should also consider the following:

For transformative agreements and pure OA agreements:

• The publisher/press should have a defined trajectory for OA and a defined threshold for when content is to flip to OA.
• Preference is for elimination of APCs rather than a discounted APC. If a content provider offers only a discounted APC, the discount should be substantial (greater than 50%).
• For traditional, fee-based publishers, additional costs should be minimal, and if additional costs are required, then there should be smaller market increases.
• Increases in institutional publishing output should not lead to unsustainable increases in fees.
• Where possible, multiyear agreements are preferred to lock in price increases.
• The role of the library in administering the agreement should be minimized.
• The publisher should provide a timeline and goals for their transition to OA.
• The publisher should provide a transparent calculation of read and publish costs (e.g., amount of institutional research published in the journal).
• The publisher should provide quarterly reports and data of author uptake of reduced or eliminated APCs.
• The deal should preferably not be capped to a specific number of journal articles or authors, or if so, should allow for some margin of increased publishing output during the life of the agreement.
• The agreement should allow for a default CC-BY license.
• All article types should be covered, as well as all journals. If not, a clear set of exceptions should be made available.

Acknowledgements

This policy is based on and informed by Emory Libraries’ OA Collection Development Policy with additional inspiration from:

• Brock University - Open Access Support;
• SPARC - Open Access; and
• Iowa State University - Library Collections and Open Strategies Policy

Many thanks to the people involved in writing the above.