Abstract
Some way already into the transition towards a fully Open Access scholarly communications landscape, it is useful to take a look at the findings arising from a pioneering pilot initiative launched by the European Commission to fund Article Processing Charges (APCs) associated to publications stemming from finished European FP7 projects. The article describes the methodology and results for the initiative. It also argues that beyond the flavour of the specific Open Access policy chosen by specific countries, this kind of supranational APC funding initiative could become a key element –alongside instruments like national-level offsetting agreements– to ensure a level playing field for researchers. It’s finally argued that the no-hybrid policy applied in the implementation of this APC funding initiative is a suitable mechanism to contain the costs and prevent further publishing market concentration. Detailed results are provided for the close to 3-year funding exercise, showing for instance the widespread uptake across EU countries albeit with significant differences across regions. Funded publishers and journal titles are analysed, together with the evolution of the average APC fee. A summary of lessons learnt is offered at the end of the paper, both for institutions and funders.
Highlights
The FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot was launched by the European Commission in May 2015 as a 2-year experimental initiative to explore the workflows around Article Processing Charges (APCs) funding for publications arising from finished FP7 projects
One of the key outputs from the FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot has been the OpenAIRE system for collecting and processing funding requests developed at Athena Research Centre
It’s mainly the research funders’ role to gradually make it clear to the researchers involved in the projects they fund that Open Access is an important aspect to bear in mind in their choice of publishing venue. This alternative funding mechanism offered an opportunity to explore in more detail the OpenAIRE interface with institutional Open Access publishers: because the OpenAIRE data provider statistics (OpenAIRE, 2018) show a far larger proportion of literature repositories than Open Access journals, the emphasis had traditionally been placed on the guidance for repository compliance
Summary
The FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot was launched by the European Commission in May 2015 as a 2-year experimental initiative to explore the workflows around APC funding for publications arising from finished FP7 projects. With a budget of 4 million euros allocated for the purpose, the initiative set out to cover the Open Access publishing expenses for post-grant publications arising from over 8,000 eligible FP7 projects. It meant a first attempt by this key research funder to support APC-based Gold Open Access in an ‘external’ way from the project grants themselves.. The fact that once the original April 30th, 2017 end-date for the initiative was reached the project was extended for an additional ten months (European Commission, 2017) provides a solid piece of evidence for its perceived usefulness. The roles played in the initiative by these institutions are summarised in the figure below
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