ChronosHub Agreement Management: Open for Publishers To Take Control of Agreements – ChronosHub

“Publisher customers subscribing to the ChronosHub platform can now access the new agreement management feature, where agreement information can be maintained. Moving away from Excel spreadsheets and into a platform enables publishers to manage the complexity of business rules efficiently. Import tools, bulk editing, and immediate editing rights make the process much faster and updates easy….

 The built-in platform flexibility allows publishers to cater for the variation in agreements with institutions or consortia. For example, different deciding dates when an article is counted as part of an agreement – this could be the date of submission, date of acceptance or even the final publication date. 

 

In addition, individual journals or collections of journals can be assigned to each agreement, as well as specific licenses, and of course, the business rules around required payment – I.e., whether an agreement covers the full APC cost, a set APC, or a discount on the APC, and if a cap applies….”

Author Experience – ChronosHub

“With the rise of open access, the relationship between the publisher and the author has changed, and the author’s experience when interacting with publishers has become increasingly important. Author experience can be split into three areas of interaction: before and during submission, post-acceptance, and post-publication. Optimizing the process for authors both in terms of the content and the presentation of the interaction at the various stages being key and can be achieved both by internal streamlining and by making use of some external technological advances.

The webinar will include short presentations, including topics like marketing, technology and design, followed by an interactive discussion….”

Author Experience – ChronosHub

“With the rise of open access, the relationship between the publisher and the author has changed, and the author’s experience when interacting with publishers has become increasingly important. Author experience can be split into three areas of interaction: before and during submission, post-acceptance, and post-publication. Optimizing the process for authors both in terms of the content and the presentation of the interaction at the various stages being key and can be achieved both by internal streamlining and by making use of some external technological advances.

The webinar will include short presentations, including topics like marketing, technology and design, followed by an interactive discussion….”

Tampere University Automating its Open Access Management through ChronosHub – ChronosHub

“ChronosHub and Tampere University are proud to announce a collaboration to guide authors through the publishing process, making funder policies and open access (OA) agreements transparent and automating the management of article processing charges (APCs).  

As the first institution in Finland, Tampere University takes its OA management to the forefront by leveraging the ChronosHub platform. The platform supports an automated APC funding approval workflow by combining integrations with publishers, and AI-powered scanning of author-submitted acceptance letters and APC invoices. This provides Tampere with a single approval dashboard covering all articles across all publishers, with automated funding eligibility checks and full insights into its APC expenditure. …”

Communicating about Open Access – ChronosHub

“In this webinar we’ll talk about the design element of communications around open access. We will hear about a recent study looking at indicators of open access for readers, and hear from a designer about visual consistency with respect to conceptual coherence in product design and the implications on user experience. After the short presentations we will move onto a discussion around the topic, and discussion of solutions that might make communication around open access easier for readers and authors.”

 

Wits University partners with ChronosHub to implement an automated APC management system | STM Publishing News

“Over the last decade, Wits has more than tripled the number of research outputs published annually, with the share of Open Access (OA) publications increasing even faster. Today, about 50% of Wits’ more than 3,000 research articles are gold or hybrid OA, which require complex processes for handling payments of Article Processing Charges (APCs). 

Through the ChronosHub platform, Wits will automate much of the otherwise manual work required to manage the APC invoices. Data collection is facilitated through many integrations with publisher systems combined with AI-technology for scanning invoices. This gives Wits an overview of all APC funding requests across all publishers on a single approval dashboard directly highlighting which approval criteria that are met or not for each invoice. Upon approval, ChronosHub also pays the publishers directly instead of the authors going through a complicated reimbursement process….”

Pre-print Posting and Open Access Publishing – ChronosHub

“In this webinar we will talk about what pre-prints are, where you can find them, and what value they can bring. Are pre-print servers used more widely in certain subjects, and why? And what impact does posting pre-prints have on an article’s later publication, if any? And do we know if articles are more or less likely to be published open access if a pre-print was posted? Join us for an hour of short presentations and a lively discussion with panelists from across the research eco-system.”

 

Why is managing open access so painful?

“Over the last decade or so, there has been a steady transition in scholarly publishing away from a traditional subscription based revenue model for publishers towards open access models where published articles are freely available to readers1 . During the early part of the transition, author-pays models, where a researcher finds money to pay article processing charges (APCs), were shown to be sustainable under certain conditions by publishers like BioMed Central and PLOS and grew in popularity among commercial publishers2 . In more recent years, concerns about rising APCs and lack of access to publication funds in many disciplines, coupled with funder mandates3 aimed at accelerating transitions to openness, have led to a number of new business models, from so-called ‘diamond’ open access4 where publication costs are covered by a third-party fund, to transformative agreements, such as ‘read and publish’ aimed at enabling journals to move from subscription to open access models with institutional support5 . Alongside all of these sits ‘green OA’, in which authors self-archive a version of their article in a suitable disciplinary or institutional repository while the published version appears in a subscription-based journal. This increasingly complex landscape poses a problem for universities as they find themselves administering a diverse range of open access agreements. At the same time, very little research has been done into how universities deal with open access. Anecdotally, approaches to OA funding are varied and sometimes ad hoc. In general, it appears that university libraries often distribute information to researchers and scholars about sources of open access funding, but no clear picture exists of how funds are allocated or monitored. With this in mind, in late 2021, we launched a community survey, supported by MoreBrains Cooperative6 , about the current state of the open access landscape7 . With 64 responses from 22 countries, although this is a relatively small sample, several themes emerge strongly, some of which we had already intuited, and some that were more surprising….

Half (32) of all respondents reported low levels of trust in the management of OA publishing and associated charges compared to 39% (25) who reported that they neither trusted nor distrusted the status quo and just 11% (7) who reported moderate or high levels of trust. There was strong support for open APC data (43), open standards for data exchange (41) and clear institutional ownership of data (42), with about 65% of all respondents claiming that each of those measures would increase trust. Seven of the eight free text responses also mentioned transparency and improved reporting as being desirable. Although no single measure emerged as a clear first priority, these ideas share a common theme of greater coordination and coherence across the many stakeholders involved in OA. In a similar vein, community governance structures for OA data were favoured by over half (34) of all respondents….” 

Tracking Open Access Usage – ChronosHub

“Open Access usage is a complex topic. In this webinar, we’ll look at what metrics can be collected, and whether we should look at the data globally, or at an institutional level, possibly to evaluate affiliated institutions’ APC payments or open access agreements.

 

We will discuss the topic both from a publisher and a library perspective, with panelists sharing their experiences and opinion on the feasibility of conducting a usage-based analysis of open access articles to determine their value to institutions and libraries….”

Open Access Guide – ChronosHub

“In this guide, we’ll share our insights about Open Access and address different types of open access questions and concerns to help you, as a researcher or administrative team member, to better understand, know, and feel confident navigating the world of Open Access. The guide is based on our experience at ChronosHub serving researchers, institutions, publishers, and research funders with their open access questions, challenges, and workflows.

You can read four of the chapters online or download the full booklet, so you have all of our knowledge in one place. Oh, and feel free to share it with as many people as you want….”

Open Access management landscape survey

“In order to create a shared understanding of the ways that the transition to open access is taking place, and to support institutions, publishers, and funders, the MoreBrains Cooperative, together with ChronosHub, have developed a short survey to gauge high level trends and indicate topics for community development. We would be grateful if you could fill in this survey. It should take only 5-10 minutes of your time.

Everyone who participates in the survey will be sent a copy of the final report. We’re keen to have a wide range of responses, and look forward to hearing from you. …”

Webinar: Navigating the complexities of Open Access Management – Accucoms

“While open-access publishing continues to grow in popularity, the industry struggles to keep up with the challenges it creates. The lack of transparency and increasing complexity for authors have been shaping the space for too long. The new norm demands new and unified standards for collaboration between all stakeholders. In many cases, the burden of open-access publishing is on the author: paying publication fees, ensuring everything is compliant with their funder’s and institution’s policies, and manually reporting data back in all directions. 

Through a collaborative approach, ChronosHub ensures a complete service for all aspects of Open Access. This includes an effective management of publishing fees, OA agreements, funder policy compliance, repository deposits, and reporting. ChronosHub also supports authors in selecting suitable journals for their manuscript submissions by making funding policies and publisher agreements transparent….”

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“ChronosHub supports authors to select suitable journals for their manuscript submissions by making funding policies and institutional agreements transparent. Through a collaborative approach, ChronosHub streamlines the workflow for publishers, funders and institutions for effective APC management, funding policy compliance and OA reporting….”