PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

The openCost project is creating a technical infrastructure that allows us to comprehensively record all publication costs and subsequently make them freely accessible by means of standardized interfaces. The aim is to enable cost transparency not only at institutional and national level, but also to facilitate international comparisons.The project focuses on the development of a standardized metadata schema to record, retrieve, and map all publication costs of a scientific institution in a structured form. This includes publication costs such as APCs, but also additional costs like page and color charges, processing fees, as well as costs for transformative agreements. We are proposing the established OAI-PMH interface for an automatic exchange of this data. Via OAI-PMH, service providers (e.g., aggregators and research funders) can harvest their publication outputs directly from the institution. We are also working on expanding the Electronic Journals Library (EZB) to include special functions for displaying publication costs and their assumption in order to facilitate access to cost-relevant information. In addition, we want to provide a function that enables institutions to record institution-specific agreements such as memberships in the EZB administration.The openCost metadata schema already comprehensively covers a wide range of publication costs leveraging Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) such as DOI, ROR and ESAC, as will be demonstrated in the session. It is designed as a minimalist yet comprehensive data exchange format that ensures seamless integration with other formats. PIDs improve the efficiency of data exchange processes and are therefore central to the openCost schema. The use of established PIDs ensures clear referencing and interoperability of cost-related data, while promoting accessibility.