Talk:Springer Open Choice Agreement

Meeting with Wim van der Stelt, 08.03.2009

Preparation

1. Task: Analyze if OC increases perception/use/impact of articles - [Hut: Margit], e.g.
   • which data would be required to execute evaluation
   • responsibilities and timelines
2. Task: Identify MPG publications not published under OC model yet - [Hut: Inga], e.g.
   • why Springer's AuthorMapper is not helpful for this task
   • which alternatives could be provided by Springer
3. Task: Improve visibility of OC articles - [Hut: tja], e.g.
   • update on "CrossRef Tag idea", update on OAI service provider idea, etc.

Participants

Anja Lengenfelder, Inga Overkamp, Margit Palzenberger, Ralf Schimmer, Wim van der Stelt, Harald Wirsching - Director of market research (inkl. EndnutzerNutzungsstatistiken von SpringerLink).

Minutes

Data Delivery Service, DDS: The package format delivered by Springer's DDS is deeply nested and not ideal for MPG to process few elements only. An OAI service provider would be highly appreciated. In addition, G. Schäfer announced that the Excel lists can only be delivered until the publications are not filtered by DDS automatically.

• Springer expects that the PEER/DRIVER project will establish relevant guidelines for interfacing publisher and/or repository platforms - and awaits further information before proceeding
• The issue could be further discussed on the next meeting. Inga is responsible to communicate relevanz of Excel-Sheet back to G. Schaefer and include Wim in the discussion if required.

Quality Assurance, i.e. how to identify MPG publications not published via OC model: Both parties share the experience that not all articles with MPG contribution are published under Springer's OC model. This could have various reasons, e.g. the corresponding author may not be aware of the option or explicitly deciding against this form of publication.

• According to a non-representative analysis by Mr. Wirsching, the OC option is only chosen for half of the potential articles. It looks like the option is chosen less often if the corresponding author is not affiliated to MPG
• MDPL/MPIs should be in charge of communicating with MPG authors to clarify their reasons and to decide which articles need to be released retrospectively. This requires that the MPG is able to identify those MPG articles not published via OC, e.g. an interface to specify more complex strategies by using boolean operators and trunction plus a limitation to date of acceptance. Unfortuantely, the AuthorMapper does not provide the required functionality.
• Problem: Author affiliation is not part of the metadata record for the publication, but only available in a data element of Springers Production System.
• Springer will evaluate potential options further, a complete list of MPG publications will be delivered within the evaluation process (see below)

Evaluation and Analyse of OC contract: The Springer representatives propose following measures to evaluate the OC contract:

1. in terms of "internal data analysis":
   • measures: number of MPG articles published (OC or not OC), development of MPG articles over year, number of articles by discipline/journal/institute, affiliation of corresponding author (MPG or not)
   • todos: MPG to provide list of insitute name (including variants), Springer to share data (full metadata records) as soon as possible
   • schedule: first numbers should be available until end of June
2. in terms of "usage of MPG OC articles":
   • measure 1: breakdown usage numbers by requester's subscription status (licensed/not licensed)
   • process: This evaluation will require a certain amount of manual work at Springer and should therefore been done for a sample only. Mr. Wirsching will suggest a sample and Margit will check/validate it.
   • problem: High percentage of not-licensed access will be triggered by robots (not nice guy GoogleBot only ;). It won't be possible to exclude these kind of requests completely.
   • schedule: first numbers should be available until end of June
   • measure 2: compare usage of MPG OC articles to "similar" articles
   • schedule: this idea has been postponed due to conceptional problems ("how to define similarity?"), but may be renewed after gathering more experiences on sample via measure 1.
3. in terms of "user surveys":
   • the parties agreed that a potential author survey should be aligned with the activities planned by various projcts (PEER/SOAP). From the MPG perspective, a generic survey would be of higher interest because the results wouldn't been restricted to Springer OC.
   • methology: it might be difficult to receive a "representative result" instead of "curatorische" reports only.
   • Margit offers to provide an infrastructure to execute a potential user survery.
   • schedule: No concrete action will be taken within 6 months, but idea will be reopened afterwards, i.e. after SOAP activities has been projected in more details.

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Open Archives Initiative

Publishing and the Ecology of European Research

Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research

Simple Object Access Protocol