 Welcome everybody to this project briefing on the OA switchboard from tall roads to highways how the OA switchboard is building the infrastructure for an OA driven scholarly communications landscape. The OA switchboard is a neutral information exchange hub streamlining the communication between funders institutions and publishers regarding OA publications. It's a tool. It's a simple tool as I will show you in this project briefing, but we believe it can enable a breakthrough in the transformation of the market such that open access is supported as the predominant model of publication. My name is Yvonne Camphons. I'm the executive director of the newly founded foundation that will run the OA switchboard moving forward as of January. And in 2020 I was the project manager when the OA switchboard was still project overseen by OSPA the association of open access publishers. And I will be presenting today together with Liz Ball from just Sarah Rui from plus and Morris York from the Big Ten Academic Alliance. Where are we with enabling open access? Well, obviously open access output is growing year on year and you can view statistics on the OSPA website OSPA does a survey every year and it clearly shows the growing trends in OA output. And increasingly funders and institutions are paying for OA centrally business models are becoming more complex diverse some with or without individual publication fees some through agreements with publishers and some through sponsorship models like diamond. Funders and institutions are also expanding their requirements about how various research outputs should be published and the result is a situation. If we talk about journals where there may be multiple authors involved in a specific publication, each with multiple institutional affiliations and funder arrangements and we call that multi lateral publication level arrangements. Now what is the challenge around these multi level multi lateral open access publication level arrangements for all three stakeholders funders institutions and publishers alike. It's very complex it's administrative heavy but it's simply complex to implement these agreements. I already mentioned multiple authors institutional affiliations funder arrangements, but don't underestimate also the myriad of systems and processes with all these players and stakeholders involved. It gets very complicated and messy everybody has their own way of working and think about all the operational relationships and communication going on. It's a challenge. And in preparing for this talk, I had a chat with this ball Sarah Rui and Morris York about what problems they see that need to be resolved in the transition to open access and we're going to listen to a recording of that. So as we seek to progress with the transition to open access across the whole publishing landscape, what we are faced with is a significant challenge around transparency. So really there's a lack of transparency around the types of data collected and stored around publications. And as we really look to for a cost effective and sustainable solution. Sorry sustainable transition to open access is critical that we have the data we need to be able to assess that and ensure that agreements are in place to support sustainability. And in line with that as well at the cost of away can be prohibitive so really more transparency around costs and that's not just article processing charges but also the total cost of ownership with regards to open access. And in general there's a need for a neutral partner to address this problem that doesn't represent any of the interests of particular stakeholders and range of stakeholders involved. Absolutely. So one of the key challenges that we're looking at is essentially how to move from 15 separate institutions that collaborate towards working together as a collective alliance towards particularly solving public challenges with publishing with open access. Picking up this gesture of how do we create intentional strategies to enable the move towards open access broadly across all of our institutions for all of our faculty authors and to really change the equation for how funding flows. One of those big ones is understanding first of all how funding flows and what money goes where and also how we can start to shift that balance. Looking at the amount of money that's in the system who pays how that pay flows and then put in place once we understand that strategies for actually shifting that intentionally towards what we'd like to see. So we have those two problems one is understanding the broad landscape and what it is that we're doing what it is individually all the institutions have very intentional strategies and have been moving those. So it's a question of how do we look across and look at our collective strategies and bring intention into that and how we can start to construct the workflows and the functional methods of collaboration that help enable those. A plus we have a number of challenges we're trying to solve for here with respect to infrastructure particularly because we have not historically engaged with libraries and therefore don't have what seems like the very obvious infrastructure to support that kind of part. One is simply reporting just for example has a very robust set of requirements to partner with them in terms of article metadata for every publication that they're they're funding. Many institutions whether they're just in the US or elsewhere around the world have have very basic requirements like do you have counter data whether or not that's particularly relevant you know do you have it. So plus really needs a mechanism to deploy this kind of these kinds of reports that doesn't require us to build an entire infrastructure portal. The way many of our other larger competitors have so that libraries don't have to go to many different spaces to get the same piece of information ideally there's kind of a one stop place for them to do that. Additionally the sort of management of fees and infrastructure around tracking fees approving fees determining this institution is part of a deal with no fees but it only covers five journals and what about the other two the kind of nuance there that can really cripple an accounting system. The idea that a shared resource could support that is very appealing. Well thanks list Sarah and Morris that gives a great overview of the challenges at stake here from different stakeholder groups so now how is the always switchboard helping with practical solution with a working solution and in various areas so this lack of transparency absolutely came up and data can help to improve transparency but there's also a challenge because it's very often a sensitive topic. So we need to collaborate to define who can see what and who can have access to what but there's no doubt to achieve a transition to LA we need better and more and clearer data. Both publication and financial information and that will come from multiple systems and so in order to respect privacy and security there we have to do something and we are addressing that in the switchboard through contracts and technical solutions. Bringing down cost it's possible efficiency and cost effectiveness are definitely possible first of all if we collaborate to agree standards that will bring down transaction cost. If we collaborate secondly to achieve streamlined communication that will bring down cost and last but not least if we work together and use state of the art technology to develop a collaborative shared infrastructure. Like other industries, banking, airlines, telecom have done for decades. But these are some of these are heated topics and it was already mentioned then it would help to have a neutral intermediary that everybody trusts to deal with these topics. Now what solution was developed already way before the project in 2020 started. This topic was being discussed by various stakeholders and quite early on they thought an independent neutral intermediary who only deals with the exchange of information streamlines the communication is contributing to the solution. So bringing standards agreeing the standards, having a shared infrastructure and providing back office services to communicate and exchange things between the three stakeholder groups is the solution and that is what the always switchboard does. As I mentioned 2020 was a project and we always had the ambition that everything worked out with an MVP and proving the concept can work technically we want to move and we have to move to a structural setup. It cannot continue as a project under OSPA so this year we spend also quite a bit of time discussing with the different stakeholders what are our principles moving forward if we're designing that structure. What should be covered first of all neutrality and independence are preserved through the structure and the governance and the funding model that we choose. Also very important all three stakeholder groups should be around the table the funders the publishers the institution should have equal say in what's happening with the always switchboard. We should be able to fund ourselves through a self sustaining not for profit obviously business model, but we obviously need some money to run the operation and keep on developing. Our promise our ambition is to support all a business models policies and types of scholarly output so whether it's diamond whether it's a PC based whether it's a book whether it's a proceedings paper or journal our ambition and promises to support all. Also in terms of developing the services and doing that through an open source solution we work with all stakeholders to determine the functionality to agree the standards and and so on. And sixth is that we serve three masters we should never forget that so we we will provide value and our ambition is to also do that equally provide value to institutions funders and publishers alike. Even though the way in which the values delivered is maybe not the same, but there should be an equal balance in what we do for the three stakeholder groups. So sustainability is now ensured moving forward through a new not for profit foundation without shareholders and it is a this neutral intermediary that meets all the six requirements that or the principles that I was talking through enabling shared infrastructure bringing transparency and efficiency and cost effectiveness to the open access ecosystem. But what is it what is the what is the tool that I was talking about the always which board is a central information exchange hub connecting parties and systems and streamlining and standardizing the communication and neutral exchange of. Oh a related publication level information that's important it's always situational and it's always interaction at a point in time so there is no database there's no big database of policies or contracts or what have you there is a situation at hand about which a funder and a publisher want to communicate and the switchboard enables them to do that. We enable a financial settlement to be done, but I can't stress enough the always which board does not get involved in invoicing or collecting money. It's only information about the settlement so whether that's an APC or an arrangement under a read and publish deal or a diamond model. It's the information about the financial settlement and not the settlement itself. Now in essence even one level deeper very very practically this is it the always which board is a hub. It's that's the technology in the middle. And the messages are predefined. We spent most of our time talking about the standards and the schemas and what goes in the messages and basically the always switchboard enables stakeholder one to send the message or ask a question. To stakeholder two and enable stakeholder two to respond through the switchboard. The technology validates the message that if the message is complete if it meets the schema and the standards and it will route the message from stakeholder one to stakeholder two and we're using the roar identifier to do so. Stakeholder one in theory in essence can be a funder publisher or an institution and stakeholder two as well. However, for the MVP the minimum viable products and we had limited time and limited money in 2020 so we had to define what is the minimum we want to do to prove the concept. And that is why we have in the MVP defined two messages and both of them initiate from the publisher. But you can imagine now that the infrastructure is in place. It's a much smaller task to define additional messages. The work will go into defining the standards and agreeing with the stakeholders what the exact question is and what the message should be. A little bit of detail now to show you what it really is the two questions are an eligibility inquiry and this one usually goes out before publication of an article by the way the MVP is also journals only. And the second type of message is a publication or payment settlement notification message and more about that in next slides. And then there's various scenarios between a publisher and an institution or funder there is nothing like an agreement in place nothing so it's just a standalone article and then the question will simply be, will you institution funder cover the article level publication charges for this intended publication with all these affiliations fund ref grant refs all the information we have will you cover it. And in that message is information like the license type the APC charge maybe additional charges and then what have you. Then the second scenario is a prior agreement and that is split into some prior agreements require article level information others don't and if they don't the question is pretty simple. It's do you agree this publication can be charged against our existing deal. And the answer is equally simple. The question, will you pick up the charges is simply yes no or partial the funder or the institution can respond through the standardized message that they will pick up the full APC but not the full color charges and so on. Quite a nice feature, which is being tested by our pilot users and also our launching customers is to then at this point already inform the publisher about your invoicing conditions and that can be as simple as a purchase order number but quite crucial for an efficient handling of the invoice later on. Same kind of type of answers yes no if there's financial information also whether it's the fee is acceptable and the same thing adding conditions or remarks. So this all happens before publication, and then once the article is published gone through peer review and it's really being published the publication notification the P1 message is to confirm that the articles now really published with all definitive authors in the right order all version of record information including a DOI and also information about how the settlement of the finances is so for instance some publishers are planning to include the URL link to their invoicing system, where in that P1 message there's simply a link where the recipient can go to pay for the publication charges. Again if there's a prior agreement that's not always necessary and the message can simply be this is the publication with all the relevant details and we will, according to whatever we agreed in our contract charge it against our deal. And again we don't need to know in the switchboard we don't keep any information about what that type or financial arrangement or payments arrangement is between the publisher and the institution. So there's no response necessary it's optional because this is a notification if all as well. Institution funder and the publisher have already talked about this publication have already given the green light that they're picking up the charges so this is just a notification that could be sufficient but optionally, there can be an answer. There's a value that the OA switchboard will bring and I have many more slides about that I won't talk about it today but you can imagine specifically for funders or for institutions or publishers there's a whole set of underlying benefits and value to these generic statements but in transparency, the clearer data is what this is all about and saving efficiency time and manual work but also cost effectiveness and an opportunity for better service to to the researcher, but also potentially for a publisher to the institutions and the funders. And what we've learned in talking to so many people this year is that there are direct benefits, especially for those who are directly involved in settling financials and maybe APCs, but there's also indirect benefits for people who may be doing things on your own like institutions managing block grants on behalf of funders, and there's also the community benefits. I mean the whole system to be able to learn, adjust and progress as as listen Sarah and more is already alluded to. If you have data if you have information you can progress and you can define policies and approaches and strategies for the future. And then I don't want to forget I want to stress, even though the OA switchboard does not have an interface for the author researcher remember we are behind the scenes this is back office. There is a value that all three stakeholders will embrace and it is trying to get the author researcher out of the equation when it comes to financial administration or settlement. There are many stories about authors having to get involved in exchanging information between their institution and the publisher about again a purchase order number, and I don't think anybody wants that we'd rather automate that and allow the researchers to focus on research. Now, the OA switchboard is a simple solution. But what makes it sometimes complex in talks like this is that it has so much potential, and it can support multiple use cases. So what I want to illustrate here and this is just the publication workflow obviously from from grant through publication. The OA switchboard can be called upon, or it can be integrated at various points in time in the workflow and in the in the systems. And this is super flexible. Again, it's a simple tool that can be integrated ideally automated and not manual there there is a user interface for funders institutions and publishers so for the occasional situation or if the volume is low. But ideally, this is integrated and it can be done at any point in time. It's all API based. I forgot to mention that. Now, partnering with the OA switchboard has the potential to solve our challenges. And again, I talked with Sarah, Liz and Morris about that. And let's see what they have to say about that how the OA switchboard can help them solve their challenges. So, in addition to increasing transparency and reducing barrier to entry for puree and smaller publishers. I really see huge promise from the OA switchboard and enabling institutions to manage and report on their publications and costs more effectively. So, no potential use cases could be the automatic feed of essential data around publications directly onto their local systems, linking invoices to publication data, you're using that burden. Really enabling them to monitor funds more effectively anticipate where funds need to be allocated to publications at key points in that publication lifecycle. And even assess if a particular way publication meets funder requirements. I think the potential use cases are vast and really it offers a very simple solution for us to build upon in the whole open research. So, I think what has becomes one of our central problems that we need to look at and really bring intention and action to is this relationship between open content and open infrastructure. The move towards open knowledge towards expanding open content and open scholarship is incredibly important in so many strategic ways for our institutions. And we need to bring alongside this question of the open infrastructure. So, if we succeeded in opening up knowledge and content, for example, but we haven't opened the infrastructure that we really move the needle on OA and what we want to see. If we've only opened up infrastructure, but we haven't had a corresponding movement in the content itself, have we moved the needle. So, what the problem we're examining closely is how to move both of those alongside of each other so that there is community ownership and investment in the infrastructure itself, as well as in the authorship and creation of the content. And OA switchboard is really one of those emerging and incredibly important pieces of open infrastructure and how we build that out. And for the Big Ten Academic Alliance, we're looking at that landscape and where can we make the investments. How can we bring the proper balance between both of these so that we can provide a real benefit to researchers, to authors who are creating the content and incredibly important part of our output. We are research institutions. We are published institutions. And on the other hand, libraries, as libraries, we're also purchasing that content and subscribing to it. So, how can we find the infrastructure that marries those together? So, a specific use case, for example, would be that the flow of money for subscriptions and access to content is different from what authors use in order to publish and to pay ABCs, for example, in charges for publishing. And those two aren't necessarily aware of each other, but how we can start to connect them and build an awareness of how much is in each place, how we have access to them, how we have funders. And conversation between authors, as well as institutions, and start to gain some knowledge of how these work together and build some real pathways for communication between those. And that's a use case that the OASwitch board steps squarely into and provides some promise for here's some pathways that could provide real solutions for how to open up that dynamic and building on this idea of transparency, provide transparency and visibility into how that flow works. And then as well as access and intention with how we can shape those and design them in a way that works best, not only works best for us and authors and researchers, but also enables an intentional transformation of the open knowledge and scholarly communications ecosystem that we would like to see. I think away infrastructure. Liz and Morris have really outlined the essential components that it brings to making this transition to away whatever that means possible, something that Morris touched on that I want to underscore is the the importance of the equity that it brings to the to the system. Many of the challenges I think we're seeing around this very aggressive pushed away particularly with respect to mandates like plan s is there are certain organizations, either because of their size their mission their location are really going to struggle to make that transition in a way that's sustainable and and away infrastructure like always switchboard is going to be a really important component to allowing those players to make this transition in a way that is not crippling in terms of the infrastructure required to do it so that's one reason I'm really excited to see the roles which were may play in leveling the playing field such that any publisher that wants to play in the space has the means to do it in a way that is open transparent interoperable and aligned with the mission of the organizations that are involved for plus specifically just given the nature of the stakeholders the kinds of organizations involved the mission of the organization partnering on something like this seemed like a no brainer obviously from a business perspective it'll be very valuable to us, but from a mission alignment perspective. It's critical to support these kinds of efforts as well so we're excited to be working with a way switchboard and the communities and stakeholders that will be involved. Incredibly encouraging for the way forward and this is the way forward we are determined to deliver and our ambition is for the ecosystems work better for everyone so that we can learn adjust and progress and as this is a not for profit intermediary it works best if everybody participates that means in this intermediary there is more connections to be made between funders and publishers and institutions, but it also means that our costs can be spread over more parties and since we're not for profit that simply means that the fees can get lower. So there's many reasons why we are aiming for wide adoptions and continue to invite everybody to the table to to join us in shaping this building it and and also using it. We have to be realistic. We regard 21 and 22 still as a launch phase because we need time. We've we've seen it takes time to achieve this adoption, get people to sign up and and of course now as of January really starting to use it, but also we've seen it takes time for technical integration and implementation. If you want to benefit from the automation and the scalability, you want to build the API is with your systems and of course that takes a bit of time and we only build an MVP. We still have a wish list and a backlog and we want to further develop and improve the always which board. Given all of that we are delighted that the following organizations have already confirmed our supports by signing up as early adopters launching customers and founding partners. I want to thank all of these funders launching sponsor institutions consortia and publishers. And as we speak we are making connections and matches where there is use cases where there's specific situations where there's an opportunity or there is a problem something that isn't going to well at the moment or is inefficient and where the expectation and the the hope is the intention is that the always which word can make make life better. So that is what we're we're doing. I want to extend the invitation to everybody who's who's in this in this meeting. I'm always happy to do one on one meetings I've done so many last year and it's been so much fun, but also so encouraging and it's also been so helpful in being able to deliver the MVP within time and budget. So I want to thank everybody who's contributed to that and who will hopefully moving forward also work with us in further building the always which board. If you want to stay informed I invite you to also sign up to our mailing list for for regular updates, but please do not hesitate to to reach out to me and I hope to talk to you about the always which board. Thank you.