schema

OpenAPC data schemas

The following schemas describe the data sets aggregated by the OpenAPC initiative. Each line conforms to a column in the according CSV file. At the moment, 3 data sets are maintained:

1. OpenAPC data set (for APCs on a per-publication basis)
2. BPC data set (for BPCs on a per-publication basis)
3. Transformative Agreements (TA) data set (for journal articles published under alternative payment models, like Springer Compact or the Wiley DEAL in Germany)

OpenAPC data set

• Publication type: Journal articles
• Cost data: per-publication, mandatory
• CSV file
• Treemap visualisation

This is the original data set OpenAPC started with. It collects cost data on Article Processing Charges (APCs) on a per-publication basis. It consists of 18 metadata fields, with 5 of them being mandatory when contributing data.

Mandatory and backup columns

Only the first 5 columns are mandatory in all cases. The 4 columns marked as backup are required only if at least one of the articles in a contributed table does not have a DOI assigned. In that case, the DOI-less articles (and only those) have to provide these 4 data fields as additional information (Example).

column	description	source	required?
institution	Top-level organisation which covered the reported costs, e.g. "Bielefeld University"	none	mandatory
period	Year of APC payment (YYYY)	none	mandatory
euro	The amount that was paid in EURO. Includes VAT and any discounts	none	mandatory
doi	Digital Object Identifier	none	mandatory
is_hybrid	Determines if the article has been published in a hybrid journal (TRUE) or in fully/Gold OA journal (FALSE)	none	mandatory
publisher	Name of the publication house that has charged the fee	CrossRef	backup
journal_full_title	Full name of periodical that contains the article	CrossRef	backup
issn	International Standard Serial Number	CrossRef	backup
issn_print	International Standard Serial Number - print version	CrossRef	no
issn_electronic	International Standard Serial Number - electronic version	CrossRef	no
issn_l	Linking International Standard Serial Number	ISSN International Centre	no
license_ref	License under which the article has been published	CrossRef	no
indexed_in_crossref	indicates if the contribution is registered with the DOI agency CrossRef (TRUE/FALSE)	CrossRef	no
pmid	id for metadata records indexed in Europe Pubmed Central (Europe PMC)	Europe PMC	no
pmcid	id for articles available in Europe PubMed Central full text collection	Europe PMC	no
ut	Web of Science unique item id	Web of Science	no
url	URL to article if no DOI is available	none	backup
doaj	Indicates if the journal is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (TRUE/FALSE)	DOAJ	no

BPC data set

• Publication type: Books/Monographs (no single chapters)
• Cost data: per-publication, mandatory
• CSV file
• Treemap visualisation

This data set is the newest addition to OpenAPC and collects data on BPCs (Book Processing Charges). It consists of 13 fields, with 5 being mandatory.

Mandatory and backup columns

The first 5 columns are mandatory in all cases. The isbn column is marked as backup and is required if the book does not have a DOI assigned. Since the usage of DOIs is not as widespread with books as it is with journal articles, we make two additional recommendations when contributing data:

• The book_title column is marked recommended. It is not strictly necessary, but if you happen to have access to that kind of information, it could be helpful to add it to the table.
• Books can have a variety of ISBNs, depending on the publication form (hardcover, softcover, PDF, epub...). If your original data provides fields for more than one ISBN type, we recommend to include them all. It is not required to name the additional columns accordingly, some generic schema (isbn_1, isbn_2...) will do.

column	description	source	required?
institution	Top-level organisation which covered the reported costs, e.g. "Bielefeld University"	none	mandatory
period	Year of BPC payment (YYYY)	none	mandatory
euro	The amount that was paid in EURO. Includes VAT and any discounts	none	mandatory
doi	Digital Object Identifier	none	mandatory
backlist_oa	Was the book published OA in the first place (FALSE) or was it already part of a publisher's backlist and became OA retroactively (TRUE)?	none	mandatory
publisher	Name of the publication house that has charged the fee	CrossRef	no
book_title	Title of the monograph	CrossRef	recommended
isbn	International Standard Book Number	CrossRef	backup
isbn_print	International Standard Book Number - print version	CrossRef	no
isbn_electronic	International Standard Book Number - electronic version	CrossRef	no
license_ref	License under which the book has been published	CrossRef	no
indexed_in_crossref	indicates if the work is registered with the DOI agency CrossRef (TRUE/FALSE)	CrossRef	no
doab	Indicates if the book is listed in the Directory of Open Access Books (TRUE/FALSE)	DOAB	no

Transformative Agreements data set

• Publication type: Journal articles
• Cost data: No (per-publication optional in some cases, see below)
• CSV file
• Treemap visualisation

The Transformative Agreements (TA) data set contains metadata on OA journal articles which were not paid for with APCs, but published under transformative agreements instead. These kind of contracts are concluded with publishers and usually involve larger bodies like research organisations (e.g. Max Planck Society) or national consortia (Springer Compact agreements) as contract partners. Cost and payment modalities can differ a lot and are usually results of individual negotiations, which means that it is often difficult to assign a per-publication price tag. Consequently, most records in the data set do not include cost information and the euro field is not mandatory.

Mandatory and backup columns

The TA data set consists of 19 fields and is very similar to the OpenAPC data set. It contains an additional column agreement denoting the name of the contract the article was published under. DOI registration is an accepted standard for TA articles, thus the "backup" rules of the OpenAPC data set do not apply here.

column	description	source	required?
institution	Top-level organisation the article author is affiliated with	none	mandatory
period	Year of payment (YYYY)	none	mandatory
euro	Article cost, usually calculated in hindsight on an agreed formula	none	no
doi	Digital Object Identifier	none	mandatory
is_hybrid	Determines if the article has been published in a hybrid journal (TRUE) or in fully/Gold OA journal (FALSE)	none	mandatory
publisher	Name of the publisher the TA was concluded with	CrossRef	no
journal_full_title	Full name of periodical that contains the article	CrossRef	no
issn	International Standard Serial Number	CrossRef	no
issn_print	International Standard Serial Number - print version	CrossRef	no
issn_electronic	International Standard Serial Number - electronic version	CrossRef	no
issn_l	Linking International Standard Serial Number	ISSN International Centre	no
license_ref	License under which the article has been published	CrossRef	no
indexed_in_crossref	indicates if the contribution is registered with the DOI agency CrossRef (TRUE/FALSE)	CrossRef	no
pmid	id for metadata records indexed in Europe Pubmed Central (Europe PMC)	Europe PMC	no
pmcid	id for articles available in Europe PubMed Central full text collection	Europe PMC	no
ut	Web of Science unique item id	Web of Science	no
url	URL to article if no DOI is available (not used)	none	no
doaj	Indicates if the journal is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (TRUE/FALSE)	DOAJ	no
agreement	Name of the transformative agreement the article was published under	none	no

Related Work

• JISC Collection Template (xlsx)
• CASRAI profile Open Access APC report