Pilot Project: Taylor & Francis Signs Open Access Offset Agreement With Austrian Academic Library Consortium
From Today’s Announcement (via T&F version of News Release)
The Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Austrian Academic Consortium (Kooperation E-Medien Österreich, KEMÖ), and Taylor & Francis Group have today announced a two year pilot which will offset article publishing charges paid by the Austrian Science Fund against subscription costs for KEMÖ members.
This offset amount will be used by the Austrian Academic Consortium members to reduce the costs of their new or existing subscriptions. In so doing, the agreement allows Taylor & Francis Group to fully acknowledge the funding provided by FWF for researchers to publish on an open access basis in the hybrid journals that make up Taylor & Francis Group’s Open Select program.
Brigitte Kromp of the Austrian Academic Consortium (KEMÖ) said,
“The members of the Austrian Academic Consortium highly appreciate this new agreement as it cumulates subscription fees and open access article processing charges on a national level, thus creating maximum transparency. We hope, and trust, that this agreement will offer a powerful incentive for more Austrian researchers to publish in Taylor & Francis journals on an open access basis.”
Falk J. Reckling, Strategic Analysis Department Head, FWF said of the agreement,
“Open access is the future of scholarly publishing. Therefore, we see this pilot agreement as an important intermediate step towards full open access with all publishers. Furthermore, due to Taylor & Francis’ strong portfolio of journals in the social sciences and the humanities, Austria gets the chance to strengthen open access publishing in these fields in particular.”
Ian Jones, Journals Sales Director for the UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa at Taylor & Francis Group, said,
“Our agreement with The Austrian Science Fund and the Austrian Academic Consortium enables us to continue our policy of developing effective open access publishing models for all concerned, publisher, institution and funder. We’ve welcomed the opportunity to discuss and develop this agreement with our Austrian colleagues, and look forward to ensuring it works effectively for all throughout this pilot phase.”
The agreement with The Austrian Science Fund and the Austrian Academic Consortium follows Taylor & Francis Group’s recent announcement of an agreement with JISC Collections, which included a discount arrangement for articles published on an open access basis in Open Select journals, determined by institutional expenditure.
See Also: UK: Wiley and Jisc Announce 2 Year Pilot Open Access Agreement (December 14, 2014)
See Also: Pilot Project: IOP Publishing Launches Subscription ‘Offsetting’ Arrangement With 21 UK Universities to Cut Cost of Open Access (May 24, 2014)
Filed under: Academic Libraries, Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Funding, Libraries, News, Open Access, Publishing

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.