Five ways to optimize open access uptake after a signed read and publish contract: lessons learned from the Dutch UKB consortium

Consortia and publishers invest a lot of time and expertise in the negotiation process. A well-drafted read and publish contract is, however, not enough to guarantee an optimal open access publishing service. The Dutch UKB consortium uses several tools and practices to actively monitor and manage open access uptake during an agreement. Library help desks are provided with a knowledge base covering most frequently asked questions from authors. A journal list gives an integral overview of the more than 11,000 journals that are part of 16 consortium deals. Because researchers wanted to know about open access publishing possibilities from a journal perspective, a journal browser was developed. Workflow improvement and retrospective open access are regular topics in mid-term meetings with publishers, resulting in increased open access uptake. A purpose-built datahub provides the consortium and libraries with publication data that helps monitoring and managing output on both article and deal level. Finally, licence choice including funder compliance is taken into account, resulting in an increasing percentage of CC BY versus the more restricted CC BY-NC and CC BY-NC-ND options.