2020 Project

Throughout 2020, a project was run to prepare for the OA Switchboard to go live as an operational solution.

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As a priority, the following types of information exchange were addressed:

1. Eligibility Enquiry: Help authors (and their publishers) understand - in the specific article-metadata situation at hand - whether a particular journal that they want to submit to has the potential to fulfil the requirements of their institution and/or research funder and whether central funding is available to pay for any open access publication charges that may be required.
   Note: prior agreements between parties are not required.

2. Publication/Payment Settlement Notification (previously referred to as Payment Request): Help, at the point of acceptance or publication, to ensure the financial settlement between publisher on the one hand, and institution and/or research funder on the other, can be done. Either via an open access publication charge, or via an applicable open access membership arrangement or offsetting/hybrid/transformative agreement.
   Note: the OA Switchboard will not serve as central payment intermediary and will not therefore process any OA financial transactions.

The roadmap for the OA Switchboard project was:

• Phase 1: Project set-up

• Phase 2: Detailed needs analysis and definition of product specs, including assessment of existing products and services that could be leveraged

• Phase 3: Selection of a third party software development provider to build an MVP

• Phase 4: Pilot and final deliverables: the MVP and a sustainable governance and funding set-up

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In August 2020, the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was delivered, i.e. the smallest feasible product, developed as an open source solution by our third party tech provider ELITEX. The MVP was developed in close collaboration with our Advisory Group and a small number of stakeholders. We’re now in the pilot phase (until the end of the year) and have already obtained sufficient proof that the MVP is viable in itself and adds value for the stakeholders: it reduces inefficiencies, and saves time and cost. The OA Switchboard has the potential to make things more manageable and more efficient.

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Throughout the whole project we’ve regularly reported to and collaborated with representatives of all stakeholder groups. Status updates and demo videos can be found here.