1. Article Processing Charges (APC) Donna Okubo Sr. Community Outreach and Advocacy Manager, PLOS COASPA 2012

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3. Growing Interest by Many National Funders to Provide Direct Funding for Article Processing Charges (APC). –Providing grants for Institutional APC funds –Investigating 3 rd party vendors to administer payments between institution and publishers –Funders and institutions are looking ways to streamline their administration of APC 3

4. The Current Billing Process for Most Journals Centralized System: Subscriptions –Publishers to Librarians –Third party vendor (i.e. Ebsco) Institution payment process is standardized –Comes from Librarian budget –Librarians submit subscription invoice to their finance department 4

5. APC is Currently a Decentralized System Researcher: Invoiced directly –Payment made by finance department –Department/lab/researcher credit card –Research assistant/grant manager Institutional OA Fund: Library/Institution –Researcher reimbursed after payment of invoice –Researcher submit invoice to OA Fund administrator –OA Fund administrator works directly with Publishing Research Funder –Direct grants to institutions to fund publication charges. Institution pays researcher –Establish a direct billing system with publisher 5

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7. Are You Prepared? Do you have a proper billing process in place? –Manual or automated Can your billing platform accommodate growth? –Is your system scalable? Subscription based OA journal? –Does your current system have a way to accept APC? –Will you miss out on this revenue stream? 7

8. APC Opportunities Researchers won’t view APC as a barrier to publish Researchers will have a better understanding of the cost of publishing research Cost of publishing is more transparent Makes the overall financial process efficient for researchers, funders, institutions and publishers Funder’s financial support of APC bring credibility to this type payment process 8

9. Take Aways Anticipate how APC policies might effect your financial billing system Evaluate your current billing processing system Think scalability and administratively sustainable Automate as much as possible 9

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