The topics of the collegial exchange with experts from libraries and consortial offices were the editorial workflows in the oa.finder/journal, the use of data sources, the deployment of the research tool in advisory and application practice, and the further development of the data structures. In several keynotes, the following questions were discussed:

• How do data about transformative agreements and publication funds of scientific institutions find their way into the oa.finder?
• What possibilities do libraries have to check, change, and supplement details?
• What role is played by consortial offices as administrators of packages of transformative and open access flat-fee agreements?
• How are university hospitals and universities whose literature is supplied by legally independent libraries (state and university libraries [SUBs], central specialist libraries, etc.) represented?
• What are the current plans for the expansion of the Electronic Journals Library (EZB) to include a registry for transformative and open access flat-fee agreements?

It became apparent during the workshop that in collaboration with various participants, the oa.finder creates transparency in the publishing process, bundles information channels, and connects actors in the open access ecosystem. As a knowledge base for researching publishing opportunities, it contains, in addition to publication-relevant information on almost 57,000 scholarly journals, information on open access activities, transformative agreements, and publication funds at over 700 scientific institutions in the German-speaking area. 

The oa.finder supports researchers in selecting suitable open access publication venues for their research and supports staff at libraries and other central service facilities in providing publishing advice. It bundles information on journals, publishers, business models, and open access agreements and makes it accessible in a structured way. The workshop participants learned that the oa.finder/journal relies on a multitude of sources and interfaces, for example the Electronic Journals Library (EZB), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), publishers’ APC price lists, the Journal Checker Tool’s Transformative Agreements Public Data, and institution-specific information from the oa.atlas. Bringing all this information together requires technical interfaces, editorial diligence, and cross-institutional collaborations.

In her introduction, Nina Schönfelder (Bielefeld University Library) addressed the collection, recording, and maintenance of the data in the oa.finder/journal. She described the complex work steps required to turn scattered sources into a consistent and current information system. From automated data collection to manual checking by the editorial team, the quality of the data is ensured at various stages in the process. Schönefelder stressed that the aspiration was to offer reliable and comprehensible information, as the oa.finder/journal wanted to provide a basis for advice and publishing decisions. The challenge of data maintenance lay not only in the technical integration but also in dealing with the dynamism of the open access market: Business models for journals change, new transformative agreements are concluded, and publishers change their guidelines.

In the first keynote, Evamaria Krause and Sonja Härkönen from Augsburg University Library outlined how the literature supply and the organisation of transformative agreements are implemented at their institution for the Faculty of Medicine, the University Hospital, and various clinical partners. According to Augsburg University’s constitution, University Hospital staff who perform scientific services have the same legal status as university members. This also applies to the University Library’s supply mandate. This constellation gives rise to complex individual requirements that constitute communicative challenges in day-to-day operations – for example when during the term of a multi-annual transformative agreement, new persons are to be registered as eligible to publish their works under that agreement. Or the additional costs that arise when staff of the University Hospital’s clinical partners wish to publish within the framework of agreements in which the Faculty of Medicine is not a participant.

Augsburg University Library provides a diverse range of services in the area of open access publishing – namely, information and advice on open access, financial support for open access articles, and participation in transformative agreements. Questions that often arise in practice include, for example: What journal allows me to publish my article open access? What costs arise, and who will cover them? Here, the oa.finder/journal provides initial orientation by bundling information on APCs, licences, and funding opportunities. Evamaria Krause and Sonja Härkönen stressed that the combination of centrally maintained data and local advice was particularly expedient. 

At Augsburg University Medicine, different funding logics collide – not only in the case of the aforementioned transformative agreements but also in the case of the university’s internal funding of open access articles. In these cases, the speakers would welcome a differentiated presentation of the transformative agreements and funding opportunities in the oa.finder/journal as well as prompt changes to their own data.

The situation is different at the University of Greifswald, where the University Hospital is part of the university and acts as a faculty of medicine. Accordingly, all members of the University Hospital are also members of the university. Ariane Retzar provided insights into the advisory practice of Greifswald University Library’s Open Access Team, who make active use of the oa.finder to provide researchers with customised information. In their day-to-day activities, it serves as a reference work with which publishing options can be quickly identified. As the University Library has linked the oa.finder centrally on its website, it is also used by researchers, as evidenced by mentions in emails and during telephone enquiries. For the further development of the research tool, the Greifswald Open Access Team would welcome the reliable and consistent labelling of eligible journals and alignment between the institution-specific eligibility conditions and the information on cost coverage.

Retzar stressed that the usefulness of the tool consisted above all in the fact that it facilitates decision-making. At the same time, she emphasised that it did not replace publishing advice but rather supported and professionalised it. With an appropriate search query, oa.finder yielded objective and comparable information that supplemented local publishing advice, thereby considerably reducing the workload –especially for smaller institutions.

From web pages, through training sessions, to personal advice – the State and University Library (SUB) Hamburg provides researchers at the University of Hamburg and the University Medical Center (UKE) Hamburg-Eppendorf with information on diverse routes to open access publishing opportunities. The provision of literature (incl. open access agreements) to the UKE takes place collaboratively and on a division-of-labour basis with the UKE’s Central Medical Library. Sarah Ehmke from the SUB Hamburg posed the question of where and how the oa.finder could be integrated into this information service and concluded that the added value lay in the central visibility, currency, and reliability of the data. She noted that if the SUB could refer researchers to a reliable data source when offering advice, this created trust – and saved time on both sides. She therefore advocated incorporating more local information into the oa.finder, for example institution-specific category labels, the placement of institution-specific information, and the storage of discount, framework, and deposit agreements. Only then could the tool become an integral part of publishing advice at libraries, with genuine added value for local researchers. Addressing this, Nicola Bieg from the consortial office at TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library in Hannover pointed out that when transformative agreements are being initiated, libraries should explicitly state that the respective university hospitals are eligible to publish under the terms of the agreements. This creates transparency as to who is eligible to publish. Moreover, the information is taken into account when the fee model is being created, as the publication figures and licenses can be included in the calculation. Bieg noted that this information is also relevant in the publishing process, as it enables publishers to assign submitted articles to the appropriate transformative agreement.

In the contributions from various libraries, it became apparent that information about the diverse and complex publishing agreements can be customised only with difficulty and that it always requires explanation. Regarding the question of where and with what financial support researchers can publish their works open access, the oa.finder is a helpful initial orientation for researchers and for those providing publishing advice. However, authoritative clarification is possible only with individual advice from libraries.

Nicola Bieg from TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library expanded the exchange to include the perspective of a consortial office that prepares and conducts contract negotiations and concludes agreements with publishers. She noted that to prepare for and monitor contract negotiations, consistent and interoperable data were essential. In the case of lists of titles for the Read component of transformative agreements, there was an established and good standard for exchanges with publishers; however, this was not yet the case for title lists for the Publish component. After concluding a transformative agreement, TIB routinely distributes some of the agreement-related data (title lists, lists of institutions) to several different types of services – including the oa.finder. A time lag was inevitable, as the agreements are often signed during the month of January with retroactive effect from 1 January, which is also reflected in the oa.finder. In each new phase of the agreement, Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) such as DOIs, ORCID, ISSNs, and ROR-IDs come into play. To monitor the agreements in terms of the expected publication figures, TIB relies on the OA Switchboard schema. In the past, when managing licences, many German consortial offices used by default WIB-ID for the unique identification of institutions, which consortial offices can now retrieve from LAS:eR. LAS:eR enables the central management of electronic resources – including consortial and national licences – in one system. In addition to their WIB-IDs, libraries can also store the ROR IDs of the institutions for whose literature supply they are responsible. This is essential in the case of transformative agreements so that the Publish component covers all eligible but legally independent institutions (university hospitals, universities with a supply mandate through a state or central specialist library, etc.). Bieg stressed that this information should be available at the beginning of negotiations; late submission was rarely possible.

Finally, Silke Weisheit from Regensburg University Library presented the plans to expand the Electronic Journals Library (EZB) within the framework of the DFG-funded project openCost to include a registry for open access agreements. This will create a new level of data integration. Information on open access agreements will be recorded in a structured, machine-readable, and reusable way, which will be a decisive step towards more transparency in the costs and agreements landscape.

This expansion exemplifies the direction in which the open access infrastructure is moving – towards more networked, open, and interoperable data spaces. The oa.finder benefits from these developments through possible interfaces and the reuse of data. In addition, the tool itself contributes to ensuring that information on open access does not just remain in the individual projects but is also accessible as shared knowledge.

The workshop impressively showed that the quality of the oa.finder as an information tool linking various sources is above all based on collaboration – between projects, libraries, consortia, and advisers. Data maintenance is not an end in itself but rather the basis for a reliable, sustainable information infrastructure. Open access publishing routes need open information flows – and these arise only when many actors share their knowledge. The oa.finder exemplifies a joint effort that not only embodies the open access idea but also makes it practicable.

The slides of the presentations at the workshop have been published open access on Zenodo:

• Bieg, Nicola (2025). Übermittlung von OA-Publikationskonditionen in TIB Konsortien. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17199072
• Ehmke, Sarah (2025). Publizieren im Open Access Informationswege der Staats und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg und wie der oa.finder uns dabei unterstützen könnte. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17199331
• Härkönen, Sonja & Krause, Evamaria (2025). Open Access an der Universitätsmedizin Augsburg. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17199443
• Retzar, Ariane (2025). Der oa.finder in der Beratungspraxis an der Universität Greifswald. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17199504
• Schönfelder, Nina (2025). Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Erfassung und Pflege der Daten im oa.finder/journal. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17199644
• Weisheit, Silke (2025). Erweiterung der EZB um eine Registry für OA-Vereinbarungen im Rahmen des DFG-Projekts openCost. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17121862

Dammann, K., Schönefelder, N. (2026). Offene Publikationswege durch Transparenz und Zusammenarbeit ermöglichen: Einblicke in die Infrastruktur hinter dem oa.finder/journal. open-access.network.