The University of Bristol has taken on a number of prepayment accounts to manage RCUK APC payments. We have these in part to take advantage of discounts but also to reduce administrative costs.
Some of our accounts do save administrative time for a combination of the author, the Library and the Finance department (a couple even save time for all three), but sometimes signing up for a prepayment can lead to a level of work far above that of paying individual invoices.
No two publisher prepayment systems operate in the same way, which causes inefficiencies for libraries and authors in itself, but it does allow us to view many different features and see what works for us and what doesn’t.
Here is our wish list for the ultimate prepayment account.
1. Process activated at the point of acceptance rather than submission.
2. Easy and intuitive system for authors with clear information about who is eligible to use the account.
3. Information for library staff about what the author will see as they go through the process.
4. Licence choice restricted to CC-BY.
5. Approval process that does not involve an extra step for the author. Codes or vouchers do not work well for us.
6. Ability to view proofs and check acknowledgements as part of the approval process.
7. Easy mechanism for managing RCUK and Wellcome Trust payments separately.
8. Ability to view online reports to monitor spending in real time.
9. Spending reported in GBP (or at least the same currency as the invoice for the original deposit).
10. Named point of contact to help when things go wrong.
Kathryn Smith
University of Bristol
OA Good Practice Pathfinder Project - Bath 