The FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot stats module is now live

One of the main aims of this EC FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot is to openly share information on the figures associated to the gradual increase in its uptake. We have so far done this via periodic reporting (see the most recent one here, with comprehensive figures as of Nov 30th, 2015). In the meantime, our technical team at the Athena Research Centre in Athens have been working on the statistics module that would allow relevant data for this funding initiative such as the total number of approved funding requests and their distribution by countries, institutions and publishers to be made available on the fly from the system for collecting and processing funding requests. This stats module has now been released in a beta version at https://postgrantoapilot.openaire.eu/#statistics.
The stats module also offers extra information on the economic progress of the FP7 Post-Grant OA Pilot that had been not included in the reports released until now, such as the amount of Pilot budget spent thus far and the average APC fees paid by institution, country and publisher. According to the information stored in the system, EUR 209,000 has been spent so far on the 137 APC fees paid as of Feb 3rd, which means slightly over 5% of the total budget for the initiative. This means that researchers expecting to collect funding from this FP7 Post-Grant OA Pilot in the future need not be concerned about the availability of funds for their eventual requests.



Further information offered from this module includes the total number of funding requests received in the system and their current status. Upon arrival, a funding request is classified as 'Submitted' and it may remain in this status for some time if specific technical requirements need to be checked before. Once the eligibility conditions have been validated, the request will normally be 'Conditionally approved' pending the submission of an appropriate invoice, which needs to be addressed to Athena Research Centre. Once the right invoice has been provided (which can directly happen at request submission time, see a few best practice examples) the request gets 'Formally approved' and ready for processing and payment by the accounting office at Athena Research Centre. As soon as the accounting office takes the attached invoice -- which is normally done on a weekly basis -- the request's status is updated to 'Processing payment', a status which is quickly updated to 'Paid' as soon as the bank transfer is made. Notification messages are automatically sent from the system to the funding request submitter whenever the status for the funding request is updated.



A funding request may occasionally be put 'On hold' too whenever there's any issue in its final processing, typically a wrong SWIFT/BIC bank code, or when it has been submitted as a test before any publication stemming from an eligible project has been accepted. Quite a high number of funding requests are left with 'Incomplete' status in the system and never get to be submitted, and many of them get 'Rejected' upon submission, typically for requesting funding for manuscripts accepted in hybrid journals or published before this Pilot was launched.

As stated in the warning message on top of the status page, this module is currently still in beta and feedback from the user community is welcome on both its present features and its possible enhancements. A first suggestion in this regard has in fact been collected at the Feb 3rd OpenAIRE review in Brussels: to include the graph for the budget spending evolution with time.

There's finally quite a number of enhancements we are already aware of and we're working to implement: one of the main ones regards the harmonisation of the system entries for institutions and publishers, which is a must in order for the figures to be accurate. So this stats module will keep evolving and its figures are also bound to become more and more significant as the months go by and the number of funded requests keeps increasing.