DataCite: integrate openCost (based on v4.7)

[aw-bib]

Purpose

Adding cost data to publications would help to improve transparency about the money spent for publications and allow third parties to analyse the costs of publications. We strongly believe, that payments are part of the metadata of a a publication and are missing in known metadata schemes.

Cost information can be valuable for publishers (to send information to their customers), research institutions (to provide open information about their spending for publishing), and for funders (to collect data about publishing costs).

It seems natural to pass costs along with other metadata during minting of new DOIs in a repository context, be it a repository for primarily text based publications or a repository handling research data, software or other types of objects.

This PR should help to further the discussion started in datacite-suggestions #60 and help to give an idea on how an integration of cost data could look like in code.

Addresses: datacite/datacite-suggestions#60

Approach

• Add the openCost namespace to the DataCite metadata schema
• Add the necessary openCost cost types to the schema directory to keep the code self-contained
• Add an optional metadata block for cost data
• Add a simple example document that validates against DataCite (as well as stand-alone openCost)

The purpose of this PR is to showcase how embedding of cost data can look like and to help in the necessary discussions ahead.

Open Questions and Pre-Merge TODOs

Learning

openCost is a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DF) via grant 457354095. The above suggestion includes the findings from the first project stage where openCost focused mainly on textual publications like research papers. openCost currently covers publication costs paid as individual fees per article (commonly known as APC) as well as costs paid via larger contracts where publications do not hold individual costs. In the latter case costs are part of the fees paid for the contract.

openCost employs a generic approach to model cost data that is open to extensions and easily extensible. It employs a pretty modular structure and tries to resort to existing standards (e.g. with regard to vocabularies).

openCost developed the integration with the DataCite metadata schema to be able to automatize reporting requirements set by the DFG that are beyond the scope of a data model focused on cost data. To this end openCost proposes to use the DataCite metadata schema enhanced by the openCost data elements as outlined in this PR. openCost strived to keep changes to a bare minimum and abstained from inventing yet another metadata schema to solve the technical questions posed for this specific use case.

Futher details on openCost can be found at

• The projects website https://www.opencost.de/en/
• The projects git repository https://github.com/opencost-de/opencost/
• The projects publications https://www.opencost.de/en/publications/
• The openCost conference websites:
  • openCost : The Road to Publication Cost Transparency (05th - 07th October 2022)
  • openCost : The Road to Publication Cost Transparency - The Next Stage (07th - 09th October 2024)
  • openCost: Navigating Cost Transparency (17th - 19th March 2026)

Types of changes

• Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to change)

Reviewer, please remember our guidelines:

• Be humble in the language and feedback you give, ask don't tell.
• Consider using positive language as opposed to neutral when offering feedback. This is to avoid the negative bias that can occur with neutral language appearing negative.
• Offer suggestions on how to improve code e.g. simplification or expanding clarity.
• Ensure you give reasons for the changes you are proposing.

[KellyStathis]

Hi @aw-bib, thanks for sharing your ideas here and on DataCite Suggestions. When a schema change idea is prioritized, this goes through our process including Metadata WG discussions, community review (through an RFC), and implementation by our engineering team. We can certainly consider your design here as part of reviewing the suggestion.

[aw-bib]

Hello @KellyStathis thank you for considering it. I just wanted to share not only a request, but also some more concrete suggestions on how one could approach it. So a PR seemed the most natural thing to do. If we can be of any further help feel free to reach out to us at openCost. :)