Pricing and tiering structure

Historical pricing

For several of the large journal packages, pricing is based on the publishers' price models at the time the joint agreements were first established — around the turn of the millennium. This type of agreement is often called a big deal. The pricing model was mainly based on the number of print subscriptions the various institutions held at that time, so-called core titles. For many journal agreements, prices therefore vary considerably from institution to institution — they are not comparable and cannot be arranged in a single matrix.

Newer publish-and-read agreements are also ofte based on the big-deal model, in addition to the institution's publishing activity.

Publishing activity

Open access shifts who pays for publishing, and for some time there has been a move away from the traditional payment model based on reading access, toward a model where the institution is priced according to its publishing activity. 

Use of FTE (full-time equivalents)

In addition to pricing based on historical factors and publishing activity, publishers often use figures based on the number of researchers or employees at the institution. The calculation method used will vary, but overall the figures must document the current situation: up-to-date and correct numbers are important when entering into new agreements and when the number of students or researchers changes. It is also important that the figures are correct when institutions merge and when agreements are renegotiated.

Many agreements use full-time equivalents, or FTEs, to calculate prices in the consortium agreements, as a basis for pricing participants. How FTEs are calculated varies from agreement to agreement, and which type of FTE forms the basis for the price calculation also varies from sector to sector.

An overview of institutions' FTE figures can be found here: Members of Sikt agreements with FTE.

The most recent FTE figures for the higher education sector are sourced from the Database for Statistics on Higher Education (Norwegian). The typical way of counting FTE is to add together student and staff full-time equivalents. In some agreements, the supplier wants to count only the full-time equivalents that make up the heaviest user group for the relevant resources. 

If you want information on how FTEs are calculated for the higher education sector, you can find the calculation model here: Utregning av FTE (Norwegian)

FTE figures for the institute sector correspond to R&D full-time equivalents. Institutes with state basic funding that report researcher full-time equivalents in the Research Council's arena reports show the number of full-time equivalents performed by researchers and other academic staff. Other institutes are state administrative bodies that do not report figures.

Figures for hospitals and health trusts vary greatly. Some hospitals are university hospitals and are often priced together with the parent institution. Publishers may request researcher full-time equivalents drawn from Statistics Norway's table R&D full-time equivalents in health trusts, by type of health trust. Other publishers ask for the number of doctors or the total number of employees. Hospitals are LÅT's newest participant group, and many academic publishers are unfamiliar with this sector — which is why not all publishers allow participation from hospitals or health trusts.

For state bodies and certain institutes (institutes with state basic funding that do not report researcher full-time equivalents in the Research Council's arena reports), no consolidated overview of figures exists. Sikt therefore depend on participants' help to obtain these. 

In all agreements where public libraries are among the participants, there is a pricing structure based on Statistics Norway's population figures for the municipality. We use population figures because the public library is meant to serve all residents of the municipality.

Institutions are themselves responsible for quality-checking that the figures published on openscience.no are correct, and for providing correct figures to LÅT upon request.

LÅT is responsible for informing institutions which figures are to be used in the various contracts, and collects and publishes figures based on the sources above. LÅT also takes on a training responsibility for use of the figures when new institutions wish to join consortium agreements.

The pricing structure Sikt negotiates

Some agreements have a pricing structure based on FTE ranges, organized into so-called "tiers." The tiers below were developed by Sikt and adapted to Norwegian conditions. The principles used are:

• the first ranges should give the smallest institutions a real chance to join
• institutions perceived as twice the size of one's own should fall into the next price category
• the categories are made robust so that institutions don't jump between price categories from year to year