FAQs For Publishers

Frequently Asked Questions

A. Principles, participants

A.1. Are there any other consortia in the Czech Republic that purchase e-resources?

CzechELib is the only channel through which the central state subsidy for purchase of e-resources shall be allocated from the year 2018 on. At the same time, CzechELib shall become the sole negotiator for such supported e-resources. This role has been officially assigned to NTK/CzechELib by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic. It is not ruled out that institutions will form their separate consortia, but they cannot receive the state subsidy.

A.2. Can you tell us how the nomination of the participating institutions happens? What is your message to institutions?

At the beginning of each calendar year we open the round of electronic resources nominations. Based on these nominations, we then send out a request for a preliminary quote to all the publishers whose resources appeared on the list of nominations and meet the criteria of 3+ nominating institutions. See brief schema of the process.

A.3. Are institutions allowed to cancel their subscriptions during the project? Under what conditions and with what consequences? Or do they have to stay with the selected databases throughout the whole project?

We do not expect or condone institutions to drop out from the contract either, however, in special cases and only if the publisher/supplier agrees to it, such a withdrawal from the consortium can be allowed. Furthermore, there is a special, opt-out clause regarding financial hardship defined in the standard license contracts.

A.4. Can new institutions join running multi-year agreements for particular e-resource anytime?

We want to keep CzechELib as open and flexible as possible. In principle, yes, although such a step must be within the limits imposed by the Public Procurement Law. It is always necessary to consult each case with the CzechELib team.

A.5. How about institutions that still have running funding from other projects?

This would depend mainly on contract conditions of a particular project, which must be considered. In general, we will gladly incorporate them into the CzechELib consortium, however, if their financing is funded from an EU project, we cannot subsidize the resource in the sustainability period of their project, and they have to finance it solely from their own funds during such period. However, we would like the publishers to treat them as full members of the respective CzechELib consortium.

B. Subsidy

B.1. Which institutions are eligible for the funding? What are the criteria?

As this consortium has been supported from R&D funding, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic decided that in order to be eligible for receiving the state subsidy via CzechELib the institutions were required to have a status of a research organization as defined in the Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014 Chapter I, Article 2, (83). (Institution that either does research and/or disseminates results of the research). From April 2019 the scope of eligible institutions has been extended by institutions which meet the “status of a professional public institution” defined as "representatives of public specialist and specialised libraries whose main activity is the provision of library services at the national level, in accordance with a specific legal regulation, Act No 257/2001 Coll., on libraries and the conditions of operation of public library and information services (Library Act), as amended’. Compliance is approved (at least till the end of 2022) by the subsidy provider MA (Managing Authority of the Operational Programme Research, Development and Education) of the operation programme, after 2023 onwards by MEYS. Institutions that meet neither the status of a research organization nor the status of a professional public institution can still be part of CzechELib consortia, but are not eligible to receive the subsidy.

B.2. What is the amount of the subsidies?

The state subsidy for the participating institutions is 70% for citation databases and analytical bibliometric tools and 50% for the other resources in the years 2018-2022. Systemic decrease of subsidy is expected for the next phase 2023-2027.

B.3. Some institutions are smaller than others, the funding that will be given to them is more important to them than to the bigger ones - will that be somehow taken into consideration?

We have applied a fair and non-discriminatory single unified rate of subsidy for all institutions. This has proved to be the most transparent approach and we expect to continue in the same way. The institutions receive preliminary quotes and then they will decide whether they want to proceed with the acquisition of the e-resource or not.

C. Content

C.1. What is the process and criteria of choosing content? Do you have any priorities?

Each electronic information resource has to be approved by the Board of Experts as an essential resource supporting science and research. Agreements which include Open Access (such as Read & Publish agreements) will deserve special treatment. More information can be found on the CzechELib website in the documents EIR selection methodology and Methodology for the selection of individual journals 2018+ (in a nutshell - the rule is nominations and final interest by 3+ institutions for now).

C.2. Can a publisher offer additional content to member institutions via CzechELib?

Currently we do not provide such service. We have quite a strict bottom-up approach and are waiting for nominations of e-resources from institutions (we do not proactively offer e-resources to our members).

C.3. We have a list of preliminary institutions that are interested in the content - so after we send you our offers, you will be able to ask also the other institutions that haven't opted in in the first list - just to see if there's order interest or is it limited to that list only?

Member institutions have the option to communicate with each other via the Google Groups discussion platform which we have set up for them. In case they are unsure whether their EIR will receive the minimum number of nominations (see more in EIR selection methodology) they can look for other possible candidates to join their nomination via this discussion platform.

C.4. What is your approach to the resources that are available on multiple platforms at the same time by different vendors?

Member institutions should specify the required platform/s at nomination. CzechELib in no way decides which combination should be procured, however we will force institutions to agree on one.

D. Price proposal, payment terms, invoicing

D.1. Is there any kind of format of preliminary prices you prefer? Would it be beneficial to have the price broken up by each institution individually showing each fee? We received the matrix - some of the institutions asked for multiple products from us, so each one of those would be individually itemized or is it enough we send a global fee?

Most publishers provide the price proposal per institution partitioned for each resource. If you prefer to give us the lump sum for a set of institutions for a particular resource, we will have to recalculate it. In most cases we expect the price to be split for individual institutions. If you wish to provide us with a proposal of an unlimited nationwide license too, we will gladly evaluate it.

D.2. Do you expect the price quotes to be flat and equal for each of the 5 years or could they include some yearly growth?

It is up to you. We do not mind the prices rising according to the world/EU inflation. We are accustomed to different models. In case a new consortium will be created as a result of the tender in later years for the same resource, we expect the same terms and conditions including pricing as it is in the original agreement. So the same conditions will apply to the members of both consortia. The Covid-19 related issues, the war in Ukraine, and significant increase of energy prices and inflation have caused, as in other countries, a huge slump in public finances that have an impact on all our member institutions (either directly or indirectly). As a result we kindly ask for the following:

Apply zero to minimum yearly price increases.
Clearly indicate applied consortial discount.
Be considerate.

D.3. The currency of the offers should be local or euros or other?

We expect your usual currency. Whichever you use.

D.4. When are you going to pay us? Are you able to work with a single invoice and make a single payment to the publisher/content provider?

We will pay annually, in the year when you deliver the content. We expect to work with a single invoice issued at the beginning of a calendar year in which the access to the content will be provided. However, as the institutions are receiving their money in March or April, we will be able to pay no earlier than in mid-May.

We also suggest the possibility to pay in two partial payments within one invoice with the following maturity: 50% on March 15 (it will be paid mostly from the state budget) and 50% on May 15th (it will be paid by collected contributions from the institutions).

See diagram “Billing schedule”.

D.5. After you receive preliminary prices, do you expect to have meetings with every publisher? Will you meet the publishers directly and present the situation?

Depends on how clearly the offer is defined (some e-resources may have several parameters which need further fine-tuning even in the preliminary phase) and how reasonable the pricing is. Sometimes we fine tune the proposals already in the preparation phase, sometimes later - during the formal procedure.

E. Tender (Public Procurement), Agents

E.1. The finances are allocated from the state budget - so every year there will be a tender?

In the years (2023-2027), more diverse and flexible lengths of contracts (1-3-5, depending on Open Access elements and regulations of the Board of experts) are employed. See more.

E.2. Does every contract have to go through a public tender?

Everything we shall finance must pass through a public tender procedure.

Since January 2021, we have been using state co-funding for e-resources purchases instead of previous EU co-funding. The subsidy coming from the state budget requires just fulfillment of the law and thus the threshold contract values triggering demanding paperwork (on publisher’s side) are higher than it was in the years 2018-2020. The limit where “above-threshold public contract” starts is approximately 3.5 million CZK w/o VAT. If the total contract size is below such value, the whole process (“below-threshold public contract” which could be either “market research” or “small-scale public contract”), could be quite hassle-free from the bureaucratic point of view and could allow easy direct contract between publisher and the consortium.

Summarised:

Below-threshold public procurement - up to 3.5 million CZK w/o VAT (approximately 132 000 EUR)
- All communication including submission of the bid can be done by e-mail communication, it is not necessary to proceed via Tender Portal.
- Instead of providing all qualification documents, which are necessary to submit in case of a public tender, two documents will have to be provided only - the affidavit that you fulfill all the requirements and the exclusivity letter. Confirmations of exclusivity (in two versions - for the Publisher and for the Supplier) are published on our web
Above-threshold public procurement - from 3.5 million CZK w/o VAT (132 000 EUR)
- It is necessary to proceed via Tender Portal (your company will have to be preliminary registered in the Tender Portal, e-signature approved by Czech authorities is needed for this)
- All qualification documentation according to Czech Public Procurement Act must be provided (criminal records, confirmations both by Czech authorities and your country of origin authorities - tax, social insurance etc. - the detailed instructions are published on our web)

E.3. Is the language of the tender procedure going to be Czech? Do we need to use a third party - a lawyer? Have it translated? Is it by law that it must be in Czech language?

We are glad to announce that we must not discriminate against anyone based on the language if both parties agree (you and us) on the language for both negotiations and contract (the only condition is that we are not allowed to rule out Czech language). Therefore we expect most of the tender procedures and the negotiations to be conducted in English. The text of the contract itself may (and we prefer it) to be in the English language as well.

E.4. Can you let us know the time frame of the tender process in the Czech Republic?

We enter solely into public procurement without publication. Public procurement without publication may be announced only in the case of the only possible provider. For this reason, publishers have to appoint an exclusive supplier of the selected products for the Czech Republic. This exclusive supplier can be a publisher itself or any provider appointed by the publisher.

We do not enter into public procurement with announcements, which allows any organization to respond to the advertised notice, request/download the procurement documents and submit a tender, due to their financial constraints, bureaucratic burden and time consuming management.

Before announcing public procurement, we need to get approval from the Working Group on Transparent Public Procurement, from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and from the Government of the Czech Republic. This process usually takes a few weeks, sometimes even about 2 months, therefore we prepare and submit all documentation well in advance. We usually announce a public procurement call during September or beginning of October for the agreements commencing at the beginning of the following year. The time frame for the procurement itself can then be quite short, about 1 - 2 months, thus the license agreements can be signed by the end of the current year.

E.5. The whole tendering/licensing process should be finished by the end of the current year for the period beginning next calendar year and access to the content should be started at the beginning of the next calendar year. Do you have the expected time to start the access in case the procurement process will be delayed and the signing of the contract resulting from this tender would be postponed to the following year?

Usually, there is a section in the license agreement referring that both parties are to meet the agreement conditions from January 1st even in the case when the agreement is signed later on (e.g. publisher gives access and NTK will pay from January 1st). We have to guarantee the accessibility of resources from January 1st in any case.

E.6. You prefer communicating about the content directly with the publishers, but in case there are certain agreements in place and the publishers appoint an agent, are you willing to negotiate with the agent and accept the price proposal from him?

The underlying principle is that at the first contact with the publisher and at the first official request for a price proposal, we always contact the publisher directly (i.e. the entity, which has intellectual property rights to the content). At the same time we ask the publisher to decide whether it will enter the public procurement process directly (as an exclusive supplier) or it will appoint another company as an exclusive supplier. In case a publisher appoints another company as an exclusive supplier, then solely a single agreement between us and the Supplier can be concluded. In case that the Supplier is not able to provide us the license to your content, we cannot be asked to conclude one (business) contract with the Supplier and another (license) contract with a publisher.

Even in the case of an exclusive supplier we prefer to negotiate the essential elements of the contracts directly with the publishers or in trilateral negotiations CzechELib-Publisher-Supplier. This typically includes key license terms, prices and possible annual increase, flipping to open access and making changes in the list of participants or titles (this depends a lot on the complexity of the consortium). We understand that some publishers will authorize their agents to perform certain activities on their behalf and we do not mind the presence of agents during negotiations and later during operation of the contract but we insist on negotiating crucial issues directly with the publishers.

F. License agreement

F.1. Are you going to send us a standard CzechELib License agreement or would you like us all to send you our own versions of our own Licenses instead?

In case you (publisher) appoint another company as an exclusive supplier, then we insist on using our standard license agreement as a basis for the final text.
In case you enter the public procurement process directly then we can agree on using either your or our license agreement as a starting point (provided that you have agreements reasonably adapted for consortia). Generally, we strongly prefer to use our license agreements where the issues related to consortium setup are already addressed. It may significantly speed up the process and lower the negotiation load.
As we are also bound by The Research, Development and Innovation Council of the Government of the Czech Republic directions towards Open Access (OA), if your products are e-journals, sooner or later we would like to enter detailed negotiations regarding transition to OA. If you are already our supplier and publisher of e-journal(s) then we’ll discuss how to synchronize the conditions with current contracts (this applies to those cases where a small group of institutions attempts to “join” a larger e-journals consortium). In the case you already have OA programs which may be suitable for us do let us know.

F.2. Will CzechELib sign a license on behalf of all the member institutions? If so, how many years should the consortium license cover?

Yes, CzechELib will sign one license for the particular resource/collection with the publisher, and part of the license will be a list of the e-resources and a list of the participating institutions. A contract between the participating institutions and CzechELib gives CzechELib the right to do so. Regarding license length see: licencing principles.

F.3. Generally, we require each member of the consortium to approve our license terms and confirm our License Agreement or Subscription Agreement by signing it. Would the CzechELib Standard License Agreement eliminate the need for these agreements to be signed?

Yes, both the CzechELib standard License Agreement which includes details of the subscriptions of each individual member institution, including prices and the Agreement on the Provision and Access to Electronic Information Resources (APAE) which we sign with each member institution eliminate the need to sign another License Terms' documents with you. The Member Institution, by signing this APAE, declares among others that it has acquainted itself with the terms of use and agrees with their wording (note that all agreements with publishers are published and the APAE is referencing these agreements). The member Institution is obliged to acquaint EIRs users with the terms of use, especially in the sense of who the authorized users are and what is the authorised use of each individual EIR. The member Institution is obliged to ensure that only authorized users have access to EIRs.

An informative English translation of APAE is published on the CzechELib website, in the section Agreements. See especially article 5 Rights and Obligations of the Member Institution. To conclude - we regularly inform institutions that no further signatures (besides the one on APAE) are necessary and that they are not obliged to sign anything directly with the publisher, as everything is covered by the License Agreement and the APAE.

G. Perpetual Access

G.1. There are certain points in the CzechELib Standard License Agreement regarding perpetual access. This is something that the majority of the companies will not be able to accept because of a number of reasons (technical, legal...). So what is the idea of handling that?

This is relevant primarily if not exclusively to article/journal databases. We had the perpetual access clause in many contracts we have signed and it is not necessarily perpetual access on the site of the publisher. We believe that we should be entitled to having access to whatever content we had once paid for. As long as we have a valid agreement, the content is accessible on your site. As soon as our contract terminates, we have to have access to what we paid for on our site.

H.Open Access

H.1. Can CzechELib sign Read and Publish agreements? Are the institutions interested in those?

CzechELib signed on behalf of its member institutions several Read and Publish agreements. It is an ongoing goal of CzechELib to flip the traditional subscription deals to the transformative ones and to promote OA publishing.

Furthermore, Martin Svoboda, the director of National Library of Technology, has been appointed by the Research, Development and Innovation Committee as the main negotiator in the Czech Republic concerning the negotiation of transformative agreements regarding EIRs. If you do have a Read and Publish offer, do not hesitate to contact us.

You can find more information at the CzechELib website in the section Open Access.

I. Continued beyond the initial 5-year period

I.1. The CzechELib project formally concluded at the end of the year 2022. What is the status now?

The CzechELib team continues, being a stable part of the NTK. The state subsidy for EIRs is being secured from the state budget (not from EU project) from Jan 2021 till Dec 2027.

I.2. Will the conditions be the same as in the period 2018-2022?

The Ministry's target is a slow gradual decrease of the state subsidy share in the years 2023-2027 (preferably to reflect the situation in the western part of Europe). We anticipate emphasis on Open Access agreements. We do not prefer abrupt changes, however it may happen that some changes will become inevitable.

I.3. Can we just simply renew/amend the existing agreements?

Unfortunately no. We will have to open new public procurement processes, which will result in new agreements, but we expect that most of the agreed clauses will be simply transferred to new agreements from the current ones.

Frequently Asked Questions

A. Principles, participants

B. Subsidy

C. Content

D. Price proposal, payment terms, invoicing

E. Tender (Public Procurement), Agents

F. License Agreement

G. Perpetual Access

H. Open Access

I. Continued beyond the initial 5-year period

A. Principles, participants

A.1. Are there any other consortia in the Czech Republic that purchase e-resources?

A.2. Can you tell us how the nomination of the participating institutions happens? What is your message to institutions?

A.3. Are institutions allowed to cancel their subscriptions during the project? Under what conditions and with what consequences? Or do they have to stay with the selected databases throughout the whole project?

A.4. Can new institutions join running multi-year agreements for particular e-resource anytime?

A.5. How about institutions that still have running funding from other projects?

B. Subsidy

B.1. Which institutions are eligible for the funding? What are the criteria?

B.2. What is the amount of the subsidies?

B.3. Some institutions are smaller than others, the funding that will be given to them is more important to them than to the bigger ones - will that be somehow taken into consideration?

C. Content

C.1. What is the process and criteria of choosing content? Do you have any priorities?

C.2. Can a publisher offer additional content to member institutions via CzechELib?

C.3. We have a list of preliminary institutions that are interested in the content - so after we send you our offers, you will be able to ask also the other institutions that haven't opted in in the first list - just to see if there's order interest or is it limited to that list only?

C.4. What is your approach to the resources that are available on multiple platforms at the same time by different vendors?

D. Price proposal, payment terms, invoicing

D.2. Do you expect the price quotes to be flat and equal for each of the 5 years or could they include some yearly growth?

D.3. The currency of the offers should be local or euros or other?

D.4. When are you going to pay us? Are you able to work with a single invoice and make a single payment to the publisher/content provider?

D.5. After you receive preliminary prices, do you expect to have meetings with every publisher? Will you meet the publishers directly and present the situation?

E. Tender (Public Procurement), Agents

E.1. The finances are allocated from the state budget - so every year there will be a tender?

E.2. Does every contract have to go through a public tender?

E.3. Is the language of the tender procedure going to be Czech? Do we need to use a third party - a lawyer? Have it translated? Is it by law that it must be in Czech language?

E.4. Can you let us know the time frame of the tender process in the Czech Republic?

E.6. You prefer communicating about the content directly with the publishers, but in case there are certain agreements in place and the publishers appoint an agent, are you willing to negotiate with the agent and accept the price proposal from him?

F. License agreement

F.1. Are you going to send us a standard CzechELib License agreement or would you like us all to send you our own versions of our own Licenses instead?

F.2. Will CzechELib sign a license on behalf of all the member institutions? If so, how many years should the consortium license cover?

F.3. Generally, we require each member of the consortium to approve our license terms and confirm our License Agreement or Subscription Agreement by signing it. Would the CzechELib Standard License Agreement eliminate the need for these agreements to be signed?

G. Perpetual Access

G.1. There are certain points in the CzechELib Standard License Agreement regarding perpetual access. This is something that the majority of the companies will not be able to accept because of a number of reasons (technical, legal...). So what is the idea of handling that?

H.Open Access

H.1. Can CzechELib sign Read and Publish agreements? Are the institutions interested in those?

I. Continued beyond the initial 5-year period

I.1. The CzechELib project formally concluded at the end of the year 2022. What is the status now?

I.2. Will the conditions be the same as in the period 2018-2022?

I.3. Can we just simply renew/amend the existing agreements?

For Publishers