Announcing Integration Option with CCC's RightsLink OA Publication Payment Workflow Solution

Easily integrate Scholastica's peer review system with RightsLink

Publishers using Scholastica’s peer review system for their journals now have the option to integrate with Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink® solution to more easily manage Open Access publication charges. Read on for the full details.

As the research landscape moves towards Open Access (OA), there are more possible journal funding options than ever before, creating OA publishing opportunities but also some new billing challenges. For publishers funding OA journals via article processing charges, transformative arrangements, or a combination of the two, generating invoices for articles, applying author discounts, and managing institutional agreements can get pretty tricky.

At Scholastica, we know many publishers are seeking to implement tools to manage publication charge complexities and provide a better invoicing experience for authors and institutions. So to make that process easier, Scholastica now offers the option to integrate our peer review system with RightsLink® for Scientific Communications (RLSC), Copyright Clearance Center’s scholarly communications workflow solution. The new RightsLink integration is part of Scholastica’s efforts to support efficient and sustainable publishing for a variety of fully-OA journal models.

With the new integration, publishers who use RLSC can seamlessly initiate payment for OA journal article processing charges from Scholastica’s peer review system at the time article acceptance decisions are made. We are also building out Scholastica’s metadata support to enable publishers to leverage RLSC’s broad range of transformative agreement workflows and sophisticated rules engine for author discounts. RightsLink is able to apply author fee waivers, discounts, or institutional agreements that publishers specify on an article-by-article basis.

The new RightsLink integration is available to journal publishers that have a RightsLink account and use Scholastica’s peer review system at no additional cost.

How the RightsLink peer review integration works

Publishers using Scholastica’s peer review system for their journals can get the new RightsLink integration set up quickly and easily. Just contact our support team with the details of which journal(s) you would like to integrate with RightsLink, and we’ll reach out to get the account information needed and take care of the technical details from there.

After the RightsLink integration is connected, publication charge invoices will automatically be generated by RightsLink when “accept” decisions are issued for articles through Scholastica’s peer review system. Once article invoices have been created, editors and authors can easily access them via Scholastica’s peer review system from the manuscript work area by selecting the view article invoice option in the left sidebar. When an author or editor selects this option, the associated RightsLink invoice page will be opened in a new browser tab. Management and payment of publication invoices is then handled in the RightsLink system.

The CCC RightsLink solution offers many benefits for journal publishers and the wider scholarly community. RightsLink provides a user-friendly interface for publishers and authors to streamline publication charge management and simplify institutional reimbursement processing. The system features a powerful and flexible rules engine that helps publishers codify and implement OA agreements and trigger appropriate touch-free or author/institution-mediated workflows. Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) brings a broad and advanced set of capabilities to all publishers, funders, institutions, and authors using the RightsLink platform.

Building out support for a variety of OA publishing models

At Scholastica, we have the privilege of working with a range of journal publishers, including scholarly societies, university presses, academic institutions, and scholar-led organizations. We know many are in the process of launching OA journals or transitioning titles to OA to expand research access and fulfill funder requirements, such as Plan S. That’s why we’re working to support efficient and sustainable publishing via a variety of possible OA models.

To learn more about how Scholastica is supporting sustainable OA publishing and helping journals fulfill the Plan S implementation guidelines, visit our Plan S Product Roadmap.

We hope you find this new feature useful! As always, don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions!