Laying a Foundation for Qatar’s Open Science Future

In 2015, Qatar National Library (QNL) announced plans to launch a fund to support open access (OA) publishing in Qatar.

Established in 2012 and officially designated Qatar’s national library in 2018, QNL operates as a heritage library, research library, and public library, serving various segments of Qatari society. Located in Doha’s Education City, it houses more than one million books and provides patrons with free access to electronic resources.

One of QNL’s core values is open access. The library aims to provide long-term open access for all Qatari research outputs, not only to increase the dissemination and impact of the country’s research, but also to preserve research outputs that are considered part of the nation’s cultural heritage.

The initial objective of the OA program, which I help to administer in my role as head of open access and copyright, was to pay article processing charges (APCs) for researchers who lacked grant funding or sufficient institutional support. In the early days, the process was simple: the author submitted an application form and an invoice to the library, which would pay the publisher directly.

Over the last decade, QNL’s role in open access in Qatar has evolved: we’ve established open access agreements with publishers and supported alternative open access business models, such as the Open Library of the Humanities, and international open access initiatives, such as INTACT’s OpenAPC project and Open Access 2020. In this article, I’ll discuss what we’ve built, some challenges we’ve faced, and what the future might hold for OA in Qatar and beyond.

The Evolution of an OA Service

QNL manages the QNL Consortium, which comprises more than ten research institutions. Through this consortium, we negotiated a number of nationwide subscription deals with publishers. But we saw that other libraries—the Max Planck Digital Library in Germany, Jisc in the UK, and the California Digital Library in the USA—were transitioning costs from subscriptions to publishing, and we believed that we could do the same. In 2018, we made a strategic decision to refrain from entering into any subscription agreement unless it included a cost-neutral OA publishing element that would allow Qatar-based researchers to publish OA without additional financial implications.

This decision became a driving factor in the evolution of our OA service.

Using savings from cancelled subscriptions and non-renewed contracts in 2018, the consortium signed prepayment agreements with the five publishers that, based on our analysis, had the largest number of publications from Qatar-based researchers: Dove Medical Press, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), Frontiers, BioMed Central (which was not yet integrated with Springer Nature), and Public Library of Science (PLOS). These prepayment agreements reduced the administrative burden that had come from processing individual invoices, shortening payment times. We also secured discounts on APCs compared to when we paid separate invoices through procurement.

Around the same time, we started signing read-and-publish agreements. The first was with Emerald in 2017. We eventually secured pilot agreements with Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) (2018), Springer Nature (2019), Taylor & Francis (2019), Elsevier (2020), and Wiley (2020).

All of these agreements, whether for read-and-publish or fully OA journals, had at least one critical thing in common: they allowed any researcher in Qatar to publish, as long as they were affiliated with a nonprofit or research institution, whether or not their institution was a formal member of the consortium.

At first, publishers resisted this arrangement. But we clarified the unique position of QNL: we do not have researchers affiliated directly with our institution. Instead, we aim to serve the whole research community in Qatar. We also maintained a dedicated fund for DOAJ indexed publishers not included in any of the read-and-publish or fully OA agreements.

None of these changes required that we put more money into the system; rather, we reallocated savings generated by our new subscription strategy.

Since the launch of our OA program in 2015, the QNL Consortium has successfully supported more than 6,000 articles authored by over 2,000 different authors across 44 institutions in Qatar. These papers represent 38 percent of all OA papers with a Qatari affiliation and 61 percent of OA papers with a Qatar-based corresponding author during that period (Figures 1A and 1B).

The Many Challenges of Operating an OA Fund

These results offer a promising glimpse into Qatar’s open science future. But they do not paint a full picture of the challenges that we encountered along the way, or the new challenges we face today, ten years after the initial announcement of the OA fund.

As an administrator of an OA program, one thing you quickly realize is that you can’t simply search online for “How to operate an OA fund” or find comprehensive guidelines from other institutions. Instead, we faced a significant and painful learning curve. We had to learn how to train a team of administrators to manage requests, negotiate initial OA agreements (which included the challenge of reaching equitable terms with publishers), and create effective workflows.

Fortunately, we are part of the OA2020 initiative, which gave us insight into what others had done. We also contacted several libraries to learn about their experiences and identify practices that might work for us.

Scaling Workflows

One of the first challenges we faced was managing a continuously increasing number of publication requests (Figure 2). When we first started using publishing agreements in 2018, we received 193 submissions. The following year it was 702. In 2024, we received 2,284.

Researchers’ growing demand for services is a positive sign that justifies the library’s open science initiatives. But this increase has also led to challenges communicating with authors and difficulties tracking funding requests.

We are also highly dependent on publishers’ systems to identify papers authored by individuals affiliated with Qatar-based research institutions. Unfortunately, publishers often complicate this process. Each publisher has its own workflow, instructions for authors, and approval methods for article requests. For example, some publishers allow approval of funding at editorial acceptance, whereas others allow it at the peer-review stage.

To address these challenges, we developed a knowledge base detailing each publisher’s workflow, including information about authors’ journeys within each publisher’s system, as well as email templates to be used in communicating with authors and publishers. We also created an internal data file to capture detailed information about each request, as we were mindful of our intention eventually to share our data with the OpenAPC initiative. Additionally, early in 2018, we developed an online form for author requests, simplified proof of eligibility requirements (i.e., by relying solely on the author’s institutional email address), reduced the number of emails authors have to send to qualify for funding, and updated the website to include instructions for authors on how to navigate each publisher agreement.

By mapping each publisher’s workflow, we were able to discover common issues and initiate discussions to address them. This exercise also enabled us to outline requirements for new publisher agreements, so that going forward, workflows were better defined and included in contracts whenever possible.

Publisher Negotiations

Contract negotiations with publishers can be quite difficult. We are grateful to the library community and the ESAC Transformative Agreement Registry for publishing agreements online, which has allowed us to gain insight into what others are doing, enabling us to determine what might work for us and to ask for it.

Of course, some larger publishers are not fond of this approach. They argue that every market is different, and, therefore, we should not expect the same terms others receive. But we share the view expressed the B17 Conference Final Statement that publishers must ensure that “investments in scholarly publishing are fair, transparent, and structured to sustain an open and inclusive publishing environment” (OA2020 Initiative - Max Planck Digital Library, 2025). In all cases—and in an attempt “to pay it forward”—we remove non-disclosure language from our agreements, which we hope will make them beneficial to others.

The ever-evolving nature of agreements has also been a challenge. Our first read-and-publish agreements included both hybrid and gold OA journals, offering potentially cost-neutral mechanisms by which we could transition our spending to OA. Over time, however, and as the demand for OA in Qatar increased, publishers began to separate hybrid from fully OA offerings. One publisher claimed that this separation would allow for greater coverage of society journals. Another indicated that it was a “necessary investment” if we were to continue benefiting from the existing agreement structure.

On average, our prepayments would only cover 20 percent of the cost of the articles our researchers sough to publish in gold OA journals. If we wanted 100 percent article coverage, these agreements would no longer be cost neutral. As a result, we started supporting fewer fully OA articles. We are now working with our consortium partners to explore ways to increase funding for fully OA articles.

We are also worried about the growing tendency of publishers to promote the more restrictive CC BY-NC-ND license, especially in the age of big AI, and the introduction of language in author agreements that potentially transfers commercial rights to publishers.

Signing an agreement with a publisher is only the beginning of an ongoing process involving continuous refinements and regular communication. While for some publishers, there is a disconnect between the sales and OA implementation teams, making it seem as if signing the agreement is the only goal, it’s crucial for libraries to work with publishers after the agreement is signed to improve workflows and ensure that they fulfil their responsibilities.

Meeting Researchers’ Needs

The most significant challenge we face is securing enough funding to meet all the requests we receive. Although QNL has supported over 6,000 articles since 2018, we have had to decline more than 4,000 requests (Figure 2), primarily due to funding limitations and publishing costs that exceed the amount we are able to cover.

To identify areas for improvement in our services and to better understand the perspectives of our beneficiaries, we conducted a survey in January 2025 (Abuhasanain, L., Harami, A., & Alkhaja, A., 2025). The survey was sent to 2,067 researchers based in Qatar; we received responses from 275 (13 percent).

The survey revealed several key points (Figure 3). Researchers wanted our website to be more transparent about the availability of funds. They also suggested a more equitable fund distribution process and a streamlined request approval procedure. Notably, many respondents expect QNL to cover APCs, indicating that a majority (86 percent) view QNL as the primary source of APC funding in Qatar. As a result, they would only publish OA if the publication was financed by the QNL OA program.

It is important to note that the original intention of the OA program and the QNL Consortium was not to be the sole source of funding for researchers in Qatar, but rather to provide support in the absence of other funding options. Interestingly, ~41 percent of respondents mentioned that their institutions provide APC funding, while ~22 percent were unaware of any funding options available at their institutions.

As a result of the survey, we updated our funding criteria for fully OA journals in order to distribute of funds more equitably within the limitations we face. We’re also exploring ways to collaborate with Qatari institutions to enhance OA support for their researchers.

Next Steps

Ten years after the launch of the OA service, we find ourselves at a crossroads. We have established an OA service that functions. But there is still a great deal of work to be done. Our read-and-publish agreements are effective, but they require fine-tuning to ensure that publishers accurately forecast the number of articles that will publish under the agreement each year. This is crucial to prevent overspending or underestimating demand. Furthermore, we need to continue to negotiate agreements with fair pricing and CC BY licensing and further transition costs from subscriptions to publishing. We also need to work with publishers to develop agreements that do not price us out of fully OA journals and to move away from agreements that link OA publishing prices to article volume.

We recognize that funding APCs is only one way to achieve our goals; we also want to support institutions in Qatar to increase self-archiving in open repositories. To that end, in 2023, we launched Manara-Qatar Research, a countrywide research repository that provides infrastructure much needed in Qatar, where some institutions do not yet have their own institutional repositories. We have partnered with Hamad Bin Khalifa University and the University of Doha for Science and Technology to make Manara their institutional repository. So far, the repository holds more than 8,000 items, including both traditional and non-traditional academic outputs. We hope that other institutions will follow suit.

We are also mindful of the need to support diamond OA and are working to identify opportunities to work with OA publishers in Qatar. We also recognize that our efforts should extend beyond covering APCs, and that the road to open access involves supporting alternative business models, including non-APC models, as well as supporting infrastructure that enables open science. But we often find ourselves constrained by the existing norms, including business models that do not always prioritize funding for the broader community. Therefore, we must collaborate with service providers to create models that are mutually beneficial, allowing us to gain immediate advantages while also contributing to the long-term support of the community.

In the last couple of years, QNL’s initiatives have provided needed support for the research community in Qatar. Going forward, we would like more OA funding at individual institutions, allowing customization to align with each institution’s goals. We would also like to see more institutional repositories in Qatar. Furthermore, we aim to explore how QNL’s efforts can encourage the adoption of more OA policies and mandates throughout the country. What we have already achieved offers a glimpse of the future we hope these efforts will create—one in which all of the nation’s research outputs are available without barriers.

References

OA2020 Initiative - Max Planck Digital Library. (2025). Final Statement: 17th Berlin Open Access Conference. https://oa2020.org/b17-conference/final-statement/

Abuhasanain, L., Harami, A., & Alkhaja, A. (2025). Assessing the Qatar National Library Open Access Program: Insights and Future Strategies [Poster]. Manara - Qatar Research Repository. https://doi.org/10.57945/manara.29220149.v1

Qatar National Library. (2025). Open Access Agreements. https://www.qnl.qa/en/open-access-at-qnl/open-access-agreements