An increasing number of publisher agreements offer opportunities for open access publication. Additionally, some institutions designate libraries to oversee funds for covering article and book processing charges related to open access. Alma will be enhanced to capture and record open access activities, including transformative agreements, article processing charges, and more.

• Well defined workflow for managing APC 
• Management of transformative agreements

Streamlined APC management and transformative agreement handling simplify administrative tasks, saving time and ensuring compliance with open access policies, leading to a more efficient workflow.

The "Update PO lines information" job will be re-designed, allowing better form navigation and additional fields to update.

• 19 new fields will be added to "Update PO lines information" job in Alma, including notes, labels, subscription, renewal fields, and more
• The job form will be divided to match PO lines sections

The redesigned "Update PO Lines Information" job will provide better form navigation and additional fields, making it easier and more efficient for customers to update purchase order lines, ultimately improving their workflow and data accuracy.

Release 5.1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice was published in 2022 with compliance required from January 2025 usage (delivered in February 2025 reports).

Alma will support COUNTER 5.1 reports in the various usage workflows.

• It will be possible to create vendor SUSHI accounts for R5.1
• Alma will harvest the various report types
• Relevant information will be available in Analytics 

Enables institutions to compare and analyze usage data effectively according to the latest COUNTER data release.

Provide institutions with insights about cost per use and article processing charges (APC) to inform transformative negotiation​ with publishers.

• Analytics reports will be introduced, summarizing the amount of money spend on article processing charges (APC) with various vendors
• A comparison will be introduced between requests to publish that are covered by Transformative Agreements licenses and those that are paid explicitly by the institution

Providing institutions with insights about cost per use and article processing charges (APC) will empower them to make informed decisions during transformative negotiations with publishers, optimizing resource allocation and enhancing the value of their investments.

The "Update PO lines information - advanced" job will support changing PO line types across inventory and continuity.

• It will be possible to change PO line types from one time to continuous, and from physical to electronic, etc.
• It will be possible to define how to handle the existing inventory and whether to create new inventory

The ability to update existing PO lines across inventory and continuity will simplify PO line management and eliminate the need to delete and recreate them for significant changes.

Additional actions will be added to the ‘Received Items List' page of the receiving workbench.

• "Withdraw" of specific items
• Open Predicted Items

The user will be able to perform item related actions during  normal receiving operations, avoiding the need to search for the title and go to the items list.

Additional improvements will be incorporated into the unified PO lines interface to facilitate more effective bulk management of multiple PO lines on a larger scale.

• Ability to exclude facets
• Ability to run a job on selected PO lines directly from the list
• Inline indication for bulk actions

Enhance usability and efficiency by allowing customers to exclude facets, run jobs on selected PO lines directly from the list, and receive inline indications for bulk actions, streamlining their workflow and improving overall productivity.

Today, PO line templates  are edited and updating when updating a PO line. 

With this new feature, it will be possible to view existing templates and manage them in a dedicated list.

• PO line templates will be displayed in a dedicated list
• It will be possible to view, edit, add and delete PO line templates from this list

Institutions will gain better visibility of PO line existing templates and will be able to manage them efficiently. 

The "Manage purchase requests" interface will be redesigned for better usability, performance, productivity, and overall user experience.

• Improved workflow for electronic purchase requests - including the ability to use CZ records
• Additional faceting options and improved display
• Ability to define personalized faceted lists

Improved workflow will streamline the management of purchase requests, improve organization, and provide a more tailored and efficient user experience.