Purpose and Scope of this document

This document outlines the policies of the TDL DataCite Consortium Membership, in which multiple TDL members join DataCite (https://datacite.org/) and subscribe to DataCite services as a group in order to reduce cost to each participating member.
This document is not a business contract. Participating institutions have existing membership contracts with the Texas Digital Library.

Glossary

Texas Digital Library (TDL) is a consortium of institutions headquartered in the University of Texas at Austin Libraries, that builds capacity for preserving, managing, and providing access to unique digital collections of enduring value. The University of Texas is the TDL’s fiscal agent.
Consortium members, in the context of this document, are other institutions who are part of the TDL DataCite Consortium Membership.
DataCite is a non-profit organization that acts as a DOI registration agency, assigning persistent identifiers (DOIs) for research data.
DOI, or digital object identifier, is an alphanumeric string assigned to uniquely identify an object. It is tied to a metadata description of the object as well as to a digital location, such as a URL, where all the details about the object are accessible.

Texas Digital Library will serve as the TDL Consortium DataCite Membership Administrator.
TDL will be billed for and pay the full cost of the DataCite Consortium Membership annually.
TDL will collect fees from consortium members for their portions of the membership and services costs.
TDL will convene a meeting of consortium members annually in the summer to determine service usage for the coming fiscal year.
TDL is responsible for technical implementation related to minting of DOIs for the applications that it hosts, notably the Texas Data Repository.

Consortium members will promptly reimburse TDL for their portion of the cost of the DataCite Consortium Membership as part of their annual TDL membership payment.
Consortium members will attend an annual meeting called by TDL to review pricing and set service usage for the following fiscal year.
Consortium members will notify TDL of any changes to their service usage or key contacts at their institution.
Consortium members are responsible for any technical implementations for applications that they host, and for managing other DOI services locally.

Other Consortium Membership policies

To become a member of the TDL DataCite Consortium Membership, an institution must be a full Regular Member, or part of a consortium that is a Regular Member, of the Texas Digital Library.
Addition of a new consortium member: New eligible members may join the consortium at any time and pay their Service Fees for that fiscal year. During the next fiscal year, the new member will be included in calculations for splitting the membership fee.
Withdrawal of a consortium member: At or before the time of the annual TDL DataCite Consortium meeting, a consortium member may notify TDL or their intent to withdraw from the consortium membership. TDL will recalculate the costs to each remaining member accordingly.

The cost of the total DataCite Consortium Membership is divided into an Annual Membership Fee and annual Services Fees, according to the 2023 Fee Model provided by DataCite.
The Annual Membership Fee will be divided evenly among members of the consortium.
Each member will pay the full amount of its Services Fees.