Joint Information Systems Committee 04/10/23 | slide 1

Digitisation Town Meeting, April 21, London

Joint Information Systems Committee Supporting education and research

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Business modelling and sustainability

Lorraine Estelle, JISC Collections

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Slide Title

Put your bullet list in here

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sustainability seeks to provide the best of all possible worlds for people and the environment both now and into the indefinite future

"Sustainability." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 9 Apr 2006, 10:06 UTC. 12 Apr 2006, 12:28 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sustainability&oldid=47680559>.

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Sustainability of what?

Content

Ownership

Web delivery and access

This presentation will focus on the sustainability of ownership and internet access to the content

In particular on sustainable access for the JISC community

It will not deal with technology migration or sustainability of the content – although this is something that needs to be paid for

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Separating content from service

The content is funded through the programme – thus in the immediate future there is no sustainability issue

The JISC Community (at the very least) is not required to pay for the content – which has already funded from the public purse

The cost of service – hosting and serving on the internet – has not been funded

The cost of service needs to be paid for to ensure sustainable and wide access to the content

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Business Models – some ground rules

Whatever the model for providing the access – you must ensure that all Intellectual Property Rights are owned by or licensed

You must ensure that you do not infringe any copyright or Intellectual Property Rights

You must ensure that you have suitable liability cover – the moment you make the content available through any business model you will attract liability

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What you need to make your content available on the internet

You need three things:

1. Robust platform;

2. Interface and functionality; and

3. A method to sustain the cost of the above (remember that CSR2 funding is for Capital expenditure and not for ongoing service and

delivery costs). A few business models:Subscription modelPay per view/downloadOpen Access funded by … Donations/Membership fees (consortia membership), royalty revenue

(Open to all – or open to the JISC Community?)

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Subscription Fee - the DIY method

Steps:

1. Fund the interface and platform development costs

2. Calculate the cost the ongoing costs of services: This includes staff, upgrades to software and hardware, the costs of promotion, authentication sales and revenue collection

3. Calculate the size of your market

4. Set annual subscription fees to recover the ongoing service cost (JISC Collections can help with the 3 and 4 – but it’s market is only the

UK higher and further education institutions – not usually a market large enough to sustain all the costs associated with a robust service)

5. Sell the service to your market place - probably an international market place

What about renewals? Did the market take what it wanted and so does not need to come back for more? This is a real problem for multi-media type content where functionality does not provide a great deal of added value

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Commercial Partnership Model

Steps

1. Identify your commercial partner(s) – characteristics you are looking for is an international company, with a reputation in the field, a robust hosting platform, suitable interface, sales and marketing infrastructure and existing customer base, and who already has content that would be enriched by the addition of your content

2. Grant you commercial partner(s) a non-exclusive licence to your content*This means you still retain all IPR and can make the same content

available on different platforms

3. In the grant of licence you ensure that the commercial partner(s) can exploit the content in the international market place – but in the JISC communityEnsure that access if free for the UK JISC communityRoyalties from external exploitation will fund the open access for the JISC community and residual royalties will enable you to digitise more content

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Other Open Access Models

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

‘..building a protected operating fund for the SEP. While the library organizations attempt to raise $3 million for the SEP over the course of 3 years (primarily from libraries at academic institutions offering degrees in philosophy), we here at Stanford hope to raise $1.125 million from private individuals and corporations during that same time period. The SEP would then live off the interest on that $4.125 million fund.’

So funding from consortia, libraries, and individual donations provide a trust fund. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lives off of the interest. Should it not prove sustainable the donors get back their original contribution

http://plato.stanford.edu/

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Pay per view/per download

For the JISC community is this approach compatible with the spirit of the CSR2 funding? Should the JISC community pay for the content (as opposed to an access fee) for digital content funded from the public purse?

Free access for the UK academic community – free search but download fee for commercial and other markets

For other markets it might be appropriate – especially for multi-media collections where it is difficult to obtain regular annual subscriptions?

DIY model – Commercial partner models are both applicable

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Questions