Freemium as a sustainable economic model for open access publications in humanities ans social...

Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)

École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)

Université de Provence

Université d’Avignon

Freemium as a sustainable economic model for OA

publications in humanities and social sciences

Pierre MounierCenter for open electronic publishing (Cléo)

Pierre Mounier PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011

Who are we ?

A short presentation

Pierre Mounier

PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 Who are we ?

A team supported by 4 major french research institutions

Pierre Mounier

PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 Who are we ?

What do we do ?

Revues.org : an international platform with more than 300 open access and books collections in humanities

and social sciences in HTML, PDF and Epub

Pierre Mounier

PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 Who are we ?

What do we do ?Calenda : a platform with 16000

conference announcementsHypotheses.org : a platform with

240 blogs

Pierre Mounier

PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 Who are we ?

An ecosystem : OpenEdition

Pierre Mounier PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011

Our problem

And obviously not only ours

Pierre Mounier PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011

Green and Gold roads

And their economic models

Green road : support from institutions, libraries, governements

Gold road ? How to build a robust economic model for Open Access journals and books ?

PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 Green and gold roads

Gold road : 2 models

100% grant/subsidies model Author-pay model

PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 Green and gold roads

Golden : 2 problems

100% grant/subsidies model

Dependance on institutions, institution-centric model, weak economic model (monoculture)

A flawed model : access to publication biased by financial capacity, universities pay twice,

Author-pay model

Pierre Mounier PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011

The problem behind the problemWhere are the libraries ?

Pierre Mounier

PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 The problem behind the problem

Some figures

Emma Bester study : Usages of open access resources in Research libraries. Revues.org case study

Pierre Mounier

PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 The problem behind the problem

Some figures

Emma Bester study : Usages of open access resources in Research libraries. Revues.org case study

Pierre Mounier

PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 The problem behind the problem

Some statements from librarians

Emma Bester study : Usages of open access resources in Research libraries. A case study on Revues.org

“Because we have shrinking budgets and paid resources are more and more expensive, we must justify the money we spend, so we are driven to focus more and more on what we pay.”

“Open access resources, right now are not very up-to-date in our tool (MetaLib). We concentrated our forces on paid resources because we have to justify the money (we spend)”

“We have stats on that (OA), but we don’t use them. We have to deal with paid databases at first ! It’s a huge work for us to answer to enquiries. The logic is return on investment because theses resources are extremely expensive. We have to justify subscriptions to the university, the scientific committee and the government.”

A triple disaster

• For OA publishers : they can’t be fully supported by libraries

• For readers : they are left alone to find open access resources (desintermediation scenario)

• For libraries : they can’t participate fully the new open access ecosystem

Pierre Mounier PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011

A proposal :OpenEdition

freemiumHow to develop a sound economic model for

OA journals and book publishers ?How to integrate libraries giving them the

possibility to « pay for free content » ?

Pierre Mounier

PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011A proposal

OpenEdition freemium

Freemium : an economic model coming from the web

Freemium

Open Access to full text articles and books in HTML– free –

Premium formats and services licensed to libraries - premium –

66% of income goes to publishers. 33% to the platform to help develop new

services

OE freemium : 6 exclusive services for libraries

• Access to premium formats (PDF and Epub files)

• Training and assistance• Data services• Standard stats• Documentation• Governance

Premium formats

No DRMNo quota

Copy & pastePrint, Save

Premium Services

OpenEdition freemium is a pragmatic AND a political proposition to academic

community…

… in order to build an alliance between scholars, publishers and librairies to support

open access & knowledge dissemination

Scholars and editors

78 journals so far

78 journals so far

Scholars and editors

78 journals so far

More than 20 university press for books

Scholars and editors

78 journals so far

More than 30 research libraries testing or subscribing

Thank you !pierre.mounier@revues.org