> On Apr 13, 2023, at 3:39 PM, Michelle Urberg <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Dear Code4Lib Community,
> 
> I am hoping to get some feedback from experts in library acquisitions and
> those who do collection development.
> 
> I am working on a project with a client who is interested in providing open
> access content to libraries and we are discussing potential business models
> to ensure that they can continue developing their content for the
> foreseeable future. They are a non-profit (501c3) organization.
> Understanding that open access content is not really "free", is there a
> circumstance in which libraries would pay a fee to support this
> organization? Any fee associated with a "subscription" would be largely
> directed back at developing the platform and enhancing content for the
> organization. The content would be area specific to the humanities and
> arts, directed to a particular segment of a university or college
> community, but its contents would be freely available to everyone.
> 
> So questions I have are these:
> 1) If there was a fee for this content, how much would be acceptable? Would
> that fee be FTE dependent?
> 2) Would the online content space need to be enhanced from what is freely
> available on the internet to be of use to the university to be worth a
> "subscription"? (e.g. a robust database search with particular metadata or
> some sort of visualization or knowledge graph)
> 3) Would a given university or college want to have the option to
> contribute to this content hub (this is not unlike Science Open, but the
> content scope is more specialized and with particular arts and humanities
> content)?


I can’t answer the specific questions, and don’t know if it helps or not, but much of the discussion in the research data and services community talked about the issue as ‘governance’ when talking about how to ensure that a community supporting the resource existed long-term.

(I remember it coming up for Dryad, OrcID, Research Data Alliance, etc, as they were starting up, and other data archives as they were working on TRAC certification)

Using the term, I found this article which from the opening seems to be related to what you’re asking about:  https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/wp4-report-exploring-models-for-community-governance/release/1

I want to say that back when I was attending ASIS&T meetings regularly, that I had some conversations with the AltMetrics folks (Jason Priem, Heather Piwowar, etc) on this sort of stuff

You might also want to look at Priem and Hemminger’s Decoupling the Scholarly Journal ( https://doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2012.00019 ), as it talks about exactly what the role of a journal is and how maybe not all of it needs to be done by the journal organization.

I know that there are open access journals which charge fees upon deposit (possibly with a sliding scale for developing countries), and some give discounts if the author is one of the member organization giving funding.  Some also give credits for participation in peer review which can then be used to publish (or given to friends who want to publish) in the journal.

One of perks that I think that the member organizations get are reporting tools so they can see how much the articles written by their employees are being downloaded, cited, etc.  (also see AltMetrics; http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/ ). Sometimes it’s also hosting extra data and supplemental research, or providing tools to interact with the underlying data associated with the publication.  ( see http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003542 )

The organizations might also give in-kind donations (hosting a copy to ensure permanence, etc)

Sorry, I’ve been out of that community for too long, and Peter Fox passed away and Ruth Duerr retired so I’m not sure who to ask questions as to whom to talk to for specifics.  I want to say these topics in a general sense have come up at RDA (Research Data Alliance), DCC (Digital Curation Conference), and RDAP (Research Data Access and Preservation).

-Joe

Sent from a mobile device with a crappy on screen keyboard and obnoxious "autocorrect"