Assumptions

WP2 report to serve as basis for the platform offers:

• OAPEN, punctum

Thoughts:

• pilot project focusing on ScholarLed + OAPEN
• consider revenue share across stakeholders

Steps:

• Iza: 2 days/week to look at this in more detail, to develop business model further
• collecting info on background: OAPEN, OBP and punctum membership models, keeping in mind comparative approaches such as MIT Direct2Open
• consider & compare existing structures

Financial component, fee structure

• Banded fee structure (e.g. Jisc template) as easy-administerable approach.

• Consider consortial bands (Jisc, LYRASIS, other regional collective approaches) to shape the platform's outline

• Other payment options (pay-as-you-go, individual funding, one-offs)

• Also need to consider: other revenue streams (e.g. grant funds per individual publisher, see e.g. OBP).

  • Open question: should we include grant income in the platform subscription fees?
  • Platform ought not to focus on (compulsory) BPC charges... some of the publishers encourage authors to apply for grant funding to cover for production charges (5000 GBP / authored book). In that sense, it is not a BPC per se, but a voluntary contribution.
  • Consider the subtleties inherent in membership fees, and actual book production costs - will need to make this transparent. To make clear that becoming a member of the platform does not automatically mean free publication of all future authors from that institution

• Bigger question: allocation between individual presses in the ScholarLed consortium. One approach might focus on number of books published, but this in itself raises further questions as how to cover fixed costs, etc.

• Scaling the membership approach: expansion - need to sustain the growing ecosystem, but also keep an eye on rising membership fees so as to balance between increase in number of libraries, and increase in fee

• annual cycle seems to be preferrable, just to cover volatility aspects and change in stakeholder structure

publisher specifics

number of books / year - including projections for next 12 months.

• Allows us to make a case for collective size, with approx. 100 titles comparable to e.g. Michigan Press or MIT.

• Ask each of the ScholarLed publishers to define what they are seeking to gain from the platform, also to include

• cost/book: for OBP & punctum ~5,000 GBP, other presses may differ, though

• average production costs

• mission and production outline

• first-copy costs - do we want to highlight this as the main costing point on the platform, or combine this with other income streams

• title-specific information & projections might be diffcult to collect and advertise, particularly across different publishers, because publication process rather fluid and short-term (compared to legacy publishers, which have longer timeframes)

• so focus of offer more on the level of publisher or collective of publishers seems preferrable.

• *Assumption: define target #/books and aim for membership scheme to cover x percent of overall costs of running the platform.

• Making workflows transparent and explicit. Question about which level we are looking at - platform-specific and publisher-specific. The costs of managing the platform to factor in to the membership model

• Another aspect: Covering the costs of early platform management through in-kind contributions by ScholarLed publishers themselves?

  • 10-15k for the technical costs
  • Follow-up with funding applications to cover the inital startup process
  • Inital cover through COPIM?

Roles needed

Outreach/Marketing

as most important initially. OBP has a Marketing/Outreach person (Laura Rodriguez) that might get involved more. Banking in on existing library members e.g. with OBP (approx. 200), with punctum (x).

Admin/Financial

navigating the different payment streams - PayPal, Stripe, etc. - invoicing, annual reports, usage statistics. (OBP experience: 2d/week). * Employer costs: salary specifics (30k/year 1.0 FTE, added 20% on top for employer fees, approx overall costs of 40k/year) * Actual value in honesty and frankness, as compared to "traditional" marketing * Library shares: for OBP - 33% each of US (incl. Canada), UK and Europe * additional members from developing countries * EU: engaging French, Italian libraries with a somewhat different scheme because of bureaucratic system

• Overall streamlined approach to marketing, admin: approx. 16-20k / year
• Usage statistics: recommendation to avoid, because of unreliability of numbers collected, mainly because OA means ubiquitous availability, and no gatekeeper/gateway to measure it through...
• Other metrics, e.g. number of authors / instituion; use cases, research papers to present on the platform to build a narrative about the neccesity of alternate approaches to measure success, particularly for OA. Outreach in a more general sense to inform about the benefits of the Collective (workshops for individual libraries, conference participation, etc.)

IT support

running the platform and collaboration infrastructure, looking after Thoth. Two aspects 1) running the platform and 2) develop future functionalities - platform running / maintenance with external hoster around the 3k GBP ballpark

• Define percentage of costs to cover for the platform itself. Making this transparent not in the sense of an admin fee, but to share the costs with libraries
• Emergency fund: to buffer unexpected impact on the model.
  • OBP has an agreement with a charity on a zero-percent loan that one can then cover such costs.
  • UK tax credits: research and development grants add to such credits, which then help to remedy

Next steps

Iza to draft an initial business plan, then feed back to group

consider different options that the Collective might be able to decide upon

Check with Tom (WP3) to ask about calculations / library

Business case template: COPIM initial business case, Toby to send to Iza; also Martin/Tom might have leads.

Consider selection of services (e.g. readership vs. authorship), infrastructure,