SCA Blog

Business models and sustainability in the digital age: a peer reviewing workshop is currently taking place at the Wellcome Trust in London, led by Kevin Guthrie of Ithaka. Under discussion is the Ithaka-produced report on sustainability and business models.

Read on for a report of the first session:

Kevin Guthrie kicked off the introductions and explained that he became JSTOR’s first employee in 1994 and continued working for the organisation as its president for more than a decade (and is still chairman of the board). About three to four years ago he realised that JSTOR’s mission needed to expand to include consulting and set up separate organisation - Ithaka – to help organisations to become sustainable not-for profit organisations. Ithaka incubates some entities with strategic advice etc like a venture capitalist and also offers strategic services.

The diversity of the 40-strong audience was revealed in the group introductions that followed. [full delegate list to follow]

Kevin Guthrie: I want to reach a common understanding of what we’re talking about – content rather than software. Online Academic Resources (OAR) is the term we use in the report – are we talking about the same thing? We mean
- content – digital resources

We don’t touch on data in the report but it’s very important – people want the data connected to the research and more and more in the sciences people want to be able to simulate the research results and need access to the data that led to those research results. We need to incorporate that into the report

David Dawson: problem with the word ‘academic’ – not all the range of uses we provide content for are academic

KG: that’s a great example of our bias – we touch on it a little in our report when we talk about secondary audiences…could you propose a different definition?

David Dawson: try me after a couple of beers!

Ian Archer: what about open courseware – OCW

KG: from my perspective it’s a different kind of university publishing – re-engineering of workflows – unintended effects etc – does fit into this definition but we need to figure out how to more directly incorporate them

Sheila Corrall: impression of MIT’s version of OCW is that it’s a bit hit and miss – not so much of a planned strategy compared with how it is happening in the UK

KG: original vision oriented was towards business-to-business model – something that professors could use to teach rather than for students to learn – different model – but come to be thought of now as an opportunity for students to self-learn – so need to think through the objective as set out – users may determine a different use

Mel Collier: we need to consider what’s the nature of the content and what’s the nature of the audience

KG: this is supply side and demand side – what you want to make sure you think about is matching the suppliers of funds to the users of those funds – in general there’s a need for increased attention on outcomes on the demand side in terms of users – like the idea of resources for learning and research as that’s the actual use of it

Clifford Harkness: Open University is very user-focused – focus here is on universities but the culture between universities and museums/archives is v similar. What happens in the universities is that academic focus is at its most intense – could see it as concentric circles with the museums the most outward facing and universities the most intense at the centre. Also broadcasters are missing in this equation – some years ago they saw their main role as education. This didn’t play out but a key focus for them is still history

KG: this report cannot be all things to all people but do we need to make this less university based and put more into those concentric circles?

Sheila Corall: some other things missing – in this country quite a lot of those initiatives are actually led by libraries so the research culture and management are different as not about individuals leading the project

KG: no doubt that at the moment the report focuses on the individual project and does not take into account institutional level

Corrall: but in the UK even many of the projects at an individual level are led by libraries and there are also projects in public libraries too

KG: didn’t write this report from the standpoint of the funders – didn’t look at the ecosystem – wanted to help the organisations within the ecosystem

Jens Jensen: want to go back to the definitions of OAR because there are other types of resources, such as computing resources in the national grid service, and that’s very different from providing data – also need to preserve the raw data and the intermediate steps – so have provenance and security issues – have to charge users for the storage space – have to charge them for empty space and have to plan for how much space they will need years into the future

KG: would put this in same class as Open Source Software – note it but it is outside scope

Jens: yes but need to treat different resources in different ways

Catherine Grout: organisational context is one of the conditions in which a project is born so we need to identify which contexts are more or less hospitable to a project – but irrespective of that, the organisms within the ecosystem are likely to be facing similar issues as they share the same ecosystem

Alastair Dunning: what about journals? if you set up a journal you don’t think of it as a project…

KG: yes, could include journals – it’s about the mentality that people bring to projects – different businesses

Chris Owens: some of the sustainability mindset also has to go into the funding side – plus our experience with content is that it may get reused many times…

KG: we may have identified a need for training for leaders [writes this on recommendations page]

The second part of the report is full of conditionals – would like to know if the matrix we describe would be useful and what the parameters would be

Definition for sustainability:

“Having a mechanism is in place for generating for gaining access to the economic resources necessary to keep the IP or service available on an ongoing basis”

Ken Chad: business and profit is another route to sustainability

KG: yes, this could be addressed more directly in the report – not intended to be anti-commercial at all

Reports from breakout groups on the report itself

Group led by Sarah Porter

• we focused on issue of notion of toolset and case studies and like the idea
• report is a useful start though feel there could be some changes
• useful to collect case studies and examples – we came up with some and they included private-public partnerships – so looked at collaboration and well as competition – and reaching out in to the general public and not just academic research
• felt that real need to collect data about other models and different type of content
• might be different models for different types of content
• comments on the fact that project leaders of all kinds are in the business of becoming publishers and providing services so services could be integrated with content
• skillset – do you put it into the individual leader or a team? didn’t manage to sort that out
• institutional context – most institutions realise that there is a need to integrate

Group led by Catherine Grout

• common sense start and good to have a check list
• feeling that the questions are applicable to all types of scenarios
• good to get an independent perspective
• questions – how do you use organisational infrastructure and how do you divert resources appropriately – also, the SCA is doing some work in the audience analysis area so this work should be tied in with that
• not everyone will agree about what is important with a new project – access v preservation
• tailoring things to individuals is a major challenge but if not, will the business model fly?
• should there be a core collection of services paid for by the public purse? if so, what does that mean for the for-profit sector?
• funders – how do they make informed decisions about what to fund?
• comments on the structure of the report – resources aren’t static in this area and would be helpful to comment on re-use and the web 2.0 environment
• business models identified are rather conservative and could look at more innovative models
• government policy is towards digital inclusion but is still ‘up there’ at the moment and hard to do
• wider and more generic language about material and audiences needed
• a tool or a matrix could be used as a catalyst – could go to the university sector for a response – use it as advocacy

Group led by Alastair Dunning

• useful report to challenge assumptions – changing peoples skills and expectations of what can be done – using this as an evidence base and doing more work beyond it would be useful
• thought that might not be project managers who need to do this work but different people within the organisations
• perhaps not people that need to change but organisations, at the institutional level
• accept that drive for sustainability may need to come from funders [KG asked for clarification here]
• different types of resources – some are not going to be able to get revenues from end users – others are and there is a need for market research to determine that
• shared services and infrastructure and national, and regional and local level to allow people and content to come together
• a lot of digitisation has been pushed by a political context and whoever is in charge of sustainability has to be aware of the political and social framework working within as that can change

Group led by Stuart Dempster

• background of context in the report useful – how we got to this situation
• impact on the user perspective useful and also the list of the various models seen as positive
• report recognises different drivers pushing this forward and also the structure – how a project might fit within an organisation
• not enough just to cover the running costs – it is an investment over the long term and need a pot for further development
• on the con side, the report overstates flexibility in terms of organisational structures bearing in mind the number of funding streams received externally that come with strings attached and so the freedom to experiment restricted accordingly
• management structures imposed by external funders such as forbidding professional project managers needs to be recognised
• also original teams may be constrained if external teams brought in
• recognition that different cultures in UK and US and Europe and the tensions that exist between more entrepreneurial cultures and those that rely on the taxpayer
• issues surrounding open access glossed over and the models identified were pretty high end and need to drill down into different hybrids
• case studies and exemplars and how that knowledge could be transferred and how fits in with existing services – fit between upskilling and ongoing support needs to be recognised

Group led by Ian Dolphin

• identified some common work areas especially sustainability matrix and the pooling of market intelligence but that shouldn’t be constrained to not-for-profits and may be ways to share that knowledge with for profits
• noted that small projects typically need partners and this area almost everyone needs partners so that might point in direction of brokerage
• more recognition of how funding programmes can distort and not necessarily produce what the market wants
• charging models a very useful summary
• but the leadership models tending towards the older leaders as messiah concept of leadership and should be more recognition of newer models
• noted but did not explore relationship between content services and software – perhaps all that needs to be done is to flag the grey areas
• would be useful to have more elaboration of the business models of search engines and how this might relate to this area

KG: just to pick up on the question of open access, it does not itself generate revenue and have to find other ways to generate revenue to make open access happen. What are the options and choices? OA is an objective, not a business model. Suggestions about how we can frame the report more strongly so that it does not appear to be anti-OA would be welcome

Breakout groups on service/infrastructure gaps

Group led by Arwel Jones

• might need to be looking developing existing models rather than looking at gaps
• cooperation and collaboration and the difference between those – also duplication mentioned – to facilitate cooperation may need to set up that map of what other people are doing – we could also bring in other sectors – the business world who might be interested in what we’re doing
• IPR presents challenges and might need a high level strategic view of that
• development – might be able to take advantage of peer training and might be bodies out there that provide entrepreneurs with training that we could take advantage of or might need to set up our own

Group led by Sarah Porter

• we focused more on the soft end of the shared service spectrum
• discussed that there is a skills gap to some extent - people who can combine technical understanding with good management and strategic thinking – not many to go round and hard for orgs to develop them internally
• discussed idea of shared set of online development materials which could be an accredited course or not to help develop those skills
• but noted that we also learn a lot by doing as well
• learn by failure as well as success so need forums where people can share what didn’t go right as well as what did – SCA does fulfil this role in some ways and helps to fill in these gaps
• issues around economies of scale for fulfilling those skills gaps – are we looking to provide the skills to do this kind of work internally or could it be outside, potentially on a national basis – this national service could provide mentoring and also need for brokerage
• also point that people are becoming publishers and we’re not sharing that experience particularly well at this point

Group led by Ian Dolphin

• market knowledge and identification of user needs seems to be lacking at present - could be addressed through pooling information or commissioning new work
• wheel-reinvention in a number of areas so more sharing and cross-fertilisation needed - could be specific role for SCA in that
• also a case to encourage join up between the unit within the institutions with responsibility for business development and areas they have not looked at before such as libraries – perhaps a way of connecting that as a third stream activity
• expertise issues probably more acute in smaller orgs

Group led by Catherine Grout

• information and literacy skills need to be improved as a problem with users and content is that they do not know how to find what might be useful and interesting
• portals – they can play a valuable role in introducing users to the idea of searching across different types of content
• but a gap seems to be in implementing technical standards properly – there is greater awareness than good implementation – gap between theory and practice
• context is valuable – wide range of thing can do with engaging users (Amazon as an example) – crowdsourcing

Group led by Alastair Dunning

• one shared service mentioned was having a sophisticated way of looking at standards and this is something that the SCA is looking into
• developing services to allow smaller projects a shared platform on a technical level for preservation and delivering
• more training needed within institutions to think about sustainability and business models and training relating to project management
• also how to negotiate with publishing
• marketing – but user needs and marketing it when it is ready and out there
• using knowledge transfer units built within universities – focused on scientific world at the moment but a place for the arts world to engage with knowledge transfer units as well

Breakout groups on business models

Group led by Ian Dolphin

• partnering with a commercial as a division of labour – element of that in Google Scholar?
• cultural sector – online content can act to drive physical visits which brings in revenue
• examples of advertising using Google adwords with the Royal Society of Chemistry journal – too early to gauge reaction to that – will need fairly differentiated market research
• the consumer-facing 24 Hour Museum carries ads and that reinforces the perception that it’s a high traffic, successful site

Group led by Jane Winters

• subscription for premium content or added value
• none of our projects use pay per use and none using contributor pays
• all had host institutional support
• in one case corporate sponsorship was brought in with help from development office support - needs to tie in with organisation’s aims
• university alumni networks raised but need support from alumni office or development office

Group led by Alastair Dunning

• value is the knowledge that lies in the people who do it, the expertise behind it
• discussions around ways to give content away for free but have added value around it
• but shouldn’t universities just allow academics to be academics, museums to be museums etc and just sell to publishers and let them deal with the issue
• one other model is the short term subscription where you pay and receive for five years and pay off the cost and it becomes free after that
• one idea for a shared service – who do publishers come and speak to if what to buy services – an umbrella organisation for content producers to sell content – and if develop such a shared service it could also act as an umbrella org for rights clearance

Group led by Sarah Porter

• other models:
• tax model such as in Europe, also lottery funding, or taxes on particular copying mechanisms
• user pays: parasite model where some people pay and others don’t such as Highwire, also Aluka where developing countries don’t pay but developed ones do
• voluntary donation and contribution: variation on pay what you want – strong risk of unpredictability so need more market research in that area
• sustainability should be built in from the grant holders

Group led by Catherine Grout

• examples of things like Wikipedia which is completely community sustained – it’s enormous and some academic services could possibly flourish with that kind of model
• a lot of services will have a hybrid model which will be different kinds of these models working together
• may have some audiences paying for some content and not others
• voucher schemes and credits and incentivising use

KG: Thanks for all your comments and discussion. The conversation has started and not finished. Feel free to email me further comment: kg@ithaka.org