As organisational budgets tighten and economic uncertainty threatens, many digital projects struggle to develop coping strategies when the funding to support core operations and/or essential development is not forthcoming.
The publications below illustrate the varied and creative ways in which leaders of digital initiatives, particularly those developed in the higher education and cultural heritage sectors, are managing to identify sources of support and generate revenue.
Work on business models and sustainability has been undertaken for the Strategic Content Alliance by Ithaka, New York, and Intelligent TV, New York.
LATEST: Revenue, Recession, Reliance: Revisiting the SCA / Ithaka Case Studies in Sustainability (October 2011)
In 2011, two years and one economic crisis later after the intial 2009 case studies were undertaken, a new round of research and interviews was conducted with the leaders of the twelve projects that were the focus of our original case studies. Our goal was to see how their sustainability models had held up, where weaknesses might be starting to show, and what new strategies project leaders were adopting in response. How had budget cuts and other factors affected the projects? What had project leaders learned about making their resources valuable to users? Where did the resources – financial or non-financial – come from to make continued growth and innovation possible? And how could these lessons be useful to others?
Download:
Full report: includes a full summary of the research and findings, all 12 case studies and a decision-making tool
Summary report : includes a full summary of the research, methodology and findings
Briefing paper: You’ve received a grant and made the case to your organisation to digitise content or otherwise develop an online resource. Your team executes the plan to the letter, and the result is a thing of beauty. What happens next? This briefing paper gives hints, tips and suggestions around sustainability planning for those involved in creating, managing or otherwise supporting digital content
Decision-making tool: When planning to build a digital resource, project leaders tend to spend a great deal of time thinking about the execution of the project itself, and considerably less time thinking about what will happen once the resource is built and operational. This decision-making tool/ framework can help project leaders and those who support them to better define the activities, costs and revenues that will be needed to achieve the sustainable outcomes they desire. All types of projects should find this useful and use some of the principles outlined here to guide the process by which they consider sustainability planning
Listen to the podcast : In this podcast, Nancy Maron, Programme Manager at Ithaka S+R joins JISC’s Rebecca O’Brien to discuss this work. Nancy explains the sticking points in research funding and shares the lessons learnt from organisations based in Egypt, France, Germany, the UK and the USA to see which strategies have been adopted in order to sustain their online digital resources over the long term.
Ithaka S+R sustainability case study updates
In 2009, Ithaka S+R published twelve detailed case studies of online digital resources, exploring the strategies project leaders were using to sustain those projects for the long term. All of the case studies have been updated in 2011, to revisit the original sustainability models and see how they have fared over the past two years. You can find the original case studies, along with the full accompanying report, inset directly below the updates.
- The National Archives (UK): Enhancing the Value of Content through Selection and Curation
- L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel: Balancing Mission-based Goals and Revenue Generation
- eBird: Driving Impact through Crowdsourcing
- Electronic Enlightenment: Outreach or Outsource? The Benefits and Challenges of Partnership
- DigiZeitschriften: A Niche Project at a Crossroads
- The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae®: How a Specialised Resource Begins to Address a Wider Audience
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Launching a ‘Freemium’ Model
- V&A Images: Scaling Back to Refocus on Revenue
- University of Southampton Library Digitisation Unit: Reimagining the Value Proposition
- The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways, National Science Digital Library: The Challenges of Sustaining a Project as the End of a Grant Approaches
- Hindawi Publishing Corporation: Growing an Open-Access Contributor-Pays Business Model
- The Department of Digital Humanities (DDH) at King’s College London: Cementing Its Status as an Academic Department
Original Ithaka Case Studies in Sustainability project (November 2009)
Executive summary:
Executive summary: Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-ground View of Projects Today
Full report with case studies:
Report with case studies: Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-ground View of Projects Today
Full report with case studies and a preface for funders:
Full report without case studies:
Report: Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-ground View of Projects Today
Low res version: Report: Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-ground View of Projects Today
Full report with a preface for funders and without case studies:
Individual case studies:
Image licensing at a cultural heritage institution: V&A Images
Specialised historical content for a niche audience: The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae
Building an endowment with community support: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Subscription-based resource sold through a university press: The Electronic Enlightenment
Library partnership and a subscription model for a journal database: DigiZeitschriften
The open access contributor pays model: Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Free content and rights licensing as complementary strategies: L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel
Digitisation with commercial partnerships: The National Archives
Early sustainability planning for a grant-funded digital library: National Science Digital Library
Funding for Sustainability: How Funders’ Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources (June/July 2011)
A new Strategic Content Alliance/Ithaka S+R report examines funding practices to provide insight on post-grant sustainability for digital resources
Download the full report: Funding for Sustainability: How Funders’ Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources (June 2011)
Read executive summaries:
Funding For Sustainability Executive Summary (UK, July 2011)
Funding For Sustainability Executive Summary (US, July 2011)
A framework for post-grant sustainability (framework and slides)
Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-ground View of Projects Today (June 2009)
Ithaka S+R has completed a multi-year investigation of innovative funding models to sustain digital projects, culminating in a summary paper and twelve detailed case studies.
Ithaka briefing papers
Sustaining Digital Resources: A Briefing Paper for Curators, Archivists, and Librarians
Sustaining Digital Resources: A Briefing Paper for University Librarians
Sustaining Digital Resources: A Briefing Paper for Digital Project Managers
Sustainability and Revenue models for Online Academic resources (May 2008)
Ithaka S+R aims in this report to gain a more systematic understanding as well as undertaking a ‘horizon-scan’ of the mechanisms for pursuing sustainability in not-for-profit projects.
Ithaka report on Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources (May 2008)
On Building a New Market for Culture: Virtue and necessity in a screen-based economy (Intelligent TV, June 2009)
A report that investigates new business opportunities to support commercial and educational institutions putting their digital content online.
On Building a New Market for Culture: Virtue and necessity in a screen-based economy (Intelligent TV, June 2009)