[BOAI] Business planning required to achieve sustainable Open Access services - Knowledge Exchange issues report on Sustainable Open Access Services

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Knowledge Exchange.  --Peter Suber.]


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Apologies for cross posting****

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*Business planning required to achieve sustainable Open Access services*****

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Open Access is a key feature of scholarly communication. The sustainability
of the services that are used around the world to underpin Open Access is
critical.  The Knowledge Exchange (KE) partners today release a
report<http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=536>that
identifies the actions needed in order to help achieve a robust Open
Access service foundation. The report examines relevant services, many that
operate on short-term funding or even goodwill, and finds that business
development expertise should be embedded into service development. The
report recommends that universities, policy makers and funders should
consider how financial resources can be distributed to achieve system-wide
sustainability. It also highlights that governance and coordination of the
infrastructure underlying Open Access is also critical to long-term
viability. ****

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*”Achieving sustainbility of new services has always been a challenge but
now with the maturity of Open Access fully recognised it is incumbent on us
to address this challenge and have the difficult discussions to ensure this
can be achieved. Successful research is dependent on it. ” *said Dr David
Prosser, member of the KE Open Access Working Group and Executive Director
of Research Libraries UK (RLUK).* *

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The Knowledge Exchange partners commissioned the report as part of a work
programme to find solutions to the sustainability problem. In this first
report from the work programme use cases have been developed in terms of
the Open Access services used by the research-related community. The key
free-to-use services are described as a series of value curves depicting
the current and future value of each service type. Use cases described
include establishing and running a repository, managing an academic profile
and publishing an Open Access journal. The services are analysed in the
context of Open Access scenarios for the future. The three scenarios used
are *Gold Open Access*, *fully Green Open Access* and *Green Open Access
supplementing subscription access as Gold OA grows. *****

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Different stakeholder groups – libraries, research and infrastructure
funders, and service providers – can play various roles in the future
scenarios. Libraries are already contributing directly to sustaining some
services such as arXiv <http://arxiv.org/> and the Directory of Open Access
Journals <http://www.doaj.org/> by financial donations, or in-kind by
supporting the development and offering of services, as in the case of
BASE<http://www.base-search.net/?fullbrowser=1>(Bielefeld Academic
Search Engine). Funders use many services, including
commercial ones, and in general acknowledge they have a role to play in
helping to sustain key components of the system. And of course some
universities have taken steps towards support for Open Access by committing
funds to pay for Open Access publication charges.****

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Seven recommendations are made, which fall into three strategic areas – as
outlined earlier - embedding business development expertise into service
development; consideration of how to move money around the system to enable
the achievement of Open Access; and governance and coordination of the
infrastructural foundation of Open Access. These recommendations will be
further addressed through the Knowledge Exchange work programme ****

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We recognise that various issues arise here, notably: coordination between
funders and projects; the development of services from projects that were
not originally expected to produce an infrastructure component; and the
business development aspects of service building, which are not necessarily
best done by those who develop the service itself. We wish to work with
others to address these and related issues****

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The report, authored by Alma Swan from Key Perspectives for the Knowledge
Exchange is the first in a series of related work packages. These work
packages will review potential organisational and business models of
individual projects and services and review the conditions under which
individual services and platforms can be sustained. Finally this will be
translated into practical outputs which can be used by institutions and
funders.****

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The report is available at:* *
http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=536****

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The press release is available through:
http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=62&M=News&PID=2379&NewsID=160
   ****

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Kind regards,****

Keith****

*Keith Russell**
*Knowledge Exchange Coordinator | www.knowledge-exchange.info |
kru at knowledge-exchange.info | Danish Agency for Culture | H.C. Andersens
Boulevard 2, 2nd floor | DK-1553 Copenhagen V | Denmark | T +31 (0)30 234
66 99 | F +31 (0)30 233 29 60 | ****

[image: cid:image001.jpg at 01CBC771.1C315CA0] ****

Knowledge Exchange is a co-operative effort of DEFF (Denmark), DFG
(Germany), JISC (United Kingdom) and SURF (The Netherlands)****

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