From: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2017 13:09:31 +0000

Toby,



I think the Freemium model as you have implemented it is fascinating and
there is lots to learn from it in terms of generating profile and usage for
content. The tricky thing for publishers to weigh up is whether it will
work in the same way for other content that is less data-heavy than the
OECD’s.



What I don’t get, is the direct relevance to the OA debate, at least not as
it is currently formulated. It’s central to the principle of OA that
content be free at the point of use (Freemium deals with that, to an
extent), but beyond that the goal is to shift the flow of money from paying
for access to paying for content to be published. I don’t see how Freemium
changes that, because your assumption is that some users, and above all
institutions, will continue to pay for enhanced access.



Unless I’m missing something here, that’s an important reason why I suspect
Freemium might struggle to find acceptance among funders and policy makers
as an alternative to Green or Gold OA as currently defined.



Best wishes


*Ben Ashcroft *Vice President, Sales & Marketing

DE GRUYTER

Genthiner Straße 13

10785 Berlin, Germany





*Von:* LibLicense-L Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] *Im
Auftrag von *LIBLICENSE
*Gesendet:* Dienstag, 19. September 2017 08:09
*An:* [log in to unmask]
*Betreff:* Re: Why current approaches to open access are failing



From: <[log in to unmask]>

Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2017 07:35:36 +0000

Ari,



In any freemium business (which is, in essence, what I am proposing) there
is a basic service provided for free and a set of premium services for
payment. One of the keys to a successful freemium business is a constant
shuffling of the line between what is provided for free and what is paid
for because a premium service today could become commoditised and become a
basic service tomorrow - at the same time, technological advances create
opportunities for new premium services which allows the basic-premium line
to be re-drawn.



I am proposing a baseline where the basic service is an ability to read the
content, online, free of charge. Without this baseline, access is not
'open'. But it is a baseline that could edge forward, provided sufficient
income is coming from premium services (which, we have to understand, must
cover the cost of providing the free service too).



So, to answer your question, with a read-only baseline, premium services
could include the ability to cut'n'paste, to print, to save for offline
reading. I'd rather not specify the type of format that would provide these
services, that is for the publisher to decide and there is no easy answer
(it is technically possible, for example, to offer a read-only PDF file).
In our case, we create a read-only file using HTML and offer PDF, e-Pub,
.csv and excel file formats for our premium editions.



As to who would need premium services - well, anyone who needs to do more
than simply read content. I would hazard that there is a sizeable audience
for doing more than simply reading online: in our case, we've found that
15% of all accesses to our content is to premium versions. This might sound
small, but since we launched our free, read-only service in 2012, the total
number of accesses to what are now premium versions is larger than the
total number of accesses we had before. So we've succeeded in reaching a
much, much larger audience and have sufficient demand for premium editions
to keep the books balanced.



Hope this helps.

Toby


Toby Green

Public Affairs and Communications Directorate

OECD

Winner *The Academic and Professional Publisher Award * 2017