From: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 06:41:21 +0000

Anthony,

At the British Library last week JISC and OAPEN organised a conference
on Open Access for Monographs in Social Sciences and Humanities. There
were a number of case studies (including OECD's) and what I found
striking was that nearly all used a freemium business model where the
content was free to read online (html) but a deeper experience,
downloading/copying etc, required paid access rights, as did access to
richer formats like ePub. It did occur to some present that maybe STM
journals could learn from this. Maybe this is the mixed economy you
imagine?  Personally, I think it would be interesting to see if
freemium (free to read, pay to download and richer formats) would work
for journals, it might be a lot simpler and perhaps cheaper for
everyone.

(For those interested some of the presentations at the conference were
recorded and are available via the conference website.)

Toby Green
Head of Publishing, OECD
Sent from my BlackBerry


----- Original Message -----
From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2013 18:12:07 +0100

I want to pick up on something that Richard has written. I am rather late
but I suspect that many on this list will have been busy with July 4th
celebrations.

I disagree with this statement - "few now doubt that OA is inevitable".
My impression from conversations with librarians, publishers and
scholars is that most now see OA as probably a default model and a
primary model. but part of a mixed economy with purchase by users however
organised continuing as part of the picture of scholarly communication for
the foreseeable future. Librarians are often reluctant to admit to this view
publicly because they fear that they are going against library (for example
ARL) orthodoxy. I have no idea how a mixed economy will work but on the
other hand I have no idea how a total OA environment can work. I am fully
aware that a switch of funds does make it possible but I do not see how the
funding can be distributed.

Anthony