From: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2013 05:42:07 +0000

It is easy to give content away for free, the challenge is to find a
way to generate sufficient revenues to cover publishing costs
especially in circumstances where an author/funder/institution-pays
option is unlikely. Rick's correct in pointing to the experiments
going on in monograph publishing where various Freemium models are
being tried out. In most cases print editions are being offered for
sale (although it is rare that the revenue so generated will cover all
publishing costs, including e-publishing) but in all cases a basic
e-edition is available for free, with value-added e-editions (e.g.
ePub) being sold. Examples are Open Book Publishers (based in
Cambridge, UK), Open Edition (based in France) and ourselves at OECD.
What is interesting about Open Edition is that they are also
publishing journals with what I would call a 'Freemium Access' model
where the complete articles are free to read online but only
subscribers can download PDF versions.

What I find interesting with Freemium is that it makes one think about
the different value propositions that publishers can wrap around
content and therefore one can think beyond the one-size-fits-all
approach that characterises the traditional model, Gold OA and, to a
great extent, Green OA. It also puts the reader back into the equation
- with Gold and Green OA the focus shifts to the author-side of the
equation (since that is where the money comes from) so who will
respond to signals from the reader-side if there is no financial
return there in the future? One advantage of Freemium access is that
the same content is offered via the same webpage eliminating the Green
OA versioning issues that have been discussed in this series of
postings.

I often wonder what would happen if one of the big journal publishers
switched to Freemium Access and made all their journal articles free
to read online and restricted downloads and other tools and services
to subscribers. Authors/funders could still opt to pay the publisher
for Gold OA to enable free downloading and access to tools (like
citation tools). I guess the key question is this: would librarians be
more likely to cancel a Freemium Access journal than a Green OA
journal?

Toby Green
Head of Publishing
OECD


> On 24 Sep 2013, at 23:27, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 22:47:11 -0500
>
> Rick Anderson wrote:
>
>> In the meantime, we do have common sense, which says that
>> it's pretty hard to give away content for free and continue selling it at
>> the same time.
>
> But this is exactly what most publishers that have experimented with
> open-access monograph publishing have done. They have sold the same
> content in the form of POD print editions while making the content
> freely available on their websites. This is not theory; it is proven
> fact that one can do both.
>
> Sandy Thatcher