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