1. Freemium as a sustainable economic
model for OA publications in
humanities and social sciences
Pierre Mounier
Center for open electronic publishing (Cléo)
Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)
École des hautes études en sciences sociales
(EHESS)
Université de Provence
Université d’Avignon

2. Who are we ?
A short presentation
Pierre Mounier PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011

3. Pierre Mounier
A team supported by 4 major french
research institutions
PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 Who are we ?

4. Pierre Mounier
What do we do ?
Revues.org : an international platform with more than 300
open access and books collections in humanities and social
sciences in HTML, PDF and Epub
PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 Who are we ?

5. Pierre Mounier
What do we do ?
Calenda : a platform with 16000 Hypotheses.org : a platform with 240
conference announcements blogs
PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 Who are we ?

6. Pierre Mounier
An ecosystem : OpenEdition
PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 Who are we ?

7. Our problem
And obviously not only ours
Pierre Mounier PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011

8. Green and Gold roads
And their economic models
• Green road : support from
institutions, libraries, governements
• Gold road ? How to build a robust
economic model for Open Access
journals and books ?
Pierre Mounier PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011

9. Gold road : 2 models
100% grant/subsidies model Author-pay model
PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 Green and gold roads

10. Golden : 2 problems
100% grant/subsidies model Author-pay model
Dependance on institutions, institution-centric model, weak economic
model (monoculture)
A flawed model : access to publication biased by financial capacity,
universities pay twice,
PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 Green and gold roads

11. The problem behind
the problem
Where are the libraries ?
Pierre Mounier PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011

12. Pierre Mounier
Some figures
Emma Bester study : Usages of open access resources in
Research libraries. Revues.org case study
PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 The problem behind the problem

13. Pierre Mounier
Some figures
Emma Bester study : Usages of open access resources in
Research libraries. Revues.org case study
PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 The problem behind the problem

14. Pierre Mounier
Some statements from librarians
“Because we have shrinking budgets and paid resources are more and more
expensive, we must justify the money we spend, so we are driven to focus more
and more on what we pay.”
“Open access resources, right now are not very up-to-date in our tool (MetaLib).
We concentrated our forces on paid resources because we have to justify the
money (we spend)”
“We have stats on that (OA), but we don’t use them. We have to deal with paid
databases at first ! It’s a huge work for us to answer to enquiries. The logic is
return on investment because theses resources are extremely expensive. We have
to justify subscriptions to the university, the scientific committee and the
government.”
Emma Bester study : Usages of open access resources in
Research libraries. A case study on Revues.org
PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011 The problem behind the problem

15. A triple disaster
• For OA publishers : they can’t be fully
supported by libraries
• For readers : they are left alone to find open
access resources (desintermediation scenario)
• For libraries : they can’t participate fully the
new open access ecosystem

16. A proposal :
OpenEdition freemium
How to develop a sound economic model for OA
journals and book publishers ?
How to integrate libraries giving them the possibility to
« pay for free content » ?
Pierre Mounier PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011

17. Pierre Mounier
Freemium : an economic model
coming from the web
A proposal
PKP scholarship publishing conference 2011
OpenEdition freemium

19. Freemium
Open Access to full text articles and
books in HTML– free –
Premium formats and services
licensed to libraries - premium –
66% of income goes to publishers. 33%
to the platform to help develop new
services

20. OE freemium : 6 exclusive services for
libraries
• Access to premium formats (PDF and Epub
files)
• Training and assistance
• Data services
• Standard stats
• Documentation
• Governance

22. Premium formats

23. Copy & paste No DRM
Print, Save No quota

27. Premium Services

36. OpenEdition freemium is a
pragmatic AND a political
proposition to academic
community…

37. … in order to build an alliance
between scholars, publishers and
librairies to support open access &
knowledge dissemination

38. Scholars and editors
78 journals so far

39. Scholars and editors
More than 20 university press for
books

40. Scholars and editors
More than 30 research libraries
testing or subscribing

41. Thank you !
pierre.mounier@revues.org