Archive
Research Report
October 6, 2011
eBird 2011
Driving Impact through Crowdsourcing, Case Study Update 2011
In 2009 when Ithaka S+R first studied the sustainability model for eBird, a database of bird sightings, we highlighted its strong focus on the needs of its end users and the extent to which the Information Science Department, where it is housed, encouraged eBird’s project leaders to pursue entrepreneurial activities. The project leader and his three co-managers, who were selected because of their familiarity with the needs of both academic ornithology researchers and casual birding enthusiasts, have developed a range…
Research Report
October 6, 2011
Electronic Enlightenment (EE) 2011
Outreach or Outsource? The Benefits and Challenges of Partnership, Case Study Update 2011
In 2008 the Electronic Enlightenment launched efforts to transition to an institutional subscription model, part of its long-term plan for sustaining itself beyond the period of grant funding. Now housed at Oxford’s Bodleian Library and working with Oxford University Press as its sales, marketing and distribution partner, Electronic Enlightenment is still in the process of building its subscriber base, a task made more challenging by the impact of the recession on library budgets. This update reports on the challenges EE…
Research Report
October 6, 2011
Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2011
Growing an Open-Access Contributor-Pays Business Model
The original case study in 2009 explored Hindawi’s transition from a subscription-based journal operation to an all open access publisher, with the bulk of revenues derived from fees from authors rather than subscription charges. Because the company’s growth depends on the number of articles published each year, the company changed its focus from marketing to end users to developing new products, entering into partnerships with societies and other publishers, and creating a publishing experience for authors and editors that would…
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Research Report
October 6, 2011
L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel 2011
Balancing Mission-based Goals and Revenue Generation
L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA), the French national archive for audiovisual materials, is tasked with preserving France’s audiovisual heritage through ambitious goals for digitising, preserving, and sharing this content. In addition to the government funding that INA receives, its commercial activities support this work. This update examines Inamédiapro, the commercial rights licensing service, and ina.fr, the public website, and their complementary ways of monetizing the rich archival holdings in recent years, through a close examination of user needs and strategic…
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Research Report
October 6, 2011
The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways, National Science Digital Library 2011
The Challenges of Sustaining a Project as the End of a Grant Approaches
The original case study, "The Middle School Portal 2 (MSP2): Math and Science Pathways, National Science Digital Library: Early Sustainability Planning for a Grant-Funded Digital Library," profiled a new grant-supported initiative: a portal devoted to collecting high-quality teaching resources for use by middle school educators. The resource was part of the National Science Foundation’s National Science Digital Library (NSDL) program, a collection of online resources for educators in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). In the first year of…
Research Report
October 6, 2011
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2011
Launching a "Freemium" Model
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), a peer reviewed, open access online reference, draws its funding from investment returns from a project endowment, built from the financial contributions of academic libraries. When we first studied the project, it had made great progress toward its goal of building a $4.125 million endowment, but it faced uncertainty over the extent to which the economic downturn in 2008 would affect its investments. In the two years since then, as endowment support has not…
Research Report
June 14, 2011
Funding for Sustainability
How Funders’ Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources
"Funding for Sustainability: How Funders’ Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources" offers an overview of funders' policies and practices, and provides a framework to assist funders and their grantees in thinking about the key elements of post-grant sustainability planning for digital resources. Over the past decade, philanthropic organizations and government agencies have invested millions of dollars, pounds, and euros in the creation of digital content in the not-for-profit sector. Their grants have facilitated major digitization efforts and encouraged innovative…
Research Report
April 11, 2011
US Library Survey 2010
Insights From U.S. Academic Library Directors
"Ithaka S+R Library Survey 2010: Insights From U.S. Academic Library Directors" aims to help academic libraries and other members of the higher education community understand the changing role of the library and how to strategically adapt to an increasingly digital environment. This survey focuses on the issues related to the strategies library administrators are pursuing for their libraries, the management of library collections, the development of new digital collections, and the creation of new services to meet changing user needs.…
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Research Report
January 1, 2011
Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading Universities are Opening Up Access to Their Courses
Over the past decade, top universities have begun to experiment with online courseware, leveraging one of their core assets—the undergraduate course—to reach out to new constituencies of learners. Ithaka S+R embarked on a project intended to chronicle the development of several key initiatives in this space, in an effort to provide senior academic leadership with actionable, strategic intelligence around activity in this emerging field. Two years of research has resulted in a scholarly monograph, Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading…
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Research Report
April 7, 2010
US Faculty Survey 2009
Key Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies
This fourth in a series of surveys conducted over the past decade examined faculty attitudes and behaviors on key issues ranging from the library as information gateway and the need for preservation of scholarly material, to faculty engagement with institutional and disciplinary repositories and thoughts about open access. For the first time, we also looked at the role that scholarly societies play and their value to faculty. Following an initial introductory letter, survey questionnaire booklets were physically mailed to 35,000…
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Research Report
October 1, 2009
Documents for a Digital Democracy
A Model for the Federal Depository Library Program in the 21st Century
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) retained Ithaka S+R to conduct a comprehensive study on the state of the Federal Library Depository Program (FDLP) and to recommend how to respond to changes in an increasingly digital, networked environment that have caused a decline in incentives for libraries to participate in the Program. Following a thorough examination of the Program’s current state, this report suggests a vision for the program: seamless, no…
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Research Report
September 1, 2009
What to Withdraw
Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization
As journals are increasingly accessed in digitized form, many libraries have grown interested in de-accessioning little-used print originals; but desires to repurpose space often come into conflict with concerns about preservation. “What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization” analyzes which types of journals can be withdrawn responsibly today and how that set of materials can be expanded to allow libraries the maximum possible flexibility and savings in the future. For journals that are principally accessed in…
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Research Report
July 14, 2009
Electronic Enlightenment (EE) 2009
Subscription-based Resource Sold Through a University Press
After several years of reliance on foundation support, Oxford University’s Electronic Enlightenment (EE), a database containing the digitized correspondence of over 6,000 thinkers and writers from the long 18th century, needed to transition from a grant funded project to an independently sustainable research project. After hiring a business planning consultant to help them think through different options, project leadership concluded that a sustainability model based on institutional subscriptions to the resource was the best fit for the project’s needs. In…
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Research Report
July 14, 2009
Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2009
The Open-Access Contributor-Pays Model
Hindawi Publishing Corporation, a Cairo-based for-profit publisher of science, technology and medical journals, was founded as a subscription-based publisher in 1997. By 2003 Hindawi had begun exploring Open Access models; by 2007 it had become an entirely Open Access publisher, and it now publishes 160 Open Access STM journals. Hindawi’s financial model is based on charging contributors a fee per article published, a model also currently used by BioMed Central and PLoS, among others. Since 2007, Hindawi has continued to…
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Research Report
July 14, 2009
BOPCRIS Digitisation Centre 2009
Experimentation with Sustainability and Partnerships for Library Digitisation Projects
The University of Southampton’s Hartley Library has been engaged in a number of large scale, grant funded digitization initiatives focused on heritage materials such as parliamentary papers and British pamphlets. These projects left them with a challenge familiar to many grant-funded projects: developing a strategy to preserve access to the content after the grant period concluded. Early experiences suggested to library leadership that they were not well positioned to host this content locally, so with subsequent projects they began to…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
Centre for Computing in the Humanities 2009
Leveraging Shared Infrastructure and Expertise to Develop Digital Projects in an Academic Department
The Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH) at King’s College London, an academic department focused on the advancement of the digital humanities, engages in a wide variety of research projects that often lead to the creation of electronic scholarly outputs. Using a model that is rare among humanities departments, CCH supplements government and institutional funding for research and teaching with a remarkable number of outside research grants and with revenue generated through knowledge transfer activities that leverage the department’s…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
DigiZeitschriften 2009
Library Partnership and a Subscription Model for a Journal Database
DigiZeitschriften, a German language archive of scholarly journals, was created in 1999 with funding from the German Research Foundation. Since its launch as an online service in 2005, DigiZeitschriften has implemented a sustainability model that includes a partnership of libraries contributing time and expertise, and a financial model of institutional subscriptions that has more than covered its operating costs to date. This case study examines the decisions leading DigiZeitschriften to adopt this plan for sustainability, and explores the benefits as…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel 2009
Free Content and Rights Licensing as Complementary Strategies
Since its founding in 1974, L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA) has undergone a profound shift in activities, developing from its role as the protector of the audiovisual heritage of France to the more dynamic role of manager of diverse media assets reaching a variety of audiences, including the general public. Today INA places great emphasis on its mission to enhance and communicate the value of its content to end users, and it supports these efforts through a range of economic…
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Research Report
July 14, 2009
eBird 2009
A Two-sided Market for Academic Researchers and Enthusiasts
The Information Science Department at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is home to eBird, a site where birdwatchers of all levels–from weekenders to academic researchers–can record their avian sightings and upload them for future use by scientists. The site serves a two-sided market: on one side, the birders who record and share their observations, and on the other side, the scientists who use that data for research. This project is notable for the level of interest it generates from users;…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways, National Science Digital Library 2009
Early Sustainability Planning for a Grant-Funded Digital Library
The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways project (MSP2) aims to provide middle school teachers with high-quality materials they can use in the classroom, and to foster greater sharing and communication within the middle school teaching community. The original Middle School Portal was a prototype for the "Pathways" projects funded under the umbrella of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), and MSP2 remains today entirely funded through NSDL. But the project faces a challenge: How will it cover…