“A crucial step to press freedom is a sound economic business model,” said Matthew Buckland, publisher of the Mail and Guardian online, write Vanessa Haarhoff and Vuyo Fatman of the Highway Africa News Agency. This was said at a workshop yesterday when discussing online business publishing models. According to Buckland, online publishing in South Africa has been struggling and has battled to find viable business models. However, because of increased online advertising in the last few years, marketing is beginning to pick up....Kerryn McKay, researcher for the Creative Commons online business model, said that the ‘open content’ business model was the key to help developing countries. “This is content can be shared, accessible and derivatives can be created.” This idea of a business model fits in with the Creative Commons movement’s notion that creativity comes out of sharing. There has been contention about whether or not this type of model is sustainable. Heather Ford, director of Creative Commons South Africa, gave an example of the Human Science Research Council (HSRC), showing how the model works. The HSRC press have a publishing model called the ‘author pays’. In this model, the investment is shifted to the author, reports are published free of charge and books are printed on demand. Ford emphasised that a publisher needs to be open to change and be able to go back to the simple principles of publishing. “If you’re not open to change, you’ll keep making the same mistake.”
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/14/2005 10:06:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
