Anna Torrance :: Blog

Reblogged from the Scholarly Kitchen

As one former publisher, now consultant, told me, “a consultant is someone who steals your watch to tell you what time it is.” That is, a consultant is someone who tells you exactly what you already know, but want to hear again for reassurance sake.

In a particularly cogent article, Open Access 2.0, published in the June issue of the The Journal of Electronic Publishing, Joe Esposito lays out many things that we don’t know – or at least are not willing to admit – about publishing. This is not a collection of declarative diatribes loosely held together with non-sequiturs, or a pronouncement of how we’ve done good in our company/library. It is one of the few articles based on theory – in this case economic theory – and how it helps us to understand and predict the successes and failures of publishing.

The basis of Esposito’s argument is that the publishing economy’s limited resource is not access, but attention, and that the role of traditional publishing is to help readers decide what is worth their time reading. This job is done essentially through filtering (also known as gatekeeping).

And yet Esposito does not discount other forms of publishing that allows everything to come through the gate, and to filter and evaluate later. Thus he sees places for the role of Open Access and repository publishing, only he believes that these forms of publishing should occupy different market niches. In this sense, Joe goes beyond the typical rhetorical and binary argument of open or closed, but sees a plurality of publishing markets for reaching a plurality of reader communities. Similar to the argument of viewing the automobile as simply a horseless carriage Esposito writes:

One of the reasons that many open-access ventures have had a hard time financially is that they have been built on the mistaken assumption that they are replacing traditional publishing and thus have to re-create all of the services that traditional publishers now provide.

For pure OA publishing, he sees stripped-down models that attempt to minimize the role of human involvement and to maximize automation. For instance, he views a university librarian spending time coaching a faculty member on how to deposit a manuscript into the institution’s repository as both overly expensive (in the time of a highly-paid administrator) and unsustainable.

In spite of his insistence on avoiding the binary pro-against open access, Esposito creates another dichotomy between supporting readers (the traditional subscription market) or authors (the author-paid OA market). Part of this dichotomy may be used for rhetorical purposes and to strengthen the force of his argument. Nevertheless, this is one article from which both sides of the open access debate can read, agree, and learn.

From the Scholarly Kitchen

Publishers allow authors more freedom to use their articles than authors currently believe, a recent study notes.

The report, Journal authors’ rights: perception and reality, was written by publishing veteran, Sally Morris, for the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC).

For both the submitted and accepted version of the manuscript, authors routinely underestimated what their publisher agreements allowed them to do. Moreover, the rights granted by publishers generally exceed authors’ wishes.

On the other hand, authors tend to overestimate what they can do with the published version of their article when it comes to self-archiving. Few publishers allow final PDF versions to be made publicly available through subject or institutional repositories, although more than half of authors believed that their agreements allowed them this right.

The strength in this report is not the introduction of new data — there have been several, well-conducted author and publisher surveys, which Morris amply summarizes in her report — but her analysis and interpretation. Morris focuses on why there is a systemic disjoint between what publishers offer and what authors believe they can do.

Finding a solution to this problem is clearly her purpose.

She writes:

Publishers need to ask themselves why it is that authors have such an inaccurate understanding of their copyright policies, particularly with regard to self-archiving [...] Clearly publishers have failed to get across the positive message about those policies which, contrary to authors’ and others’ belief, do meet (or even exceed) their wishes.

Morris believes that much of the misunderstanding about self-archiving can be explained by confusion over the term ‘postprint.’ Indeed, she doesn’t hold back leveling some of this blame on the RoMEO database and on open access advocates such as Stevan Harnad and Peter Suber, who all equate ‘postprint’ with the final draft of a manuscript and not the published version of an article.

Responding to the report, Stevan Harnad defends his use of the terminology:

the preprint/postprint distinction is perfectly coherent: a preprint is any draft preceding the author’s final, accepted, refereed version, and a postprint is any draft from the author’s final, accepted refereed version onward (including the publisher’s PDF).

This definition may be coherent for Harnad, but it seems to confuse more than clarify.

NISO’s proposal for Journal Article Versions uses less ambiguous terminology such as Author’s Original, Accepted Manuscript, and Version of Record. Morris believes that widespread adoption of standardized terms will avoid future confusion. It would also reaffirm that publishers are adding value at each stage of publication. Morris concludes,

Although a few academics and librarians may want to see the demise of established journals and their publishers, most do not; a clear explanation of why this could happen, if a critical mass of their value-added contents were freely available, needs to be reiterated at every opportunity.

Earlier today I was able to conduct my final one to one interview for my dissertation.

This was the 6th(??) interviewee. All have had some involvement in the decision making processes that resulted in Emerald's new presence in Dubai.

It's been a learning experience. I'm not sure the first interview was a good one. I think I spent too much time trying to stick to a script, I didn't introduce the thing as well as I could have and I didn't listen as actively as I should have.

That being said, and after only a brief review of the interviews and my notes, there is a lot of consistency in the topics covered and the overall stories that emerge. I think I have to be happy with how it's gone so far.

The documentary evidence that I need to corrobarate and triangulate these interviews is a  little more difficult. I believe this mostly due to the fact that there is not much evidence there in the first place; much of the process and conversations and final decisions don't seem to be auditable in the form of meeting agendas, minutes, emails or much else. I don't know how much of a problem this is yet.


The very act of going through the interviews has been enormously useful though, and very enlightening. There have been some side tracks that I'll follow through that I think will really add some depth, texture and balance to the research.

The shape and structure of the dissertation is a little clearer to me now.

Overall pleased with how things have proceeded in May. My plan calls for data and evidence and interviews to have concluded by the end of May so we're ok there. June is analysis/interpretation. Don't have a clue how that might pan out - check back in a month.

reblogged

On the Sustainability of OER Projects
Jan 27, 2009 at 11:18 am, Mr. Jared Stein

I’m certainly not the first to suggest that sustainability is an elephantine problem for current and future OER projects. But it’s a problem that may take several perspectives and ideas in order to condense workable solutions.
Problem of Sustainability

The success of early OER projects such as MIT OCW rely in part on funding, some of it massive. For example, MIT OCW began with grants totaling $11 million, contributed in equal amounts by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and committed $1 million of its own funds during the first two years of the project. Yet such grants may be drying up (ref needed), regardless increasing interest and participation in OER projects will heighten competition for and further limit availability of such funds. On their own few public institutions could be expected to come up with that money, and currently many US institutions, particularly state institutions, are facing budget cuts that threaten to limit, decrease, or prevent local OER projects.

The OER Handbook describes the problem of sustainability in context of successful open source software projects:

In open source software projects, money is raised by soliciting donations, selling manuals, training, software development and providing technical support. While some of these methods can be applied to OER, some can not, and some funding methods remain largely untested. Few of the well-known OER projects exhibit the same vibrant communities of contributors that well-known open source software projects have. This issue is one of the most serious the OER community faces.

Though others have found fault with it I was encouraged by the Cape Town Declaration’s suggestion that the open education movement “[has] the opportunity to engage entrepreneurs and publishers who are developing innovative open business models.” Further, some may disagree and even convulse with the idea of linking OER projects with commercial ventures, even as a means of providing sustainability. As a strong-minded capitalist, I do not. Rather, I look forward to working examples of such innovative business models (e.g. Flat World Knowledge), and anticipate innovative adaptation to what I believe is a fundamental shifting of the (sometimes conflicting, often confusing) relationship between creator/consumer/copyright holder.
However, as the OER Handbook describes, such approaches remain largely untested.
Mainstreaming Openness

At UVU I’ve maintained the mindset that long-term success of OER will depend upon mainstreaming it, integrating the mentality of authoring for OER and the activity of publishing as OER into the normal course development and teaching processes. In taking this position I merely echo what others have said, e.g. David Wiley, as in On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resources (2006), Stephen Downes, as in Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources (2007), and Andy Lane, as in Sustaining OERs: a brief and provocative road map (2008), albeit from my own perspective of being in an institution interested in OER projects, but with no explicit funding for it.

For distance learning programs the goal of integrating OER activities is most feasible. Quality digital content production is part of the practice, and distance learning programs should already be auditing third-party copyright materials. Another approach could be to set a goal of zero third-party copyright content from the course design phase onward, ensuring that no new course includes copyright content. UVU we have played with hosting course content on a public server (called “Shadow Files”) and “mixing” it with copyright content and “private” course activities via the learning management system (LMS). Further, the LMS may be used as the OER publishing platform itself, technology provided (as I’ve prototyped on Moodle with the OpenShare block). However, in such a case the ability to release just parts of the course as OER is necessary, and most LMSs are void of such features.

OER investments may interweave with distance learning initiatives in other ways as well. Terri Bays, Dan Charchidi, Sunnie Kim in presentation Open Sharing, Local Payoff note, “OCW can complement a distance learning initiative, taking content from and directing learners toward an … e-learning curriculum”. It’s a two-way street: developing OER can result in distance learning; developing distance learnign can result in OER.

Additionally, many of the same justifications for distance learning as a cost-reducing and education-enhancing vehicle apply to OER. Mark Pesce notes, “Recording is cheap, lecturers are expensive, and students are forgetful.” Capturing teaching materials in a digital form has perhaps the highest potential for institutional ROI. Reuse reduces redundancy: capturing allows reuse, and access to reusable materials has the potential to dramatically reduce redundancy, diminish the cost of lecturing both in the expenditure of dollars and time, and improve student learning. Stephen Downes argues that “non-economic definitions of ’sustainable’ should not be dismissed lightly”. He mentions that different organizations will have different objectives for practicing distance learning, and some are not cost-saving. Indeed, OER provide a potential means of relieving faculty lecture time for other teaching activities, such as actually interacting with students and providing more feedback.
Brainstorming Institutional Changes Towards Openness

I’ve collected the following ideas on how to successfully mainstream and integrate OER across the institution. Many of these are based on the practices of other institutions, and conversations with colleagues and the OER community. These ideas are based on the need to grow positive attitudes toward OER support across the institution, and the fact that different institutional staff may require different arguments to catalyze support (here especially I welcome feedback, altertions, or additional ideas from the community).

* IT should be encouraged to work with OER advocates to find streamlined technology solutions for publishing OER, and then budget for maintenance of these solutions.
* IT may need proof that OER will either not overload hardware, or be worth the increased load. Also, discussions on whether or not OER may increase susceptibility to malicious attacks.
* Administration may need evidence that OER does not diminish profitability or marketability of institutionally-own content, and in fact may provide satisfactory ROI through PR, student retention, quality improvement, international competitiveness, adaptation to changing cultural and educational paradigms, etc.
* Student services and advisement may need education and training on the potential value to students of OER, and how to access and utilize OER in a manner similar to that in which they access and utilize course catalogs and descriptions
* PR should be educated on the goals, scope, and potential impact of institutional OER efforts that they might better.
Faculty may need reassurance that the value of opening and sharing is competitive with the value of locking down and isolating learning materials.
* Faculty and technology support staff may need workflows and technology training to facilitate publication of OER.
* Finding, reusing, and remixing of OER should become just another faculty skill set, and trainings should be provided–similar to (now commonplace) trainings on use of word processors, e-mail, and the web.
* Everyone should be involved in discussions of the potential value and responsibility of using non-rivalrous resources to provide access to educational content to a new, broad international audience.

I believe OER can be mainstreamed and integrated into existing processes for course development and publishing, but the needs identified in this list above require organizing, supervising, supporting, and proselytizing. Institutions serious about engaging in open education would be well served by funding at least one full-time position, such as “OER Coordinator”, if not a small team. Such a position may be situated in context of campus IT, faculty development and training, or distance learning. Investment in such a position could cohere OER efforts and reduce waste, redundancy, poor planning, and, perhaps most significantly, mis- or failed communication. At the very least, an existing staff member should be appointed as OER coordinator, and responsibilities shifted or condensed to allow for these needs.

My experience with the OER community has shown me that the passion, reasoning, and ideas of individuals will fuel and maintain the global effort regardless–Andy Lane states that “the success of OERs is also dependent on a thriving and healthy OER movement”. But to foster the movement in the long-term it behooves us to focus on the immediate needs of local sustainability. Unlike purchasing computers or licensing an LMS, with OER we are not buying a solution, we are building a solution. In doing so we are investing in the people of the institution, and can obtain a new kind of ownership: a grassroots, shared ownership of the learning materials cultivated by access to and encouragement of open and shared learning resources.

5 Responses to “On the Sustainability of OER Projects”

1. Thieme Hennis Says:

   Hi, interesting piece. I am also convinced that lower barriers for publication, a more intrinsic relation with external parties, and new business models may lead to sustainability of OER. I am currently working with an OER/social networking startup, and we  http://aboutpeers.com) have proposed to develop the next Delft OCW site.

   Find the link to my report on the future of Delft OCW (thesis project) here: http://hennistalk.blogspot.com/2008/05/final-thesis-report-future-of-delft.html

   A shorter description, but without extensive description of the revenue models and overall sustainability can be found in the article I presented in last year’s Ed Media conference: http://www.scribd.com/doc/11464174/ED-Media-08-Future-of-Delft-OCW-A-Case-Study

   [Reply]

   January 28th, 2009 at 2:58 am
2. Tom Carey Says:

   Another article to address OER sustainability is the chapter “Extending the Impact of Open Educational Resources through Alignment with…Institutional Strategy: Lessons Learned from the MERLOT Community Experience” in the book “Opening Up Education”. The part that applies to this discussion is a description of the MERLOT cooperative approaches to sustaining institutional investments - in essence, identifying strategic institutional priorities where support for OER work would have an evident payoff, rather than going for ‘big picture’ support of OER as opening up education to the world.

   You can access the chapter online at http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262033712chap12.pdf

   [Reply]

   January 30th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
3. Jeremy Says:

   I like your ideas on mainstreaming. Just today in our college technology council meeting, I corrected the chairman’s assertion that it’s illegal to upload textbooks to our CMS. “It’s could be an *open* textbook,” I said.

   But… You’re a “strong-minded capitalist, eh? Let’s talk about how companies react to market forces.

   Look at diversified companies like IBM. I must admit that I’m a little biased (having completed three internships there as an undergrad), but whenever a market they’re in becomes a commodity, they bail out responsibly. It’s not worth it for them to compete on razor-thin margins.

   Compare IBM’s actions to one-trick ponies like SCO, or consortia like RIAA, who employ every method at their disposal to force their relevance on the marketplace when demand is moving the other way.

   Let’s bring this model into the OER debate on sustainability. *Are we so convinced that OER is the way to go that we have to put artificial structures on it to keep it viable?* Or are we willing to accept that, like an organism ill-suited for its environment, this movement may someday be extinct… and for good reason?

   [Reply]

   January 30th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
4. Mr. Jared Stein Says:

   @Jeremy I like where you’re going with this, but I’m not sure if adapting existing financial systems to OER efforts is “artificial structures”, though maybe I’m misunderstanding. I for one am willing to accept that the movement could be extinct, and for a good reason, but, based on several online cultural shifts toward “free” or “open” information, I think we’re more likely going with the flow rather than against it.

   [Reply]

   February 2nd, 2009 at 11:26 am
5. David Wiley Says:

   “To foster the movement in the long-term it behooves us to focus on the immediate needs of local sustainability.” Yes, yes, yes. Otherwise, we become the dictionary example of “flash in the pan.”

reblogged

Risky Business–Part Uno
By Marc Strohlein - El Granada, California - on April 27, 2009

Interesting read by James Surowiecki in the New Yorker about why businesses cut spending during downturns even when history shows that that isn’t necessarily a good ploy. The gist of the article is that companies such as Kellogg, Chrysler, and more recently Hyundai, have benefited from increasing advertising and R&D budgets rather than cutting them as their competitors did. Studies by Bain & Company and McKinsey, among others, have shown that companies that either increased advertising spend or at least stayed flat grew faster than those that cut advertising, for several years after the downturns.

So with such evidence, why would companies continue behaviors that sub optimize their performance during economic upturns? Surowiecki points to economist Frank Knight and his work on risk versus uncertainty. In essence, risk describes a situation where you have some idea of the range of possible outcomes, while uncertainty entails a total lack of knowledge of what might happen. Businesses are quite used to managing risks, but when faced with uncertainty as most currently are, their instinct is to manage what they can which is primarily spending. So businesses are, in fact, acting rationally, just perhaps not wisely, when they cut advertising and R&D spending.

We continue to beat the drum for our “no guts, no glory” theme as we believe that publishers that are “pushing through” to the digital side and making investments in light, agile technology and superior user experience, will be much better positioned to ride the wave of the inevitable upturn in the economy. Companies that, on the other hand, are purely focused on cost cutting and riding out the storm will likely get caught flat footed by their more-nimble competitors. Now that’s risky business.

This is an older post which I discovered only today. thought provoking and for me, bang on the money.

The Technium: Better Than Free

The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.

Our digital communication network has been engineered so that copies flow with as little friction as possible. Indeed, copies flow so freely we could think of the internet as a super-distribution system, where once a copy is introduced it will continue to flow through the network forever, much like electricity in a superconductive wire. We see evidence of this in real life. Once anything that can be copied is brought into contact with internet, it will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can't erase something once it's flowed on the internet.

Copy-Transmission

This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports -- that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.

Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?

I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well, what can't be copied?

There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.

There are a number of other qualities similar to trust that are difficult to copy, and thus become valuable in this network economy. I think the best way to examine them is not from the eye of the producer, manufacturer, or creator, but from the eye of the user. We can start with a simple user question: why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free? When anyone buys a version of something they could get for free, what are they purchasing?

From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free.

In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them "generatives." A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.

Eight Generatives Better Than Free

Immediacy -- Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released -- or even better, produced -- by its creators is a generative asset. Many people go to movie theaters to see films on the opening night, where they will pay a hefty price to see a film that later will be available for free, or almost free, via rental or download. Hardcover books command a premium for their immediacy, disguised as a harder cover. First in line often commands an extra price for the same good. As a sellable quality, immediacy has many levels, including access to beta versions. Fans are brought into the generative process itself. Beta versions are often de-valued because they are incomplete, but they also possess generative qualities that can be sold. Immediacy is a relative term, which is why it is generative. It has to fit with the product and the audience. A blog has a different sense of time than a movie, or a car. But immediacy can be found in any media.

Personalization -- A generic version of a concert recording may be free, but if you want a copy that has been tweaked to sound perfect in your particular living room -- as if it were preformed in your room -- you may be willing to pay a lot. The free copy of a book can be custom edited by the publishers to reflect your own previous reading background. A free movie you buy may be cut to reflect the rating you desire (no violence, dirty language okay). Aspirin is free, but aspirin tailored to your DNA is very expensive. As many have noted, personalization requires an ongoing conversation between the creator and consumer, artist and fan, producer and user. It is deeply generative because it is iterative and time consuming. You can't copy the personalization that a relationship represents. Marketers call that "stickiness" because it means both sides of the relationship are stuck (invested) in this generative asset, and will be reluctant to switch and start over.

Interpretation -- As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it's no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that. They provide paid support for free software. The copy of code, being mere bits, is free -- and becomes valuable to you only through the support and guidance. I suspect a lot of genetic information will go this route. Right now getting your copy of your DNA is very expensive, but soon it won't be. In fact, soon pharmaceutical companies will PAY you to get your genes sequence. So the copy of your sequence will be free, but the interpretation of what it means, what you can do about it, and how to use it -- the manual for your genes so to speak -- will be expensive.

Authenticity -- You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don't need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You'll pay for authenticity. There are nearly an infinite number of variations of the Grateful Dead jams around; buying an authentic version from the band itself will ensure you get the one you wanted. Or that it was indeed actually performed by the Dead. Artists have dealt with this problem for a long time. Graphic reproductions such as photographs and lithographs often come with the artist's stamp of authenticity -- a signature -- to raise the price of the copy. Digital watermarks and other signature technology will not work as copy-protection schemes (copies are super-conducting liquids, remember?) but they can serve up the generative quality of authenticity for those who care.

Accessibility -- Ownership often sucks. You have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you. Many people, me included, will be happy to have others tend our "possessions" by subscribing to them. We'll pay Acme Digital Warehouse to serve us any musical tune in the world, when and where we want it, as well as any movie, photo (ours or other photographers). Ditto for books and blogs. Acme backs everything up, pays the creators, and delivers us our desires. We can sip it from our phones, PDAs, laptops, big screens from where-ever. The fact that most of this material will be available free, if we want to tend it, back it up, keep adding to it, and organize it, will be less and less appealing as time goes on.

Embodiment -- At its core the digital copy is without a body. You can take a free copy of a work and throw it on a screen. But perhaps you'd like to see it in hi-res on a huge screen? Maybe in 3D? PDFs are fine, but sometimes it is delicious to have the same words printed on bright white cottony paper, bound in leather. Feels so good. What about dwelling in your favorite (free) game with 35 others in the same room? There is no end to greater embodiment. Sure, the hi-res of today -- which may draw ticket holders to a big theater -- may migrate to your home theater tomorrow, but there will always be new insanely great display technology that consumers won't have. Laser projection, holographic display, the holodeck itself! And nothing gets embodied as much as music in a live performance, with real bodies. The music is free; the bodily performance expensive. This formula is quickly becoming a common one for not only musicians, but even authors. The book is free; the bodily talk is expensive.

Patronage -- It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators. Radiohead's recent high-profile experiment in letting fans pay them whatever they wished for a free copy is an excellent illustration of the power of patronage. The elusive, intangible connection that flows between appreciative fans and the artist is worth something. In Radiohead's case it was about $5 per download. There are many other examples of the audience paying simply because it feels good.

Findability -- Where as the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. A zero price does not help direct attention to a work, and in fact may sometimes hinder it. But no matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention -- and most of it free -- being found is valuable.

The giant aggregators such as Amazon and Netflix make their living in part by helping the audience find works they love. They bring out the good news of the "long tail" phenomenon, which we all know, connects niche audiences with niche productions. But sadly, the long tail is only good news for the giant aggregators, and larger mid-level aggregators such as publishers, studios, and labels. The "long tail" is only lukewarm news to creators themselves. But since findability can really only happen at the systems level, creators need aggregators. This is why publishers, studios, and labels (PSL)will never disappear. They are not needed for distribution of the copies (the internet machine does that). Rather the PSL are needed for the distribution of the users' attention back to the works. From an ocean of possibilities the PSL find, nurture and refine the work of creators that they believe fans will connect with. Other intermediates such as critics and reviewers also channel attention. Fans rely on this multi-level apparatus of findability to discover the works of worth out of the zillions produced. There is money to be made (indirectly for the creatives) by finding talent. For many years the paper publication TV Guide made more money than all of the 3 major TV networks it "guided" combined. The magazine guided and pointed viewers to the good stuff on the tube that week. Stuff, it is worth noting, that was free to the viewers. There is little doubt that besides the mega-aggregators, in the world of the free many PDLs will make money selling findability -- in addition to the other generative qualities.

These eight qualities require a new skill set. Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity. Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.

In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.

Careful readers will note one conspicuous absence so far. I have said nothing about advertising. Ads are widely regarded as the solution, almost the ONLY solution, to the paradox of the free. Most of the suggested solutions I've seen for overcoming the free involve some measure of advertising. I think ads are only one of the paths that attention takes, and in the long-run, they will only be part of the new ways money is made selling the free.

But that's another story.

Beneath the frothy layer of advertising, these eight generatives will supply the value to ubiquitous free copies, and make them worth advertising for. These generatives apply to all digital copies, but also to any kind of copy where the marginal cost of that copy approaches zero. (See my essay on Technology Wants to Be Free.) Even material industries are finding that the costs of duplication near zero, so they too will behave like digital copies. Maps just crossed that threshold. Genetics is about to. Gadgets and small appliances (like cell phones) are sliding that way. Pharmaceuticals are already there, but they don't want anyone to know. It costs nothing to make a pill. We pay for Authenticity and Immediacy in drugs. Someday we'll pay for Personalization.

Maintaining generatives is a lot harder than duplicating copies in a factory. There is still a lot to learn. A lot to figure out. Write to me if you do.
Posted on January 31, 2008 at 6:21 PM | Comments (218)

Slide for

Reblogged from ToC, with inclusions from Publishing 2.0 (Scott Karp)

Scott Karp has an insightful (and provocatively titled) piece over on the Publishing 2.0 blog about just how deeply Google has inserted itself in Web distribution of content. While much of the piece is about linking, one paragraph in particular is worth calling out for traditional publishers (emphasis added):

If media companies want to compete with Google, they need to look at the source of its power — judging good content, which enables Google to be the most efficient and effective distributor of content. They also need to look at Google’s fundamental limitation — its judgment is dependent on OTHER people expressing their judgment of content in the form of links. Above all, they need to look at sources of content judgment that Google currently can’t access, because they are not yet expressed as links on the web.

"Content judgment" is a neat way to put it, reinforcing that when there's already more than 1 trillion web pages in Google's index value is shifting away from more content toward better filtering and curating of what's already there. (Or as Clay Shirky says, it's not information overload, it's filter failure.) While many publishers fret about customers no longer paying for content, they may miss the boat by not realizing that customers will pay for packaging and convenience (which often means judgment and filtering). For example, at the same time the market for our printed reference books has declined, our Safari online subscription service has steadily grown at a double-digit pace, in part because those subscribers value the implicit filtering of the library.


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I'm with Clay Shirky on this and in my bones I feel there could be a shift coming down the line that supports content and business models which allow subscribers/users to feel more in control of the content they have to manage. Much has been written about the economy of attention, but perhaps this will prove to be a short term blip as filters, sematics, profiles, recommendation engines and an increasingly personalised online experience begins to allow one to take time to digest content in a more considered manner, confident that the filters and processes in place ensures that nothing of significance and immediate relevance is missed?

Reblogged from the Corporate Librarian

On academic and corporate libraries

I caught Ross Housewright’s article “Themes of Change in Corporate Libraries: Considerations for Academic Librarians” from a link posted on FriendFeed (hat tip to Peter Murray-Rust) and braced myself. Would it be yet another commenter looking lovingly over the fence at corporate libraries, imagining that they face none of the problems academic and public libraries face? Would it be yet another prescription for applying a one-size-fits all poorly-understood trendy business methodology to the academic library setting?

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Housewright addressed both the commonalities and the differences between academic and corporate libraries. He cites some of the sources you might expect - James Matarazzo’s work, Laurence Davenport and Thomas Prusak’s “Blow Up the Corporate Library,” but doesn’t stop with the 1990s and the outsourcing of corporate library functions.

Some tidbits:

* It’s not enough to establish measures and track them, the measures have to actually have something to do with value provided by the library. Telling me you had X number of transactions says nothing about whether the library should be handling all of those transactions, or what value those transactions bring to the library’s sponsor(s).
* It’s OK - no, it’s more than OK, it’s vital - to identify services that don’t make sense and to change them or stop offering them.
* Communicate with your sponsors and end users (and where Housewright shines is in stressing it’s not enough to market what you are doing, you have to actually listen to your sponsors and end users).

For people who wonder why I object to the notion of librarians as people who connect users with information:

In the traditional model described above, librarians acted mechanically and broadly, accepting simple requests and returning simple answers in high volumes, but this sort of activity was easily replaced by end-user research or simple outsourcing.

Housewright is honest enough to point out that a library can do all the right things and still close - these aren’t magic bullets. Some libraries were aware they needed to change, but couldn’t free up their resources or staff. Some libraries were and are not positioned effectively in their corporate hierarchies. And some solutions for corporate libraries may not fit academic and public libraries - the “let’s make Walt happy” sentence here is

The experiences of the corporate library demonstrate that there is no ‘one size fits all’ model for the successful library; a library is successful if it serves the needs and priorities of its host institution, whatever those may be.

but in general I applaud the notion of libraries constantly assessing the services they provide in collaboration with other groups. I’m somewhat wary of the assumption that LibQUAL+ and the Balanced Scorecard methodology are necessarily value-driven metrics - I can’t speak to LibQUAL+, but Balanced Scorecard is easy to apply in a haphazard fashion. Or such was the case when I last used it.

Housewright does recognize that academic libraries may have other concerns beyond immediate provision of value - he cites preservation as an example of this - but argues that libraries need to be willing to re-examine their missions and how their values play out in terms of services offered and roles played. Housewright also notes that some end-users may be quite vocal against a given change. Some of those users can be led to different behaviors, some may need specialized services.

I’m curious what academic librarians, as well as readers of this blog, think of the article. Is it an exercise in teaching one’s grandmother to suck eggs? Is it something to be printed out and shared with one’s peers?

Google's Distribution Advantage Has Its Limits - Tools of Change for Publishing

Google's Distribution Advantage Has Its Limits

Andrew Savikas
April 13, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen Speech Icon

Scott Karp has an insightful (and provocatively titled) piece over on the Publishing 2.0 blog about just how deeply Google has inserted itself in Web distribution of content. While much of the piece is about linking, one paragraph in particular is worth calling out for traditional publishers (emphasis added):

If media companies want to compete with Google, they need to look at the source of its power — judging good content, which enables Google to be the most efficient and effective distributor of content. They also need to look at Google’s fundamental limitation — its judgment is dependent on OTHER people expressing their judgment of content in the form of links. Above all, they need to look at sources of content judgment that Google currently can’t access, because they are not yet expressed as links on the web.

"Content judgment" is a neat way to put it, reinforcing that when there's already more than 1 trillion web pages in Google's index value is shifting away from more content toward better filtering and curating of what's already there. (Or as Clay Shirky says, it's not information overload, it's filter failure.) While many publishers fret about customers no longer paying for content, they may miss the boat by not realizing that customers will pay for packaging and convenience (which often means judgment and filtering). For example, at the same time the market for our printed reference books has declined, our Safari online subscription service has steadily grown at a double-digit pace, in part because those subscribers value the implicit filtering of the library.


Tags: google
1 Comments
bowerbird said:
April 13, 2009 12:41 PM

andrew said:
/> subscribers value the implicit filtering of the library.

i'm sure some do.

today.

this year.

tomorrow? maybe.

next year? maybe not.

before long? certainly not.

"implicit" filtering will mean very little, if anything at all,
once collaborative filtering establishes its rightful place.

specifically, if the collaborative filter says a book stinks,
it won't matter what the "implicit" filtering says about it.

now, perhaps you don't think that publishers like yourself
need to fret that, since you know your books don't stink...
maybe you're even thinking you will _benefit_ from that,
since then both filters will be recommending your book...

but that thinking ignores the more important dynamic...

if the collaborative filter says that a book is _worthy_,
its "implicit" filtering for that book will be meaningless.

indeed, even if the book has _zero_ "implicit" filtering
-- i.e., doesn't have some fancy publisher's imprint --
that's irrelevant, since you know the book _is_ worthy,
because it was rated that way by people _just_like_you._

this means that the author of a _worthy_ book will not
benefit from any "implicit" filtering, and thus will not be
willing to trade anything of value in order to obtain it...

(and won't suffer from that decision in the marketplace.)

but, of course, if an author isn't willing to trade enough
so that you can pay you a salary, you'll not be interested.

will you?

in other words, you will run out of authors simultaneously
with the world being over-run with content just like yours,
much of it available for free, and just as findable as yours...

and this is how dinosaurs go extinct in the age of mammals.

-bowerbird