Sustaining Scholarly Infrastructures Through Collective ActionThe Lessons that Olson Can Teach Us

@cameronneylonhttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-716X

To read the paper search for biorxiv neylon olson

• Collective (Public-Like) Goods are difficult for large groups to provision• Small groups can work together• Large groups can only succeed by

applying one of three special cases•Oligopoly•Non-collective goods as a side

effect• Compulsory funding (taxation)

Ways of beating the problem…1. Oligopoly: Generally of funders or publishers, there are too many

institutions. EuropePMC is an example.2. Non-collective side-product: Needs to be a natural service or non-

collective good generated as part of public good provisioning. Very few good examples in open data world and this is predictable, failure often results in a turn to a subscription model eg TAIR

3. Compulsion: Either compulsory membership models (professional certification is an example) or top slicing/overheads models

Crossref phased through all three approachesCrossref provides a public good in the form of freely accessible bibliographic metadata and the infrastructure that supports it.Three phases1. Effective oligopoly: 5-7 publishers dominate the space and were

essentially able to act unilaterally to set up and support Crossref2. Non-collective side benefit: Members join to be able to assign

DOIs and to gain the benefits of traffic through the referrer3. Compulsory contribution: No (STM) publisher will be taken

seriously unless it is assigning Crossref DOIs. Membership is (close to) effectively compulsory for a serious publisher.

Project

Infrastructure

Project

Infrastructure

Project

Infrastructure

“Find  a  sustainability  

model”

Membership  Models

Subscriptions

Non-­‐collective  side-­‐product

Project

Infrastructure

No taxation without representation

• Broad coverage• Stakeholder governed• Non-discriminatory• Transparent operations• Cannot lobby• Living will• Incentives to wind down

• Time-limited funds only for time-limited uses

• Generate a surplus• Contingency fund• Revenue from services• Mission consistent

• Can be “forked”• Open Source• Open Data• Available Data• Patent non-assertion

Governance Financial sustainability Community insurance

Bilder G,  Lin  J,  Neylon  C  2015  Principles  for  Open  Scholarly  Infrastructure-­v1,  Available  at  http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1314859

1. Membership models are much less applicable as a transitional model than we would like (especially for open data)

2. If we accept a need to move to taxation models then organisations will need to be trusted by community

@cameronneylonhttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-716X

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