Rick Johnson
SPARC Enterprise Director

SPARC Thrusts

• Stimulate competition to drive down cost of scholarly publications
  

  o Market dysfunction closely linked to increasingly dominant commercial model
  o Non-profit alternatives are a counter-force
  

• Mobilize scholar & librarian support of changes in scholarly communication
  o Partnerships provide a vehicle for crystallizing issues, undertaking action

Playing the Society Card

• Societies are a key competitive option
  
• Merits of society alliances
  

  o Established relationships with authors
  o Established publishing capacity
  o Seek broad dissemination
  o Core financial incentive to serve community
  o Studies demonstrate better value of society journals
  

• Society weakness
  o Undercapitalized in comparison to commercial publishers
  

BioOne Overview

• Assembles & integrates a broad, coherent selection of bioscience journals
  
• Creates full-text standards-based digital versions of articles
  
• Maintains a stable repository of digital texts
  
• Provides expanded user base with value-add & web access
  
• Aspires to be the top web channel in field
  

Applicability to Other Fields

• Broad-scale initiative to capture channel leadership in discreet field
  

  o Recognizes changing nature of consumption & competition in digital environment
  

• Model of library-society collaboration
  o Seizes opportunity in time of transition
  
• Model of collective action to keep science in the realm of scientists
  o Illustrates need for societies to collaborate among themselves to assure viability

BioOne Content

• Organismal and integrative biology, including ecology, environmental sciences
  
• Peer-reviewed research (initially)
  
• Mainly AIBS member societies (initially)
  
• 70% of titles in field now available only in print
  

  o Self-published titles avg. $165
  o Commercial titles 4 times as expensive
  

• High risk of commercial takeover
  

About AIBS

• History
  

  o Founded 1947 by NAS
  o Non-profit D.C. corp. since 1950s
  

• Umbrella organization
  o 69 professional scientific research societies and organizations
  o Rapidly-expanding membership, more than 25 societies have joined since 1997
  o Collective membership over 150,000 biologists
  
• Focuses on non-biomedical areas of biology: ecology, environmental biology, other integrative studies across all taxa
  

About Allen Press

• Provider of printing & production services to self-publishing societies
  

  o SGML experience & infrastructure
  o Serves many prospective BioOne journals
  o Contributes client journal SGML to BioOne (estimated year-one value: $170,000+)
  

• Two separate BioOne roles:
  o One-sixth of seats on BioOne Board
  o BioOne data fabrication contractor
  

  • 3-year contract
    
  • Subject to performance standards & measures
    
  • Competitive prices (validated independently)

BioOne Organizational Overview

• Non-profit corporation
  

  o 501(c)(3) status pending
  

• Governed by an uncompensated board representing Founding organizations & content providers
  
• Working Group of Founders currently managing development as in-kind contribution
  
• COO to be hired

BioOne Business Rationale

• Alternative to commercial takeover of small & medium-size societies' journals
  

  o Lack of capital, expertise for digital transition
  

• Collaborative development offers:
  o Reduced operating cost (shared infrastructure)
  o Scale enabling access to consortia purchases & expanded dissemination
  
• Non-profit basis reduces price
  o Founders receive no financial benefit
  
• Emerge from dev't as self-sufficient
  

BioOne Financing

• Libraries
  

  o Advances against future subscription fees (to be returned over 5 years)
  o Contributions from "Sponsors"
  

• Founding organizations
  o In-kind and cash contributions
  
• Amigos
  o Contribution under discussion
  
• Alternatives to private venture capital-maintains non-profit control

BioOne Markets

• Market expansion will benefit:
  

  o subscribers (lower price)
  o societies (expanded dissemination)
  

• Forecasting 80% of sales to consortia
  
• US sales & service via Amigos
  
• Sliding scale pricing (FTE-basis anticipated)
  
• Direct sales to Canada?
  
• International market plan under development

Society Financial Arrangement

• Revenue-sharing pool
  

  o 50% of sales net receipts
  o largest share offered
  o Equitable journal-specific allocations
  

• Cancellation reimbursement
  o Protection from downside risk of above-average institutional print subscription cancellations for first two years

Journal Participation

Licensing status

o 100 titles: relevant universe (approx.)
o 40 titles: Phase 1 goal
o 50 titles: contacted to date
o 7 titles: agreed
o 27 titles: add'l pending probable
o 50 titles: yet to be contacted

Stages in BioOne's Evolution

1. Start-up & Development (Q3 1999 - Q4 2000)
   

   o Business plan
   o License agreements with publishers
   o Build the database aggregation
   o Validate/implement technological solutions, archiving arrangements
   o Create subscriber license
   o Build sales/distribution channels
   o Pre-pub sales commence

2. Launch & Introduction (Q1 2001)
   

   o Initial database aggregation becomes user-accessible
   

3. Sustaining Operations (Q2 2001 and beyond)
   

   o Content and market expansion

4. Potential Enhancements (2002-2003 and beyond)
   

   o Article submission/peer-review component
   o Links to JSTOR, A&I services, related sites
   o Expanded coverage
   

   • Additional journals
     
   • Expanded retrospective coverage
     
   • Additional information types: conference proceedings, theses & dissertations, monographs, course materials, data sets, analysis tools
     o License database via other distributors
     o Facilitate new non-institutional revenue sources & member services for societies
     o Empower societies (at their option) to enhance member services

More Information

http://www.BioOne.org
http://www.aibs.org
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may00/johnson/05johnson.html