Cost recovery: decisions to make

1. Cost recovery: decisions to make • Acceptance of the cost recovery framework • Set membership fee • Set baseline deposit fee • Build in transaction costs for deposit plans • Set the nonmembership surcharge • Set charges for excess storage • Decide how to implement waivers • Decide when to phase in cost recovery

2. How we got here • Sustainability planning started in Dec 2009 • Two consultancies • Lorraine Eakin-Richards (budget projections) • Neil Beagrie & colleagues (sustainability recommendations) • Fed into an initial plan proposed by the Interim Executive Committee (April 2010) • Progress to that point summarized in: • BeagrieN, Eakin-Richards L, Vision T (2010) Business Models and Cost Estimation: Dryad Repository Case Study, iPRES2010, see http://wiki.datadryad.org/Publications • Over a year of consultation with partners and other stakeholders, culminating in a DryadUK workshop in April 2011 • Substantially revised by Interim Board in July 2011 • Reviewed and put to a vote by the Interim Executive Committee • Approved by the Interim Board in May 2012

3. Initial guidance to consultants • To not be dependent on grant funding and institutional largesse for operational costs • Assume we need to recover costs for curation, maintenance, preservation, other core functionality • While assuming continued R&D funding and institutional hosting • Interim board desired costs in the range of $25-50/article

4. Eakin-Richards cost model • Activity categories based on KRDS: • Included: management & administration, curation, hardware/storage, software/system maintenance, marketing/promotion, board meetings, etc. • Did not include: facilities, training, 501c3 status • Projections over 5 years • Varied curation level: 5, 20, 140 mins/article • Allowed volume of data submissions to vary

5. Eakin-Richards projections

6. Lessons from Eakins-Richards • Curation levels • Moderate curation (20 min/article) found to be viable(note: we now estimate this to require ~30 min) • Scale is critical • Costs (on a per article basis) are viable starting at 5-10K submissions/yr • Curation costs dominate at >30K submissions/yr

7. Beagrie April 2010 sustainability report • Included • Key performance indicators • Cost and revenue comparators • Comparison of different revenue options • Revenue scenarios for Dryad • Risk register • Key recommendations • Full-time executive director • Close association with an institutional host • Diverse revenue stream including deposit fees, partner subscriptions and grants

8. Cost comparators • Staffing at other data archives • 2-4 FTEs is smallest viable size seen • Staff >10X larger at highly curated resources like PDB • Competing with publisher hosting of data files • Dryad’s partners have emphasized the need to articulate the added value to journals over suppl. files • Some publishers see suppl. files as a growing burden • But none interviewed could provide clear information on costs • Most journals do not charge for suppl. files • Those that do charge $100 to $300+ per file • A few journals now reject most or all suppl. files (e.g. Cell, J. Neuro.)

9. Revenue sources considered by Beagrie • In-kind contributions (e.g. institutional hosts) • Journal subscriptions • One-time joining fees • Deposit fees • Grants • Tiered charges based on dataset size • Angel donors • Advertisingand sponsors

10. Rationale for charging deposit fees • Enables free access to end-users • The majority of costs are incurred upon ingest • Revenue from deposit fees scales with costs • The costs are spread widely • Costs are distributed fairly according to deposit use

11. Plan circulated 2010-2011

12. DryadUK sustainability activities • Private consultations with several major publishers • Workshop at British Library, April 2011 • Researchers, learned societies, journal editors and publishers, funders • Solicited frank feedback separately from each stakeholder group • All attendees voted on perceived market value: • Majority: $50-$100 • A few felt a more expensive service than Dryad offers would be desirable • Outcomes discussed at the July 2011 Dryad Interim Board meeting • Examined feasibility and costs of service mirroring

13. Pushback on initial plan • Seen to work well for small society journals • But not as well for • large-volume publishers • journals of broad scope • Concerns expressed • price curve from A to C seen as unfairly steep • journals should not be penalized for paying retrospectively • journals should not be penalized for using Dryad occasionally

14. Consensus from Interim Board Meeting, July 2011 • Membership not ties to deposit fee structure • Instead, discounted deposit fees are a member benefit • Members pay an annual fee (w/ no fee to charter members for 3 yrs) • Membership open to any legitimate organization supporting Dryad’s mission • Proposed $1K annual fee for 10% discount • Deposit fees • Four payment plans that accommodate different usage models • No discounts for bulk deposits • No joining fees (to cover submission integration) • Aim for baseline costs ~$50/submission • Deviations from that baseline should be due only to transaction costs and nonmembership surcharges • Voted on and approved by the Interim Board this Spring • Subject to review by BoD

15. Deposit fees in the cost recovery framework 1 Or other sponsoring organization 2 Up to a fixed deposit size (currently 10GB). Additional charges for larger deposits. The lower figures are intended to be rates for members, with a10% surcharge for nonmembers

16. Anticipated transaction costs • Billing overhead, including individual interactions • Monitoring voucher status • Waiver overhead • Contract negotiation for partners • Cash flow

17. Projections for this meeting • Assumptions • Curation by students, 30 min/article • $100K/yr in fixed costs (not incl. staffing) • Membership revenue $1,000/yr per member • Deposit fees: $40-$70/submission

18. 5,000? Scenario B & D with variable submissions

19. Balance projections

20. Membership numbers • Currently 26 charter members • Discussions underway with >15 other organizations, mostly journals • How many potential members are out there? • Over 3000 journals provide content to PubMedCentral • Not counting other types of organizations (e.g. libraries) • No separate membership drive has yet been made

21. Recent deposit rate increases of 500-750/yr Deposits per quarter Cumulative integrated journals

22. Deposit rate increase projections Deposits/yr Deposit rate increase

23. Excess storage costs • Current limit is 10Gb/data package • Mean is ~10 Mb/data package • Assumptions • 1 download/month (bandwidth will drive costs) • Excess curation effort is not significant • Estimated costs • $100-125 per Tb/month • To recover costs • Investing into an endowment with 5% annual return will require $24-30K per Tb • Propose charging $30/Gb

24. Deciding on a waiver policy • BMC policy • an automatic waiver to authors in countries classified by the World Bank as low-income or lower-middle-income economies as of December 2011and with a 2010 gross domestic product of less than 200 billion US dollars • For others, full or partial waivers on a case by case basis • PLoS policy • ‘No-questions-asked’ • “We have found that nearly 90% of those who submit manuscripts do not request a fee waiver, and the few who do still offer to pay some portion of the fee.” (Doyle et al., 2004, Who Pays for Open Access? PLoSBiol2, e105) • We have assumed 10% full waivers in our cost projections

25. Issues in phasing in cost recovery • At current scale, we would recover • $26,000-40,000 in membership fees • ~$60,000 in deposit fees (assuming $50/per) • Issues to consider • Community readiness • Technical preparation • Questions • Whether to phase in all revenues at once? • Whether to offer introductory periods? • How hard to push for non-journal-based discounts?

26. Cost recovery: decisions to make • Acceptance of the cost recovery framework • Set membership fee • Set baseline deposit fee • Build in transaction costs for deposit plans • Set the nonmembership surcharge • Set charges for excess storage • Decide how to implement waivers • Decide when to phase in cost recovery