4th OpenAIRE Workshop - Legal and Sustainability Issues for Open Access Infrastructures Nov. Vilnius Preliminary Results of the OpenAIRE Sustainability Study - Phoebe Koundouri, Associate Professor - Athens University of Economic and Business

1. Sustainability Model and Business Plan for the
Infrastructure and Organisation of OpenAIRE
Prof. Dr. Phoebe Koundouri
Director RESEES, AUEB.
workshop:
Legal and Sustainability
issues for Open Access
Infrastructures
November 5, 2013, Vilnius, Lithuania
RESEES:
Research tEam on
Socio-Economic & Environmental
Sustainability

2. 2
AUEB-RESEES Team
COORDINATOR:
Phoebe Koundouri
BA, MPhil, MSc, PhD (Cambrige)
Associate Professor in Economic Theory and Policy
Director RSEES, AUEB
ECONOMISTS/ ECONOMETRICIANS:
Anastasios Xepapadeas
BA, MA, PhD (Manchester)
Dean of School of Economics, Professor of
Economic Theory and Policy, AUEB
Nikolaos Kourogenis
BSc, PhD (National Technical University of Athens)
Research Associate, RESEES, AUEB
Assistant Professor, Econometrics / Quantitative
Finance. Department of Banking and Financial
Management, University of Piraeus
Osiel González Dávila
BA, MRes, MSc, PhD (SOAS)
Research Associate, RESEES, AUEB
Subject Lecturer in Economics, SOAS, University of
London
Vassilis Skianins
BA, MA, PhD (LSE)
Research Associate, RESEES, AUEB
ARCHIVE SPECIALIST:
Oya Y. Rieger
BSc, MPA, MSc, PhD (Cornell)
Research Associate, RESEES, AUEB
Digital Scholarship & Preservation Services arXiv
Program Director, Cornell University Library.
ACCOUNTANTS:
Georgios A. Papanastasopoulos
BA, MSc, PhD (Piraeus)
Research Associate, RESEES, AUEB
Lecturer in Accounting, Department of Business
Administration , University of Piraeus
John Sorros
BA, PhD (Piraeus)
Research Associate, RESEES, AUEB
Associate Professor of Cost Accounting, Department of
Business Administration, University of Piraeus.
LAWYER/INSTITUTIONAL ANALYST:
Lefteris Levantis
BA, MSc, PhD candidate (University of Athens)
Research Associate, RESEES, AUEB

3. 3
Concept and objectives
• To provide OpenAIRE with an accurate estimation of
the benefits and costs of its infrastructure.
• To build a sustainable business model for the
continuation of OpenAIRE beyond the life-time of its
funding.

4. 4
Specific objectives
1. Stakeholder definition, stakeholders’ benefits: Identify, prioritise
stakeholder groups and their needs; estimate monetary value of benefits
they derive from OpenAIRE.
2. Cost accounting: how much does the current system setup and operation
& maintenance cost? (technical & human cost of infrastructure
components, operation/maintenance of the system, account keeping and
financial analysis).
3. Cost benefit analysis: how do the system costs respond to the benefits of
the identified stakeholders?
4. Business Model for OpenAIRE: identify revenue channels that can
support the best and most viable way to spread the costs of OpenAIRE
among beneficiaries of its services.

5. 5
DELIVERABLES. Deadline.
• METHODOLOGY. July 2013
• STAKEHOLDERS ANALYSIS. November 2013
• COST ANALYSIS. November2013.
• STAKEHOLDERS BENEFITS MONETARY VALUATION:
CHOICE EXPERIMENT. January 2013
• COSTS BENEFIT ANALYSIS. March 2014
• BUSINESS PLAN. July 2014

6. 6
COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF OPENAIRE
COSTS OF INFRASTRUCTURE
Investments & Operation & Maintenance
Cost Questionnaire
BENEFITS TO STAKEHOLDERS
- Which Stakeholders?
Stakeholders Database
Stakeholders Mapping &
Prioritization
Sample Selection Method
- Which Services do they Value?
Stakeholders Questionnaire
- How much & in which way are they WTP?
Choice Experiment Method
REVENUES
EU Grants & Institutional Contributions
Revenues from providing access to articles to individual users
who seek the article.
Revenues from subscriptions (e.g. universities and private
entities).
Revenues from contributions – donations, without equity rights
or voting rights.
Revenues from discovery services (e.g. library service providers)
Revenues from Research Funders (e.g. welcome trust, national
funders)
Revenues from Brokering Services (e.g. copy editing)
WTPsh, services = Price sh, services
Revenues from Providing Statistics
Revenues from other Services, etc.
Financial Sustainability:
( R - C ) + ( R - C ) +… + ( R - C )
FNPV = ( R - C ) +
(1+ i ) (1+ i )
(1+ i )
1
0
0
1
2
2
N-1
2
Pricing/Financing Scheme and Business Model
N-1
N-1

7. 7
Work Progress reported on:
• Project wiki; [User: PhoebeKoundouri & Pass: openairetender]
• Bibliography on the Economics of Open Access publishing.
• Project Methodology.
• Stakeholders’ Database: Stakeholders database
• Stakeholders Mapping & Prioritization: Stakeholder description
• Stakeholders’ Questionnaire and e-survey: part 1 and part 2
• Cost Questionnaire and e-survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/R37SB28
• Sampling Method for the implementation of e-surveys.
• Implementation of e-surveys starts this week!

8. Task 1
Estimating OpenAIRE benefits

9. 9
Stakeholder Mapping: 4 phases
1. Identifying: listing relevant groups, organizations, and
people. Create stakeholder database. (completed: see
Stakeholders database).
2. Analysing: understanding stakeholder perspectives &
interests (see Stakeholder description and the
stakeholder questionnaire part 1 and part 2).
3. Visual Mapping: visualizing relationships to
objectives and other stakeholders.
4. Prioritizing: ranking stakeholder relevance and
identifying issues. [Use these weights in Sample
Selection for questionnaires implementation)

10. 10
Criteria in stakeholders’ mapping
• Contribution: Does the stakeholder have information,
counsel, or expertise on the issue that could be helpful to the
project?
• Legitimacy: How legitimate is the stakeholder’s claim for
engagement?
• Willingness to engage: How willing is the stakeholder to
engage?
• Influence: How much influence does the stakeholder have?
• Necessity of involvement: Is this someone who could derail
or delegitimize the process if they were not included in the
engagement?

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12. Task 2
Estimating OpenAIRE costs

13. 13
Project Costing & Cost Questionnaire:
Main Cost Categories:
• Repository Annual Costs
• Coordination and National Open Access Desk (NOAD) Annual Costs
• Cost of Infrastructure and Services
Distinguish between:
• Investment costs: establishing the infrastructure required for the operation
of OpenAIRE and any extraordinary maintenance or expansion costs.
• Operating costs: mainly labor and maintenance costs.
• A questionnaire was developed by accountants, which will be sent to
relevant stakeholders identified in Task 1.
• The questionnaire is available at:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/R37SB28

14. 14
Sampling methodology
The selection of the stakeholders is based on a stratified
sampling strategy, using
the Stakeholder database
spreadsheet. Two main stakeholder clusters are identified:
1. Individuals: The sample is separated into groups with
respect to the academic/research orientation of each
individual.
2. Organizations:
- organizations financially affected by an OA in a direct way
- all remaining organizations, which are also affected by an
OA initiative, but mainly on operational issues.

15. 15
Task 3
Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA)

16. 16
CBA is crucial for the creation of a
sustainable financing model:
1. Allows determination of the value of the services provided by
OpenAire activities to a number of users: individual researchers,
libraries, research institutions, etc.
…but also more general values stemming from the positive
knowledge externality which is generated by the accumulated
information in the repositories and which can be accessed freely.
2. Allows determination of the cost required for establishing and
operating OpenAire.
3. By combining A and B, allows determination of the financing
schemes that will ensure the long term sustainability of the project
in financial terms and thus the continuous provision of quality
services to the stakeholders.

17. 17
Sustainability concepts
• Economic Performance: Design financing schemes that will result
in a positive financial net present value (FNPV) or an acceptable
financial internal rate of return (FIRR) for the time horizon in which
OpenAire activities will take place.
Determining a financing scheme according to this objective will
ensure that the performance of the project is acceptable in the sense
that the discounted financial costs of the project (outflows) are less
than the discounted financial revenues (inflows).
• Financial Sustainability: Design financing schemes that ensure
that the project will not run out of cash during its operating life
(enough cash to cover the projects cost without running the risk of
incurring cash shortages).

18. 18
CBA: Costs
• To design these financing schemes we need information on the structure
and the cash flows of future costs and benefits.
COSTS: Let C0, C1,…CN-1 denote the cash flow of costs for a time
horizon of N years (t=0,1,…N-1) during which the OpenAire activity will
be operational. These costs will include the cost categories characterized in
the cost questionnaire, that is:
•
•
•
•
Repository Annual Costs
Coordination and National Open Access Desk (NOAD) Annual Costs
Cost of Infrastructure and Services
So Ct ≥ 0 is the sum of all the above costs incurred in year t.

19. 19
Benefits – Revenues
• Total benefits obtained by the stakeholders’ Choice
Experiment will reflect willingness to pay for the
OpenAIRE services.
• The willingness to pay estimates can then be mapped,
at least partially, to a pricing scheme that will provide
revenues from different sources, as described in the
revenue part of the cost questionnaire.

20. 20
Estimation of the total economic
benefits for identified stakeholders.
• One theoretical approach of capturing and describing the
benefits derived from the different services provided by the
OpenAIRE platform is the Total Economic Value (TEV)
framework.
• It provides a systematic tool for considering the full range of
impacts a service has on human welfare.
• The way to derive TEV is from preferences of individuals.
Preferences can be studied by stated preference methods and
revealed preference methods.

21. 21

22. 22
Choice Experiment Method (CEM)
• CEM is a state of the art, survey based, hypothetical method, to estimate
economic values for virtually any public good and service, and can be used
to estimate non-use as well as use values.
• CE is grounded in Lancaster’s characteristics theory of value (1966), which
states that any good/service can be described in terms of its attributes and
the levels these attributes take, and consumers purchase the attributes rather
than the good/service itself.
• In a CE survey the respondent is presented with two or more alternatives of
the non-marketed service with different levels of its attributes at different
prices and asked to choose their most preferred alternative in each set of
alternatives.
• As long as one of the attributes of the good is price, it is possible to derive
the WTP for changes in the levels of the service's other attributes.
• CEM can estimate the TEV of a good or service and the value of its
attributes as well as the value of more complex changes in several attributes.

23. 23
Example: Valuing the Environment
Choice Experiment 1.1
Which of the following three wetland management scenarios do you favour? Option A and option B would have a cost to your
household. No payment would be required for option C, but the conditions at the wetland would continue to deteriorate.
Option A
Option B
Option C
Biodiversity
Improve
Maintain current level
Decline
OWSA
Increase
Increase
Decline
Maintain current level
Increase
Decline
Number of locals re-trained
150
75
0
One-off payment
€ 40
€ 40
€0
Option B 
Option C
Education and Research
Extraction
(Please tick as appropriate)
I would choose:
Option A 

24. 24
Next steps for CE benefit valuation.
1.
Design the instrument for data collection (survey)
The results from stakeholders’ and cost questionnaires will be inputs in the
construction of the Choice Experiment Questionnaire (service-specific
benefits, attributes and price vehicle).
2. Implement the survey using sample selection method.
3. Econometric Analysis of the data.
4. Estimation of WTP per OpenAIRE service, per stakeholder group.

25. 25
For the CE we will use Stakeholders’
Analysis Questionnaire on:
• Exactly what is the service or services that OpenAIRE will
provide to potential interviewees stakeholders (see next slide).
• What benefits (marketed and non marketed) a user will obtain
from OpenAIRE
• Who should pay for the service? How can the user pay
(methods of payment)? How much will the user pay?
• Keep in mind that different users may require different
instruments.

26. 26
OpenAIRE current & potential services
• Hosts a catalogue of over 6 million publications from over 400 data
sources, 40.000 of them linked to EC/FP7 projects.
• Measures research output and monitor funders’ open access policies.
• Hosts research results from other European funders.
• Informs scientists about the funding agencies requirements and how
they can conform;
• Enables EC, funders, member states to monitor the impact of their
policies easing reporting from coordinators to funders;
• Provides statistics for funders to measure research impact and
resources to help researchers publish in open access;
• Offers services for project coordinators to generate lists of
publications for reporting purposes.

27. 27
• Let’s denote the cash flow of
annual
expected
potential
revenues from sources 2 and 3.
Main Financial Resources
1. EU Grant and Contributions
EU grant
Institutional Contributions
2. Revenues from posting articles.
• Grants and contributions are
expected to cover investment
(infrastructure) costs. If they are
designated to cover operating
costs they should be included in
categories 2 and 3.
Revenues from providing access to articles to individual
users who seek the article.
Revenues from subscriptions (e.g. universities and
private entities).
Revenues from contributions – donations, without
equity rights or voting rights.
3. Possible Additional Financial Resources
Revenues from discovery services (e.g. library service
providers)
Revenues from Research Funders (e.g. welcome trust,
national funders)
Revenues from Brokering Services (e.g. copy editing)
Revenues from Providing Statistics
Revenues from other Services

28. 28
Financial Performance
• The financial net present value for the project (FNPV) will be:
( R -C ) + ( R - C ) +… + ( R - C )
FNPV = ( R - C ) +
(1+ i ) (1+ i )
(1+ i )
1
0
0
1
2
2
2
…
N-1
N-1
N-1
• In this formulation investment costs are expected to occur in
the first year of the project’s life and i is the discount rate that
reflects the opportunity cost of capital used to finance the
project’s investment costs.

29. 29
The opportunity cost of capital is
defined as
• “the expected return forgone by bypassing other potential
investment activities for a given capital” (European Commission
(EC) Working document No 4: Guidance on the methodology for
carrying out Cost-Benefit Analysis).
• The reference rate to use for the discounting of the financial analysis
can be estimated in a number of ways.
• The EC considers helpful the use of a benchmark value. For the
programming period 2007-2013, the European Commission
recommends that a 5% real rate is considered as the reference
parameter for the opportunity cost of capital in the long term. Values
differing from the 5% benchmark may, however, be justified on the
grounds of the Member State’s specific macroeconomic
conditions, the nature of the investor and the sector concerned

30. 30
The financial internal rate of return
(FIRR) is defined as
• the discount rate r such that the FNPV=0, or
( R - C ) + ( R - C ) +… + ( R - C ) = 0
FIRR is the discount rate r : ( R - C ) +
(1+ r ) (1+ r )
(1+ r )
1
0
0
1
2
2
2
…
N-1
N-1
N-1

31. 31
Financial profitability and financing
schemes
• The project will be considered financially profitable if:
FNPV > 0 or r > i
Therefore given:
• The operating cost cash flow, and the grants and contributions
that will finance investment cost: C0, C1,…CN-1.
• A discount rate i = 5%
OpenAIRE will be financially viable if a revenue policy and a
policy for attracting other financial resources generate a
revenue cash flow R0, R1,…RN-1 such that: FNPV > 0 or r > i

32. 32
Financial sustainability and financing
schemes
• Financial sustainability means there is enough cash to cover the annual
project’s costs without running the risk of incurring cash shortages.
Given:
a) The cash flow of operating costs, the time profile of any interest
payments, loan reimbursements, or taxes paid which are related to the
project.
b) The sources of financing investment costs (EU grants or contributions).
• The project will be financially sustainable if a revenue policy and a policy
for attracting other financial resources generates a revenue cash flow R0,
R1,…RN-1 such that the cumulated cash flow of the project is greater or
equal to zero during the projects life time.

33. 33
Financial Sustainability
(Example millions of Euros)
• In this example the
project of case 1 is
financially
sustainable while
the project of case
2 is not because it
runs out of cash in
year 3.
1
EU grant
etc.
Operating
Revenues
Total
Inflows
Investment
costs
Operating
costs
Interest
Loans
Taxes
Total
Outflows
Total Cash
Flow
Cumulated
Cash Flow
CASE 1 (YEARS)
2
3
4
5
3
4
3
3
4
-5
0
4
5
3
5
1
CASE 2 (YEARS)
2
3
3
1
3
2
1
-2
-2
-2
-0.1
-1
-
5
2
-0.1
-1
-
-5
-2
-2
-2
-0.1
-1
-
0
-0.1
-1
-
-5
-2
-3.1
-3.1
-5
-2
-3.1
-3.1
0
1
-0.1
0.9
0
1
-1.1
-2.1
0
1
0.9
1.8
0
0
-0.1
-2.2

34. 34
Task 4
Identify a sustainable and
socio-economically acceptable
Business plan for OpenAIRE
Back to tasks list

35. 35
The pricing policy
• Will determine the pricing rules for providing the following services
Revenues from providing access to articles to individual users who seek the article.
Revenues from subscriptions (e.g. universities and private entities).
Revenues from contributions – donations, without equity rights or voting rights.
Revenues from discovery services (e.g. library service providers)
Revenues from Research Funders (e.g. welcome trust, national funders)
Revenues from Brokering Services (e.g. copy editing)
Revenues from Providing Statistics
Revenues from other Services
• at levels which are: (i) consistent with the willingness to pay
estimates and (ii) sufficient to ensure the financial performance and
the financial sustainability of the project.
• Even if the desirable pricing scheme is not implementable and gaps
appear either in the financial performance or the financial
sustainability, the cost benefit analysis will provide directions for
the extra financial assistance required in order to close these gaps.

36. 36
If economic analysis reveals that
• the project generates additional benefits that cannot be
quantified or realized through the pricing scheme, and this
results in poor financial performance, or problems in terms of
financial sustainability, the CBA will also suggest the extra
financial assistance required in order to make the project
financially sustainable.
• Sensitivity analysis and Monte Carlo simulation will be
applied in order to account for the risk/uncertainty associated
with the costs estimates and the expected revenues from the
pricing schemes.

37. 37
Business Models for Repository Services
Source: Friend, F. (2011). Open access business models for research funders and universities.
Knowledge Exchange
• Institutionally-supported: appropriate for digitization, repository
provision, preservation at some levels and overlay journal production.
• Publicly-funded (e.g. from top-sliced money allocated by the JISC):
appropriate for all advisory services for interim ‘catch-all’ repositories,
metadata creation and enhancement, resource discovery, technology
transfer and bridging services.
• Community-supported: appropriate for subject- and media-specific
repository provision, usage, assessment, and meta-analysis services and
publishing services.
• Subscription-supported: appropriate for access and authentication,
preservation and resource discovery services.
• Fully-commercial models (including advertising-supported, merchant and
utility models): appropriate for digitization, repository provision and
hosting, technical advisory services, metadata creation and enhancement,
technology transfer, and all output-level services

38. 38
Contact details
Prof. Dr. Phoebe Koundouri
Email: pkoundouri@aueb.gr
Webpage:
http://www.aueb.gr/users/koundouri/resees/