Publishing Web Magazines, eJournals and WebZines: Funding Issues

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Publishing Web Magazines, e-Journals and
WebZinesFunding Issues
Pres 7

• Marieke Napier
• M.Napier_at_ukoln.ac.uk

UKOLN is funded by Resource The Council for
Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint
Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the
Higher and Further Education Funding Councils, as
well as by project funding from the JISC and the
European Union. UKOLN also receives support
from the University of Bath where it is based
MN
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Session Aims

• In this session we will
• Discuss the different options publishers have for
  funding their Web publication(s)
• Highlight the pros and cons of the different
  options

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Money Making Methods

• In house Funding
• External Funding
• Sponsors
• Advertising
• Subscription

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The cost of not publishing

• You fail to reach out to your audience
• You fail to improve your image
• You fail to shows how IT friendly your
  organisation is
• You will loose out on publicity
• You will loose out to competitors
• You have to continue to run a print version of
  your magazine

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In House Funding

• Explain to your manager the reasons for
  publishing
• Transfer costs from elsewhere - the print
  magazine
• Find out which equipment you can use
• Plan a budget for equipment

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Funding

• Sources of Funding
• UK
• British Library
• Resource
• Department for Culture Media and Sport
• New Opportunities Fund
• European
• European Commission Information Society
  Technologies Programme (IST)
• Culture 2000
• INFO2000

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Cultivate A Case Study

• Cultivate Interactive
• Funded under the European Commissions DIGICULT
  programme
• Half a persons time
• Time spent on management, commissioning and
  production
• Beneficial to work on new interesting areas of
  research

http//www.cultivate-int.org/
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Sponsors

• Publication grants
• Sponsors from different local communities
• Sponsors for use of certain software
• Problems
• Subventions usually cover the publication of
  primary data (or project data), it is difficult
  to attract funding for synthetic articles

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Advertising

• Still an area under debate for public sector
  sites
• The guidelines given by universities vary
• Government sites are permitted to carry
  advertising

http//www.citu.gov.uk/iagc/pdfs/websites.pdf
Income from advertising (banner ads) is on the
decline
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Advertising Cons

• They are currently against certain networks
  guidelines
• Adverts may distract users from the magazines
  design
• They may increase download time
• In many peoples eyes public sector organisations
  should be adequately funded
• Users expect us to be neutral - ethical dilemmas
• Income from advertising is dropping
• Negotiating deals will be expensive and
  time-consuming

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Advertising Pros

• Money is there to be made
• Well-targeted adverts can be useful to users
• Banner ads for your site can be swapped with
  similar audience thus increasing traffic
• Everyone is doing it!

See talk on Advertising on Your Web Site at
lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferen
ces/ili-2001/advertising/gt
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Subscription

• Supporting the subscription base
• Reluctance of users
• Motives
• Who should you charge?
• Authentication system
• Access to issues
• Micro Payments