Publication

In publishing our collection, the WWP has faced two challenges. The first is technical: although the WWP has always assumed that we would publish our collection online, the key has been to find a system that would marry ease of access with powerful functionality. The advent of the web in 1993 has made broad access possible, but the web (which relies on HTML, a very simple encoding system) does not yet provide any easy way to exploit full TEI/SGML markup, which we felt was necessary in order to make our effort both worthwhile and long-lasting. The second challenge was more sociological: who would in fact "publish" the WWP's collection, and what sort of publication would it be?

Self-publication

We first explored the possibility of working with one of the publishers who are now undertaking electronic publication: Oxford University Press, Routledge, Cambridge University Press, Chadwyck-Healey, and a few others. Our assumption was that the advantages of commercial publication would be significant, offering access to established marketing venues and putting the burden of management and advertising onto the publishers' professional staff rather than on the WWP. Most importantly, we expected that the publisher would develop the delivery software and interface, thus solving our first challenge as well. At the time, both Routledge and CUP were in the process of launching ambitious new electronic ventures and developing delivery software which would allow the online publication of richly encoded SGML data over the web.

At the same time, our discussions with these publishers gradually revealed several differences of strategy and attitude which emerged as potential obstacles to collaboration. First, their approach to pricing was fundamentally different from ours, based on an extremely cautious assessment of the potential market. Assuming low sales for what they felt to be a niche product, they also assumed a need for correspondingly high prices in order to make back the investment, which in turn made higher sales still more implausible. Their approach would have recouped costs, but could have jeopardized the wide dissemination which was our fundamental aim. In addition, as we considered what we wanted to achieve by online publication, we found ourselves more and more concerned about retaining control over the data, setting our own schedules for upgrades, and allowing free research use. These were goals to which commercial publishers--given their business model and fiduciary responsibilities--quite reasonably felt cautious about committing themselves.

Our eventual decision to publish the collection ourselves, and to develop our own delivery system, turned out to be a welcome necessity. Two of the publishers' online delivery systems did not materialize as planned, owing to delays in programming, and began to look less likely to fit our criteria of functionality when completed. In particular both publishers seemed more interested in CD-ROM publication than in online distribution over the internet, a choice which seemed to us to go directly counter to our conception of how the collection would be used and distributed. Working with Chadwyck-Healey would still have been possible, but for a number of reasons we decided that we did not want to be absorbed into Chadwyck-Healey's Literature Online collection. For one thing, we found that the level of functionality which Chadwyck-Healey had made standard for their collection was considerably below what we had envisioned for RWO and Women Writers Online, and would not be likely to exploit our markup fully. This problem was compounded by the fact that the interface to RWO/WWO would necessarily be made homogeneous with the rest of the Chadwyck-Healey collection, leaving us with little scope for the kinds of special features we felt users would want and that we could provide. In addition we would lose control over how our work would be sold and represented. Self-publication would allow us a degree of autonomy and oversight which would be more valuable than we first imagined. And although (as a number of publishers pointed out to us) it would put the burden of marketing on our shoulders, we felt that our unusually close relationship with a substantial existing audience would give us an advantage in that area.

Licensing model

Our licensing model has in principle always been based on a desire to make the collection broadly accessible to an academic audience, and possibly in the future to the general public. We also understand that the materials in our collection are not necessarily well-known or (at least at present) regarded as an essential part of the academic mainstream, and that electronic publication is still in a marginal position. As a result we need to adopt a strategy which encourages experimentation, and minimizes the risk or cost to a potential user. In other words, we have everything to gain by appearing surprisingly generous and effortless, and everything to lose by imposing even small obstacles in the way of purchase and use. Although this approach appears altruistic, in fact we believe it offers us the best chance at financial viability.

The subscription model which we have developed is entirely motivated by these concerns, although our understanding of how to accomplish these goals has matured considerably over the past two years. Several different points have been at issue:

• Sale or license?

  Our choice to license rather than sell the WWP textbase emerged from two motivations. The first is largely altruistic: because we envision the textbase as an expanding resource, and because of the constant development of encoding technology, we wanted to make it available in a form which would be most conducive to regular updating, and which would discourage purchasers from getting by with out-of-date versions. The second reason is more self-interested, though it derives from the first: we wanted to be sure that the WWP would receive a steady revenue stream that would allow us to continue our research and our updates to the collection. Selling access--albeit at a lower rate--would even out our revenue stream and keep our ongoing work integrated with the development and use of the textbase. For the user, it would also insure prompt, regular improvements to the collection and enable us to respond to user feedback.

• Institutional license fee, individual license fee, or fee-per-use?

  We wanted the decision to purchase the WWP collection to be independent of any moment-by-moment assessment of immediate necessity. Because of the marginal position of women's writing, we suspected that if an individual instructor had to motivate a purchase, only those who already had a substantial commitment to women's writing would actually follow through. The effort and cost would appear too great to make it worth while if one only wanted to include a single text, or wanted to provide background reading. (Other online content providers have made the same assessment; see Guthrie 1999, 139.) This would be particularly true if one tried to set the per-use fee high enough to recoup a reasonable cost; it would be difficult to avoid entering a self-reinforcing upward spiral in which fear of insufficient revenue motivates a cost which proves prohibitive. On the other hand, if the institution had already subscribed and received unlimited access for all of its members, there would be no obstacle at all even for instructors or students who had only the most casual interest. We also suspected that the material itself--once users started exploring--would be sufficiently compelling to motivate further, more intensive uses. Our goal, therefore, was to sell annual institutional subscriptions by appealing to the librarians' understanding of the importance of women's writing, and to encourage faculty to use what for them would be a free resource. Our expectation is that the resulting levels of use will fully repay and justify the institutional subscription fee.

• Tiered or flat pricing structure?

  We were surprised to find that several of the commercial publishers we approached were strongly in favor of a flat fee. This may have been partly because they were favoring a purchase rather than license arrangement, and might base the purchase price on the number of simultaneous users allowed. However, we preferred not to place limits on simultaneous users, a practice which is particularly disadvantageous for resources that anticipate simultaneous use in classrooms. A tiered pricing structure based on institutional size appeared a better alternative. Many online resource providers use this approach, and librarians regard it as fair, particularly if some flexibility is built in to accommodate larger but poorer schools. Our pricing tiers are as follows:

  Group I: more than 25,000 students (undergraduate FTE) Group II: 10,000-25,000 students Group III: 5,000-10,000 students Group IV: 2000-5000 students Group V: 500-2000 students Group VI: fewer than 500 students

  We also offer an individual rate, and a graduate student rate.

• Basis for institutional ranking

  We considered several possible rationales for assigning institutions to a particular size group. Enrollment was an obvious choice but using Carnegie classifications was another alternative which some electronic publishers have adopted. We decided on the former because it was easily ascertainable (whereas some institutions belong to more than one Carnegie class). We also decided to use total undergraduate enrollment, rather than the size of the humanities departments, or of the entire institution. We felt that the collection was sufficiently broad-based to be used in a variety of disciplines and in survey courses as well as those for concentrators, so that keying it to the total undergraduate enrollment was reasonable (as this would be comparable from school to school). We also allow for variances to accommodate special cases such as technical colleges with a tiny humanities division.

• Actual price points

  The actual pricing was the most difficult decision, largely because unlike the other issues it was not susceptible to a common-sense solution, but required a certain amount of guesswork. Our original thoughts (influenced by the pricing of scientific journals and the like) were quite high, at $4000/year for the largest institutions and $1000/year for the smallest, and with fewer separate pricing tiers. From this we came down by degrees, after conferring with librarians and other projects. We also came to feel that with the small resources we could commit to marketing, we wanted to make the purchase decision as easy as possible, to minimize negotiation and caviling, and to maintain the good will we have been fortunate enough to receive from our user community. Consequently our final pricing structure is as follows:

  Group I: more than 25,000 students:	$1500/year
  Group II: 10,000 - 25,000 students:	$1000/year
  Group III: 5,000 - 10,000 students:	$750/year
  Group IV: 2000 - 5000 students:	$400/year
  Group V: 500 - 2000 students:	$250/year
  Group VI: fewer than 500 students:	$100/year
  Individual subscribers:	$100/year
  Graduate students:	$50/year

  In addition, we decided to offer aggressive discounts (30% for 3 years, 50% for 5 years) to encourage people to commit for the long term (thereby demonstrating our likely longevity) and also to bring in advance revenue. Thus far, subscribers seem to regard the pricing as low or reasonable in relation both to the value received and to the pricing of comparable products.

• Access terms

  The final problem we needed to address was the question of what subscribers receive for their money, and to what extent we should be concerned about protecting ourselves against willful or accidental harm (for instance, unauthorized copies of texts entering circulation or being resold). Reviewing contracts offered by other resource providers, we found that most contracts are quite restrictive in their provision for reuse of digital materials and printouts. Our position, we felt, was different from that of other providers, in the sense that we were selling access to a collection whose chief value lay in its size and scope as a collection, and its electronic functionality (searching, textual analysis, and so forth). The circulation of individual copies of printouts or HTML files would not have a substantial impact on the value of the collection (and certainly would not discourage institutional subscribers), and it was clear that easy access to such materials would be a strong selling point and a considerable convenience to users. The only real risk would be if an individual recreated the entire resource using illegally downloaded files, and succeeded in passing it off as a competing resource. This seemed unlikely, but also remediable by legal means if it should occur, and we decided that it was a risk worth taking. As a result, our access terms permit unlimited printing and downloading of files for curricular or research use. We also allow institutions to use our materials for interlibrary loan. Finally, in the event of the WWP going out of existence, or being unable to continue to support the textbase, subscribing institutions will receive a full copy of the source data to use as they wish (subject to the terms of the license agreement). This serves to protect the subscriber's investment and provide reassurance.

Next to Encoding Methods and Delivery System

Back to Selection Criteria