[RQC-interest] Community funding approach for Review Quality Collector (RQC)

["Lutz Prechelt" <prechelt@inf.fu-berlin.de>]

Dear RQC contacts,

What you already know
======================

http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/w/SE/ReviewQualityCollectorHome

- Discussing the Review Quality Collector idea with you,
  I found a lot of interest and received support letters
  from 6 of the largest scientific publishers 
  (together representing more than 7300 journals) and
  from 9 research institutions and from individual researchers
  of another 25 research institutions from 14 countries
- I submitted a proposal for public funding (in a very
  suitable program), but it was rejected
- I told you I would develop an idea for community
  funding and contact you again (which I do today).


New: The community funding approach
===================================

- With community funding (from publishers and universities),
  the project can focus more on technical issues and less
  on adoption and so can be compressed from 3 to 2 years.

- The required budget then is 456 000 EUR.
  (The project will not start if this budget is not achieved
   by November 2014. If it starts, RQC will be developed and
   run by a not-for-profit company.)

- To this budget, each participating publisher will contribute
  at most EUR 200 per journal (for all of its journals) and
  each participating university will contribute
  at most EUR 70 per post-doctoral researcher (for all of those).

- Why are these amounts "at most"?
  If the sum of these contributions grows
  beyond 115% of the budget (EUR 524 000), 
  the above contributions are reduced in proportion.

- Example:
  If publishers with 4000 journals and universities with
  2000 researchers participate in the funding,
  the contributions would amount to
  4000*200 + 2000*70 = 940 000 EUR
  so the contributions will be adjusted by factor 
  524000/940000 = 0.557 
  and so become
  EUR 111 per journal and EUR 39 per researcher.

- Benefits for the participating funding partners:
  - can co-control the design of the RQC service
  - have priority usage rights (everybody else
    can start not before year 3)
  - reap the marketing value of being an innovator
    (RQC will forever advertise them as founding sponsors)
  - receive 60% fee reduction during 5 years of subsequent use
    (probably worth about half of the funding in total)

Questions are extremely welcome.


I have three questions as well:

- Under which circumstances do you think would your company
  or university participate in this funding scheme?
- What would be its primary motivation to do so?
- What might be the primary inhibitor against doing so?

Please speak up!
Reply email will go to me, not the mailing list.


I will be at the Academic Publishing Europe conference
next week and will talk to some of you in person there.

Hoping to hear from many of you,

  Lutz Prechelt

Prof. Dr. Lutz Prechelt; prechelt@inf.fu-berlin.de
Institut f. Informatik; Freie Universitaet Berlin
Takustr. 9, R.014; 14195 Berlin; Germany
+49 30 838 75115; http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/w/SE/