Freemium as a sustainable economic model for Open Access digital publishing in humanities and social sciences

Between the two paths of open access - green and gold - the latter is the harder to develop and has less support from the research community. The main difficulty lies in finding a sound economic model. Open Access journals usually depend on two funding sources: subsidies and/or donations from institutions and publication fees from research units in the author-pay model. These two ways of funding Open Access journals and books have proved effective in some cases (Plos), but are not flawless. The Center for Open Electronic Publishing, a French initiative for Open Access publishing in humanities and social sciences, has recently developed a new economic model based on "Freemium" for its full Open Access journal and book series, in order to address two issues: improve their economic soundness and give them more visibility in libraries. Freemium, a blend of "free" and "premium", preserves the information side of Open Access as well as premium service marketing.