Open Content Business Models

The Creative Commons Netherlands organized a workshop on open content and education. The term “open content” often causes a lot of misunderstanding. Often “user generated content” or free accessible material from online sources, such as netlabels, flickr sites, wikipedia are described as “open content”. The term “open access” therefore was recognized as more appropriate, especially since the workshop focused on teaching material for schools.
The discussion centered around two aspects:

• how could the production of the content for teaching material be facilitated by involving students, teachers as well as university scholars and scientists.
• what would be the added value a publishing house could offer to turn that production into a business model.

Quality control and peer review were recognized as crucial aspects in publishing open content for education. Publishing houses were considered as able to organize the peer review process and function as a 'gatekeeper' in order to evaluate publications according to quality criteria. The maintenance of a cultural resource emerging through production of open content is important.  Institutions or communities have to develop strategies to administer the material.

A dutch summary of the workshop is provided on the Creative Commons Netherlands website.