Connexions grant to help it become self-sustaining

Rice University's OA Connexions project has received a $1.7 million grant from the Hewlett Foundation.  From yesterday's announcement:

Rice University's revolutionary, open-source publishing platform Connexions today received a third-phase $1.7 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation that will allow Connexions to become more self-sustaining through new revenue-generating initiatives....

Founded in 1999, the nonprofit Connexions is one of the Web's first open educational resources. Connexions adapts open-source concepts to educational publishing, allowing anyone anywhere in the world to read, write, use and modify materials for free. The number of people using Connexions has grown by almost 70 percent during the past year, and the site today is attracting around 500,000 visitors each month.

"We're entering the most ambitious phase of our development," said [Richard Baraniuk, founder of Connexions and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice].  "We're looking at three potential revenue streams that may allow us to become self-supporting, and we're committed to developing those without betraying our core mission to keep all of our material available for free."

Connexions' initial revenue streams will come from the sale of books. In one case, Connexions plans to found a University Press Consortium that allows member presses to offer print-on-demand publication of money-losing monographs that are academically important but which simply cost too much to publish. The model builds upon Rice's announcement in July that it would use Connexions to revive its own university press, which was shuttered in 1996....Under this model, readers can access all books online for free, and they will pay only if they want a printed book...

Connexions also plans to develop a catalog of the 10 most-popular community college textbooks, which also will be free for online viewing and cost less than $30 when purchased as hardbound books....Baraniuk said..., "Our goal is to dramatically affect the economics of textbooks by providing high-utility courses in Connexions that can be customized by instructors and printed affordably by students."

Connexions' final revenue-generating plan involves licensing its platform to companies for in-house corporate training....