Establishing a Social Economy Organization
Key Factors to Address
1. A clear description of the organization, including its mission and vision.
• Why does the organization exist?
o State of academic publishing (i.e. problematic context, enormous contracts, difficulties for academics, including abuse of volunteer labour, surprising findings about pricing, and is a noted ethical concern for librarians – including variable pricing by subject)
o Online platform cooperative
o Publishing cooperative that starts with one journal about the social and solidarity economy
o
• What will be your organization’s primary benefits and services, and to which clients/customers/members?
o Ownership of publications
o Shared distribution of profits
o Editorial decision making power
o Shared resources in terms of editors and printers etc.
o Professional benefits for professors and clearer inclusion criteria
o Collectively determined standards and review processes
o Vested interest in seeing your own journal good and grow- innovative model
• What are the values that will guide how your organization operates?
o Participatory decision making
o Equity
o Fairness
o Freedom of the press/speech
o Openness/Access
o Transparency
• How would you like others to view your organization?
o As an organization that actually applies concepts from the social economy in the academic publishing space
o As a flexible and responsive organization
o First journal has a critical and wide-ranging set of views
o As a replicable model for cooperative publication
o As a cutting-edge publisher
2. Discuss financing and other resources, which includes the following points:
• Available resources of the organization
o Volunteer time of members initially
• How much it will cost to run the program, in real dollars, and in in-kind and volunteer hours?
o Web development/maintenance- from grant money,
o use members for the labor involved, professors, editors, marketing taking care of maintenance- what is a reasonable amount to pay them
o Can say at some point when say, taken up by library, will be remunerated
o Payment scheme for all members?
• Describe where the funding would come from (for example, Trillium, City of Toronto, Atkinson Foundation).
o Maybe free or by donation at the beginning?
o Launch with grants? Identify particular ones
o Can look for comparison what universities pay for journals
o Can charge for educational material
o
3. Describe how the organization will be evaluated
• Processes
o How are we doing in view of the values we set out for ourselves
o Internal audit
o General meetings
o Have a clear and defined version of the values to refer back to
o Feedback from organization that supports co-ops, like a member co-op within a larger scheme, organizational health check
• Economic, social and environmental impacts
o No need to for permanent shared space
o Contributing to different economic doings, diverting from capitalist form of producing and commodification
o Education component
o Long term goal- does this lead to more organizations like it
o Production of knowledge around social economy, contributing to the circulation of knowledge
o
• Organizational learning
o Being a member co-op of a larger organization of co-op
o Have we produced internal reflections
o A sustained system of feedback
o Conflict resolution practices
4. Describe how the organization will sustain itself over time.
Membership (types, voting, etc. as there is growth)
Education on cooperative publishing
New Journals
Developing a reputation and trust in the fields where it publishes
Host conferences and topical events for publishers, or for academic fields
Directory?
Instructions: I have a group presentation and my part is governance structure.
What is its governance structure – how many on the Board; does the Board elect members itself, or is there a membership in the organization that elects the Board? Who is on the Board – what types of backgrounds? What is the Board’s relationship to the staff?