Draft: Ftb 7, 2001
During the course of the grant period, Vanderbilt University Library will be the fund administrator for all Mellon Foundation funds. Vanderbilt may subcontract specific segments of the project to other ETANA organizations, or related commercial businesses. Some grant funded equipment and software may be placed at other ETANA participating organizations. It is the intent that ETANA will eventually become an independent not-for-profit organization controlled by its member organizations.
Participating units - whether "charter members," "affiliate members," or something else -- will be a) institutions or units within academic institutions (such as libraries); b) member-based academic learned societies; c) individual or group projects based within and/or supported by academic institutions or learned societies and led by academic faculty in those institutions and societies; d) other types of participating units that ETANA's host, Vanderbilt University, or the ETANA Board may wish to introduce or recruit. Participants will have differing statuses depending on their character. For example, there may be a class of "Charter Sponsors," another of "Sponsors," and another of "Members" or "Projects." The differences will be reflected in the governance structure, voting rights, and economies of ETANA.
ETANA's legal status will be an independent not-for-profit corporation duly registered and established and certified for tax-exempt benefits.
ETANA will be assertive if not aggressive in recruiting new participants. Joining will be by invitation and will be determined by the needs and goals of ETANA and will not be determined by applicants or nominees. There will be no negative connotation attached to denial of participation and those denied at one time may be admitted at a later time if the needs of ETANA change. Similarly, a policy for removing participants will be developed that will be based on the needs and goals of ETANA.
An organizational structure and economic plan incorporating these presuppositions will be developed. It might include the following:
Vanderbilt University will subvent core costs of ETANA annually in return for the tangible and intangible benefits that accrue to the organization. For example, the presence of ETANA on the Vanderbilt campus will assist with recruiting graduate students and will provide training and employment opportunities for them; ETANA will add stature to the Vanderbilt. ETANA will be a base for additional fund raising and grant writing within the University.
If projects are deemed appropriate for generating a profit and if the owning participant wants a profit, ETANA will be the marketing and distributing agent, will collect fees or subscriptions, and will return a portion of the income to the owner-participant, retaining a portion to cover ETANA's expense and investment. Specific revenue sharing arrangement will be negotiated between the ETANA Board of Directors and individual content owners.
If a project is not intended to be marketed for profit, a different economy will prevail. As for-profit projects, all production costs will be paid by the participant. Following completion, future costs will be divided between ETANA and the participant. An established ratio will eventually be set, based on experience. In the meantime, during a trial period, the same 60/40 division will prevail: participants will bear 60% of the operating costs and ETANA 40%.
For ETANA-sponsored projects, ETANA will bear all costs and enjoy all rewards. For instance, early core texts might be licensed to publishers to produce reprints. These revenues would accrue to the legal entity ETANA.
ETANA will establish a robust system of rights management for all materials held on its site. All contributing entities, either individual or organizational, will be expected to make a clear statement of their ownership rights to material held on the ETANA site. Generally ETANA will expect to receive perpetual non-exclusive digital rights to all material on the ETANA site. No material of questionable rights origin will be hosted on the ETANA site.
ETANA will create its own peer review standards and appoint its own editorial boards as needed. Individual member organizations can exert their own editorial control over specific segments of the ETANA site that are clearly understood as being under the control of that organization. Specific journal titles and image databases are good examples of this situation. For those more experimental segments of the database, such as the Archeologist's Tool-Kit, the Scholars Commons, or preprint servers, minimal screening may be preformed by Vanderbilt Divinity School graduate students or by individual scholar editors.
During the period of the Mellon Foundation Grant, Vanderbilt University Library will be the principal grant administrator. The Vanderbilt University Librarian will serve as the principal grant investigator, and the Director of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library will be the Project Director. A steering committee made up of one representative of each participating organization will advise the Project Director. Periodic reports of progress toward ETANA project goals will be made to both the Mellon Foundation and the ETANA Steering Committee.