D4.1—A prioritised assessment of the indirect economic determinants of digital curation
"an evaluation of the relative importance of all the economic determinants of digital curation"
Executive Summary
This deliverable discusses indirect economic determinants of digital curation. It defines them as generic management tools that can be applied in any organisation to help ensure sustainable digital curation.
Indirect economic determinants are similar to indirect costs in that they usually support more functions within the organisation than just the digital curation function. The indirect nature of these cost factors derives from the multitude of ways that the digital curation function can be embedded in the business models of organisations. The constellation of digital objects, the purpose of preservation, the intended target audience of the preserved objects and the type of organisation all determine how these cost factors can benefit the organisation.
The indirect economic determinants are also presented here as high-level concepts comparable to indirect long-term benefits that curating digital objects can yield. Implementing these instruments is more likely to lead to indirect benefits, such as negative impacts avoided (such as avoiding the cost of recovering objects) or reducing long-term costs (for example through risk assessment).
The report describes fifteen indirect economic determinants that are significant for digital curation today. These 15 were selected through consultations with experts and stakeholder groups, and ranked according to their importance to the stakeholders identified by the 4C project. The list includes topics such as benefit and value, efficiency and impact, quality and trustworthiness, reputation and risk, and so on.
A selection of these determinants will be further explored by subsequent tasks in work package 4 of the 4C project, and their cost-benefit model will become a component of the Economic Sustainability Reference Model.
D4.1—A prioritised assessment of the indirect economic determinants of digital curation (707.25 kB)