Business Model Ontology for Electronic Theses and Dissertations: An explorative approach

Objective: Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) programs often encounter obstacles of technical, legal, financial and business nature. The existing literature provides valuable insight into each aspect, however a holistic view on these critical success factors is missing. To develop a multifaceted view of ETD programs, the concept of Business model (BM) can be used. BM helps to grasp a detailed understanding of business feasibility and viability, which entails abroad spectrum of key factors and features the business. The existing BM ontologies and frameworks however are often generic and do not match the specific context of ETDs programs. The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap and identify and empirically evaluate a BM ontology that corresponds to the peculiarities of the ETDs context.
Method: In this study a multi-method approach is chosen. First, by means of a systematic literature review, different ontologies and frameworks in the literature were reviewed. The findings were used as an input to conduct a series of interviewing with ETD program’s managers around the world.
Findings: Based on the interviews, an ETD-specific BM ontology is proposed, which consists of eight key components, including users, financial aspect, governance, content providers, content, services, technology, and cooperation.