Simon Inger Consulting and Renew Consulting for Societies undertake numerous strategic business reviews of publishers' and societies' journals business, often with a view to finding an appropriate publishing partner for a society that can keep up with a rapidly changing publishing environment. The impact of open access is significant, and has led many societies to rethink their publishing mission beyond making a surplus to support the society's charitable operations.

1. Simon Inger Consulting
What Scholarly Societies Want
from their Publishers – a
Changing Landscape

2. My brands
 Simon Inger Consulting Ltd – publisherfacing brand, often get asked to undertake
strategic business reviews for journals
including assessment of publishing partner
options
 Renew Consulting for Societies – aimed at
societies who have already outsourced
and who need education or help in
renegotiation, tenders, etc.
13 January, 2014
www.sic.ox14.com
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3. Journal Brand Image
Author Experience
Funding Agencies
Government Policy
Review Process
Full OA Journals
Author Marketing
Bucket OA Journal
Scope and Coverage
Submissions
Subscriptions
Finances
Page Charges
Platform Costs
Composition Costs
Impact Factor
Mission
Copyediting Costs
Regional Journals
Competitor Titles
Publications Partnerships
13 January, 2014
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4. Societies with Partner Publishers
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Education
Requirements Filtering
Prioritisation – key objective
RFP
Objective Assessment versus Priorities
Negotiation and Contract
13 January, 2014
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5. What societies want to know about
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Big deals and lock-in
Reach, usage, impact factor
Open Access
Delivery Platform and Technology
Financial Basis of Deals
Backfile digitisation and ownership
New title launches – freedom / ownership
Editorial control
13 January, 2014
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6. What self-published societies ask about
 How to get to widest markets (compete
with big deals)
 Impact factor
 Open Access
 Delivery Platform and Technology
 Editorial trade-off (speed vs quality)
13 January, 2014
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7. Big deals and lock-in
Usage of <TITLE> by access type (all libraries)
Big deal
Subscription to at least one title plus big deal
Subscribed
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8. Reach, usage, impact factor
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Impact factor related to readership
Readership related to big deals
Big deals = lock-in
Therefore a necessary trade-off
13 January, 2014
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9. Open Access
 OA = Author Market
 Author Market = Community
 Community = Society
13 January, 2014
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10. OA as a Service Industry
 If OA is the future, we have moved
essentially from a product-based business
model, to a service model.
– Scalability and profitability
– Cost control
– Price point (for APCs)
13 January, 2014
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13. Implications of Service Model
 Author is King
 Author experience
– Ease of submission
– Review fairness and speed
– Value-added editorial process
 Author relationships and marketing
 Delivery platform features
– “Article of the Future”
 Cascading
13 January, 2014
www.sic.ox14.com
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14. Data
 Who owns the author data?
– Publisher or Society?
– Society is free to change publisher, but what
about its author relationship data (perhaps in
a CRM)
 Which department?
– Even within a society, can be conflicts of data
ownership over author data held by publisher
and member data held by society
13 January, 2014
www.sic.ox14.com
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15. OA may be complicated
 Many societies who self-publish looking for
help on OA from commercial partners
AND
 Many societies who have a commercial
partner want to do OA themselves
13 January, 2014
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16. Delivery Platform
 Platform questions often manifest
themselves as a concern over visibility of
content
– Libraries, and discoverability and reach
 Individuals, power users and features
 Editorial Board, features and look
 “Article of the Future”
– a clear space between Gold OA and Green
OA articles?
13 January, 2014
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17. Article of the Future
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18. Editorial Software
 Everyone wants access to the best
solution
 Concerns over reviewer discovery
 Concerns over open access, especially
cascading
13 January, 2014
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19. New Title Launches
 New OA titles
– Publisher owned and society supported
– Society owned but with commercial partner
– Joint venture
– Self publish even if partnered with major
publisher for subscription journals
– Cascade and transfer
13 January, 2014
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20. Money
 Revenue share not profit share
 Societies usually want to protect revenues
to support society work
– But some recognition that publishing mission
best served by being flexible on revenue,
especially in short term.
13 January, 2014
www.sic.ox14.com
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21. Conclusions
 Gold OA is having a radical effect on how
societies think and their relationships with
partners.
 Societies are increasingly understanding
how they could be central to an authorcentric service-based publishing model.
13 January, 2014
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