Open Forum 2007 – Society Publishers: What’s important to your business?
This year’s open forum, held at the Oxford Playhouse on 27th June, was focused on the issues facing society publishers. Ian Russell, the Chairman of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), expertly chaired the afternoon of discussions. Below are some of the highlights from the day.
The good, the bad and the ugly
Ian started things off by looking at the ‘challenges and opportunities facing society publishers’. He stressed that in the current rapidly changing climate, society publishers need to embrace change, using it to their advantage.
The good: Societies are well placed to be scholarly publishers, they have excellent knowledge of their field and are a trusted authoritative resource. With the proliferation of content and many users turning to Google for all of the answers, Ian believed that publishers in general - and perhaps Learned Societies in particular – will have an increasing role to play in providing ‘authority’. To prove the point that you can’t trust everything you find on the internet he introduced us to the infamous Tree Octopus!
The bad (or at least the challenging): There are many challenges facing scholarly publishing in general. Many of these challenges threaten the whole structure on which society publishing is currently based. These include the rise of informal scholarly communications, utilising web 2.0 technologies. Changes to peer review, the open access movement and even changes in the assessment of academic reward. Other challenges include the drawbacks inherent with society publishing. Ian’s list included commercial limitations set by the societies charter, lack of economies of scale and in many cases a conservative outlook.
Safety in numbers: Separately societies are small, with 97% of Society Publishers having three or fewer journals and 90% having just one, but together they can make a difference.
So what does the future hold?
Ian concluded that the challenges are not going to go away. “It is difficult for small players, but societies are well placed to take advantage of change and the need for ‘authority’. Societies have to stay abreast of the issues and can’t be overly conservative or risk averse.”
Finally, Ian shared with us one of the little know society membership benefits, according to a report from the Vienna Institute of Demography; that members of Learned Societies live longer!
Ian’s slides can be viewed here.
For more information about becoming a member of ALPSP click here.
How can Societies leverage web 2.0 to make the most of their content?
Leigh Dodds’ presentation, on ‘How societies can make the most of new technologies’ was so well received we have dedicated a whole article to it!
Scitopia
Terry Hulbert from the Institute of Physics shared his experience of creating Scitopia, a collaboration between 15 leading science and technology societies to create a federated vertical search portal. Traditionally societies have been wary of collaborations with competitors, but Terry stressed the benefits of this, including spreading the risk and costs as well as the advantage of keeping your competitors close. There are of course challenges in a project like this, not least communication and the different agendas of each of the participants, but it has been made to work with the intention being that the project will be self-sustaining within a few years.
There was some nervousness from other publishers in the room about collaborations like this and the loss of brand identity, with questions raised about whether collaboration in Physics was easier than in other subjects. Other examples of collaborations between publishers include CrossRef and the recent announcement by Sage Publications and Springer to publish a joint special issue between 'The International Journal of Robotics Research' (SAGE) and 'International Journal of Computer Vision' (Springer) that brings together ground-breaking research from both the robotics and computing communities.
Future gazing – Online Advertising
With time running out a show of hands was taken to chose the last topic of the day. With growing pressure to increase revenues it was no surprise that the topic chosen was online advertising. Most of the publishers in the room were in agreement that they have to look at new revenue streams and that online advertising has vast potential. Those with experience of advertising felt that behavioural analysis was of great importance, because if users see adverts that are relevant to them they don’t mind. Behavioural targetting in advertising will be a topic at the 'Publishing Technology Trends' Forum, being held in December. You can read more about the advertising options Ingenta offers, here.
Other discussion topics included:
• The recent release of the Transfer guidelines. Generally these were felt to be a step in the right direction, but more work was needed.
• Importance of discoverability/usage – There was some concern about the flaws in Impact Factors, for niche journals or content that is highly used but not highly cited.
• There was a lot of interest in new initiatives such as Eigenfactor and MESUR, but also concerns that usage as a measure of impact is also problematic.
• Journal archiving - LOCKSS, Portico – Becoming a big issue in the states with perpetual access to content likely to become a condition of the subscription purchase.
Our thanks to everyone who helped make the discussions so interesting, with special thanks to our external speakers Ian Russell and Terry Hulbert.
Ingenta’s next Publisher Forum will be held on 3rd December, details of which can be read here.