Transcript Slide 1

Society journal publishing in
the 21st century
Ian Russell
Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
[email protected]
UKSG 33rd Annual Conference and Exhibition: Edinburgh
Overview
• Introduction
• Society Publishing in the 21st Century
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Background
What society publishing brings to the table
Surviving and thriving today
What new/changed roles could societies take
on
What is ALPSP
?
• The international association for all nonprofit publishers
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learned societies
professional associations
university presses
Inter-Governmental Organisations
institutes, foundations, charities etc
• Other members of the scholarly
communication chain (including
commercial publishers) may join as
Associate Members
• Founded in the UK in 1972
• Now the largest association for scholarly
publishers in the world
– 360+ members
– of which more than 270 are publishers
– publishing over 10,000 journals
(almost half the world’s total output)
– as well as books, databases and other
products
• Members in ~40 countries
What does
do?
• Representation and advocacy
• Professional development
• Networking events / opportunities
– Virtual
– Physical
• Collaborative initiatives
• Good Practice leadership
• Information and advice
What are learned and
professional societies?
What are learned and professional
societies?
• Organizations that exist to promote an
academic discipline or group of disciplines
(Learned) or to support a specific
profession, e.g. law (Professional)
• Controlled by their members
• Primary membership made up of
individuals
• Usually non-profit, often a charity
What are learned and professional
societies?
• Subject coverage can be very general
(science) or extremely niche (headaches)
• Often national bodies
• Membership can:
– Be open to all
– Require some form of qualification
– Be by election
Why do societies have
publishing interests?
Why are Societies involved in
publishing?
• Fulfils mission statement of promotion and
dissemination
Learned and Professional Society missions
• A key part of mission statement is almost
always advancement and dissemination of
the subject
– “The object for which the Institute is hereby
constituted is to promote the advancement
and dissemination of a knowledge of and
education in…”
• Publishing is a natural way to achieve
this…
Why are Societies involved in
publishing?
• Fulfils mission statement of promotion and
dissemination
• Allows national society to have
international reach
• Provides kudos and gravitas
• Generates income? Profit?
Surplus / Profit
• ~1/3 do not make a surplus
• Median surplus just 15% of revenue
• Income to society (%’age of total
revenue):
– Median 20% for self publishers
– Median 30% for those that contract out
• But can be important (e.g. Royal Society)
Christine Baldwin What do societies do with their publishing
surpluses? (ALPSP / Blackwell, 2004)
How do societies spend their
surpluses?
• Support for the subject community as a whole
– keeping conference fees low
– providing bursaries for meetings
– offering research grants
• Public education
• Support for the society and its membership in
particular
– providing free or reduced-price copies to members
– keeping membership dues low
– generally supporting the running costs of the
organisation
How do societies spend their
surpluses? 2/3
1 Subsidy of members’ copies of the journal (96% of
respondents did this)
2 Supporting the organisation in general (82%; of those who
did, median 60% of surpluses was applied to this)
3 Reinvestment in the publishing business in particular (42%;
30%)
4 Subsidy of conference fees (33%; 7%)
5 Subsidy of membership dues (32%; 15%)
6=Provision of bursaries (26%; 7.5%)
6=Public education (26%; 7.5%)
8 Reinvestment in the organisation’s reserves/endowments
(25%; 17.5%)
9=Provision of research grants (21%; 25%)
9=Other (21%; 25%)
How do societies spend their
surpluses? 3/3
• “Other” includes
– Publication of a newsletter
– Activities related to continuing professional
development, e.g. qualifications, exams, training
– Activities for students and subsidising student
membership
– Prizes
– Running scientific meetings
– Maintaining their own library
– Press and PR work
– Advice to / lobbying of government
– Special projects identified by the institution
Importance of society publishers
• Over 97 percent of society publishers
publish three or fewer journals, with
almost 90 percent publishing just one title
• ~ 10,000 societies that own at least one
journal
• Collectively own around 55% of the
world’s journals (~ 2/3rds self published)
• Commercial publishers play a role in 62%
of the world’s journals owning 45%,
contract publishing 17%
Raym Crow, Publishing cooperatives: An alternative for non-profit publishers
(First Monday, Volume 11, Number 9)
Pros and cons of Societies as
publishers
• Close to subject
– Know what’s going on
(often helping to shape
it)
– Subject expertise close
to hand
– Know movers and
shakers
• Goodwill from
community
• Restricted by subject
• Often small
– No economies of scale
– Few staff covering lots
of different roles
– Difficult to innovate or
even stay up-to-date
• Can be conservative
and slow to move
• Difficult to access
investment funds?
“In an increasingly electronic
environment, scale has become allimportant, and scholarly societies have
increasingly turned to outside partners for
their journal publishing”
Roger C. Schonfeld & Ross Housewright Ithaka S+R Faculty
Survey 2009: Key Strategic Insights for Libraries,
Publishers, and Societies, April 7, 2010
Commercial vs non-profit
Commercial
• Small number of large
publishers
• Economies of scale
• Purchasing power
• Big Deals
Non-profit
• Large number of
mostly small
publishers
• Not much economic
leverage when
negotiating for
publishing services
• Little market presence
when disseminating
their content
Would it matter if all
societies outsourced their
publishing to commercial
partners?
Three key questions:
• What do learned and professional societies
bring to scholarship that would be missed
were they not involved in publishing?
• What do societies have to do to thrive and
survive as publishers if the landscape
tomorrow looks much as it does today?
• What new / changed roles might societies
take on in the publishing value chain in
the future? (…and how?)
• Others?
What do learned and professional societies bring to
scholarship that would be missed were they not
involved in publishing?
• Money – the so called “scholarly dividend”
– But no divine right to earn money from
publishing
– Societies could get same return if publishing
outsourced to commercial publisher
• Support of unprofitable products
• A deeper understanding of their subject?
• Diversity, richness
– But what does this really mean?
Innovation?
• Can be innovative, fleet of foot, and
entrepreneurial
– And because there are so many of them lots of
experimentation
• Can be conservative and risk averse
• Large publishers more likely to experiment
(e.g. with web 2.0 technologies)
• Society publishers often have limited
access to investment funds (unable to
raise money on open market)
Society subject knowledge = new
journal launches?
• 202 publishers responding have launched
1,463 new titles between 2003-2007
• 7.24 per publisher (cf 5.25 in 1999-2003,
6.02 in 2000-5)
• Larger publishers more likely to launch
new journals
• Commercial publishers more likely to
launch new journals
John Cox & Laura Cox Scholarly Publishing Practice Survey 2008 (ALPSP,
2008)
Three key questions:
• What do learned and professional societies
bring to scholarship that would be missed
were they not involved in publishing?
• What do societies have to do to thrive and
survive as publishers if the landscape
tomorrow looks much as it does today?
• What new / changed roles might societies
take on in the publishing value chain in
the future? (…and how?)
• Others?
What are the issues?
• Selling (under a subscription model)
Do librarians prefer non-profit
publishers?
• 45.6% of librarians state that they would prefer
to purchase from non-profit publishers (with
21.5% indicating a strong preference to do so)
• However, elsewhere in the same survey the profit
status of the publisher was consistently
considered to be the least important factor when
making purchasing decisions
• Majority of the responding librarians, 54.5%,
have no preference to purchase from non-profit
publishers
Ian Russell ALPSP Survey of Librarians: Responding to the credit crunch what now for librarians and libraries? (ALPSP, 2009)
What are the issues?
• Selling (under a subscription model)
– Sales representation
– Getting squeezed by ‘Big Deals’
• Visibility
• Product development / editorial
development
• Launching new products
• Staff knowledge, expertise and time
• Best practice
What do societies have to do to thrive and survive
as publishers if the landscape tomorrow looks much
as it does today?
• Join trade associations!
• Band together? Collaborative / cooperative
products, services and functions
• Constantly improve editorial product (=
investment)
• Efficiencies / cost savings
– How will societies fare going e-only?
• Follow best practice
– Adherence to standards
– e.g. Preservation and curation
Long-term preservation
• 52.4% have formal arrangements for
preservation (cf 42% in 2005)
• Portico and LOCKSS most popular
• Small publishers less likely to participate
• A danger since these are the publishers /
journals that are probably most at risk!
John Cox & Laura Cox Scholarly Publishing Practice Survey 2008
Three key questions:
• What do learned and professional societies
bring to scholarship that would be missed
were they not involved in publishing?
• What do societies have to do to thrive and
survive as publishers if the landscape
tomorrow looks much as it does today?
• What new / changed roles might societies
take on in the publishing value chain in
the future? (…and how?)
• Others?
What new / changed roles might societies take on
in the publishing value chain in the future?
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Reduce operations to organizing peer review only
Some other way of providing ‘authority’?
Helping users get to trust worthy content
Improving the corpus of literature post
publication
• Funding publishing from other things rather than
funding other things from publishing
• Web 2.0 technologies?
• Communities
– Online
– International
Percent of faculty responding “very important” to the question
“How important is it to you that your scholarly society
provides each of the functions below or serves in the capacity
listed below?”
Roger C. Schonfeld & Ross Housewright Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey 2009: Key
Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies, April 7, 2010
Web 2.0 technologies
• New questions in 2008
• 20% of publishers offer social tagging,
further 34% intend to
• Only 25% of publishers offering
wikis/blogs, forums, podcasts etc
• Large publishers more likely to be
implementing these technologies
• Negligible difference between commercials
and non-profits
John Cox & Laura Cox Scholarly Publishing Practice Survey 2008
What new / changed roles might societies take on
in the publishing value chain in the future?
•
•
•
•
•
Reduce operations to organizing peer review only
Some other way of providing ‘authority’?
Helping users get to trust worthy content
Improving literature post publication
Funding publishing from other things rather
than funding other things from publishing
• Web 2.0 technologies?
• Communities
– Online
– International
Should society publishers
be leading the way to open
access publishing?
Open access
• Author self-archiving – ‘green’
• Open access publishing / Author-side
payments – ‘gold’
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No need for large sales-forces
Eliminates motives for online piracy
Capitalizes on good relationships with authors
In keeping with mission of dissemination
Open access journals
• 4 fold increase in the number of fully OA
journals from 199 in 2005 to 786 in 2008
• 25% of publishers offer at least 1 fully OA
journal
• Funding sources less experimental
– Author pays fees; grants; subsidies
• Of those using author-pays:
– 34% charge submission fees (cf 8% in 2005)
– 94% charge publication fees (cf 84% in 2005)
– 20% charge both
John Cox & Laura Cox Scholarly Publishing Practice Survey 2008
Open access journals
Average percentage funding by profit status
Author pays Advertising Subsidy by
institution
Commercial
2005
2008
Non-profit
2005
2008
Grant /
industry
sponsor
30.5%
65%
7.0%
7.0%
1.3%
17.4%
0%
1%
11.8%
16.8%
11.5%
1%
33.0%
35.3%
12.7%
23%
Optional Open Access
• Dramatic increase in percentage of publishers
offering ‘hybrid’ models
– 9% in 2005
– 30% in 2008
• 53% of these offer hybrid on all their journals
• Take up is low:
– 52.9% have take up of 1% or less
– 73.5% have take up of 5% or less
– 91.2% have take up of 10% or less
• Fees range from under $500 to over $3000 but
majority (69%) in the range $1000 - $3000
John Cox & Laura Cox Scholarly Publishing Practice Survey 2008
“online communications technologies have
changed… this study suggests that, as yet,
these changes have remained relatively
marginal, and faculty members cannot
imagine traditional forms of interaction
being supplanted by online mechanisms”
Roger C. Schonfeld & Ross Housewright Ithaka S+R Faculty
Survey 2009: Key Strategic Insights for Libraries,
Publishers, and Societies, April 7, 2010
“Despite several years of sustained efforts by
publishers, scholarly societies, libraries, faculty
members, and others to reform various aspects
of the scholarly communications system, a
fundamentally conservative set of faculty
attitudes continues to impede systematic change”
Roger C. Schonfeld & Ross Housewright Ithaka S+R Faculty
Survey 2009: Key Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and
Societies, April 7, 2010
Questions / discussion
A word on prices…
• Prices of journals owned by commercial
publishers are 4-5 times higher than those owned
by societies
• Prices of journals owned by societies but
published by commercial publishers 3 times
higher than those owned by societies
• BUT
• These comparisons are not comparing like with
like
– Based on full list price
– Most self-published society journals are sold as
individual subscriptions at full price
– Most commercially published journals are sold in
packages at a deeply discounted price
References
• Baldwin, C What do societies do with their publishing surpluses?
(ALPSP & Blackwell)
http://www.alpsp.org/ngen_public/article.asp?id=200&did=47&aid=277&st=&oaid=1
• Cox, J & Cox, L Scholarly Publishing Practice Survey 2008 (ALPSP)
http://www.alpsp.org/ngen_public/article.asp?id=200&did=47&aid=24781&st=&oaid
=-1
• Crow, R Publishing cooperatives: An alternative for non-profit
publishers (First Monday 11, 9)
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/1396
• Russell, I ALPSP Survey of Librarians: Responding to the credit
crunch - what now for librarians and libraries? (ALPSP)
http://www.alpsp.org/ngen_public/article.asp?id=200&did=47&aid=112716&st=&oai
d=-1
• Schonfeld, R.C & Housewright, R Faculty Survey 2009: Key
Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies (Ithaka
S+R)
http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/research/faculty-surveys-20002009/Faculty%20Study%202009.pdf