Some professional societies need to be persuaded that open access publishing may be in their interest. The best way to do this is to provide data on the publishing ecosystem, including such things as the number of articles of interest to a society that appear in other venues and the practical implications of not having an OA option for prospective authors.
University presses have long had programs in journal publishing, but some of these programs have declined a bit in recent years. There are steps a press can take to strengthen its journal publishing program.
Revisiting a holiday classic: ‘Twas the month before Christmas, and by listening hard, you can hear Joe Esposito yearn for a library card. The reasons are simple, yet give publishers pause. No wonder Joe’s only hope is with Santa Claus.
The analysis of workflow is a primary activity for many publishers today, but new workflows can only lead us to where we have already been. We have to get beyond analyzing workflow and focus instead on new product development.
It is often argued that open access will reduce the overall cost of scholarly communications, but this article proposes that OA will be additive to the size of the current market.
Announcing a research project to study how many academic books Amazon sells to libraries.
Organizations need to encompass multiple perspectives on where a business is headed. It’s usually the case that the staff is not in agreement on that direction, but that could be a very good thing.
A report from Simba Information tallies the total value of the open access marketplace, putting OA at 2.3% of the total market for STM journals. It documents as well, without comment, that more and more OA activity is the business of for-profit companies.
Following up on a report posted on the Scholarly Kitchen two years ago, this essay addresses some ways university presses can mitigate some of the effects that demand-driven acquisitions have on book sales.
Revisiting Joe Esposito’s post on the real world concerns of the research community. Although many people claim to know what scientists want, the author’s own ongoing survey has come up with results that are at odds with most conventional wisdom. This post summarizes those findings and identifies a near-universal view held by many scientists.
Organizations seeking change will often turn to an individual to bring about that change. The challenge for such a change agent is how to move the organization forward without breaking it.
A research report on direct-to-consumer marketing is provided here. The study was first announced on the Scholarly Kitchen. The report includes a survey of current university press practices and recommendations for steps to take to improve performance.
The competition among the largest journal publishers to acquire the rights to professional society publications is very keen. The bidding for these publications is likely to result in an alteration of strategy, whereby the bidding publishers seek to bind the societies more closely to them.
This year’s beach reading will be spent with books by public intellectuals. Unfortunately, writing for the general public is not valued within the academy, to the detriment of public education.
There is a rumor, based on no or scant evidence, that Google is preparing to launch a platform for scholarly communications, which could threaten established STM publishers. A publisher should react to this by reviewing its own internal operations and value proposition. In particular, the role in certification should be strengthened.