The 360° Competitor
The defining aspect of such an organization is that it operates as an industry nexus.
Good vs. Evil? Finding the Right Mix of For-Profit and Not-for-Profit Services
Today, Joe and Roger analyze the variety of firms to which the academy can outsource scholarly communication and adjacent priorities: consortia, societies, and commercial enterprises.
Scientific and Scholarly Meetings in the Time of Pandemic
As professional and academic societies scramble to cancel meetings or move them to online formats in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Michael Clarke discusses considerations for both maintaining revenues and engagement.
What Will We Learn About Scholarly Publishing as a Result of COVID-19?
In the coming months and years, we will have an opportunity to study the affects of the COVID pandemic on scholarly publishing. Angela Cochran explores questions related to the participation of women in scholarship, funding changes, resource issues, and the future of research enterprises.
Building Your Remote Workforce: Including Tips & Tricks for Social Distancing
Organizations across the globe are being forced to adapt quickly, with some allowing employees to work from home the first time. But there are many reasons to shift to a remote team – learn more about why and how in today’s post.
Building for the Long Term: Why Business Strategies are Needed for Community-Owned Infrastructure
As community-owned and -led efforts to build scholarly communications infrastructure gain momentum, what can be done to help them achieve long term sustainability?
Agile isn’t Always Cheaper, But it Should Mitigate Risk
A lot of people talk about Agile project management and how effective it can be. They also talk about how hard it is to get executive buy-in. The disconnect is caused by a lack of understanding of how Agile reduces risk.
Where Does a University Press Sit in its Parent’s Priorities?
The unfortunate news about cutbacks at Stanford University Press makes it clear that all presses must develop strategies to make them more central to the university’s set of priorities.
Strategic and Non-strategic Society Publishing
Many society publishers, concerned about the disruptive implications, of Plan S, are nervously considering selling off their publishing assets.
Why Don’t Societies Simply Sell off Their Publishing Assets?
Society publishers resist the sale of their publications to bidders from the commercial world because they view the publications as a central component of the society itself.
Consolidation in Academic Publishing Has a New Target
Research publishers may acquire textbook publishers in order to increase market share in libraries with inclusive access programs
Old Media, New Media, Data Media: Evolving Publishing Paradigms
We typically classify publishers as Old Media and New Media, but now we have companies that are part of a new paradigm, the Dat Media company. Such companies sit above both Old and New, studying patterns in usage and in the databases of information aggregated by publishers.
The Future(s) (plural) of Publishing
A presentation to the ISMTE conference. The argument is that strategy is an integral part of business operations and must be used to measure all activity within an organization. A three-step process for strategic planning is included.
Neither Fish Nor Fowl: Journal Publishing and the University Press
University presses are not well positioned to thrive in journal publishing because they have not adopted any of the (relatively few and common) business strategies that are necessary, given market dynamics, for success. I do not put forth this thesis lightly. I have great affection and admiration for university presses, their value — craftsmanship, attention to detail, “getting it right”— and their mission. This is not admiration from afar: I served, in the formative years of my career, at the University of Chicago Press (Chicago), where I learned the tools of the trade and many of the practices and protocols of scholarly publishing still in use today. But after nearly two decades of observing university presses, from within and without, this thesis seems to be inescapable.
The Publishing Industry is Mature, but Publishing Companies are Not
While it certainly is the case that scholarly publishing is a mature business, some of the companies operating in this industry have found new avenues for growth by expanding beyond the publication of content into data science. This is an opportunity that is only available to the larger companies with enlightened management.