Ask The Chefs: Society Sustainability
With many professional societies finding their revenue sources under pressure, this month we asked the Chefs: How might professional societies continue to be sustainable?
With many professional societies finding their revenue sources under pressure, this month we asked the Chefs: How might professional societies continue to be sustainable?
Professional societies often seek partnerships for different reasons. This post summarized the categories of partnerships and helps to identify when a partnership is not really a partnership.
A presentation to a scientific society on the current environment that STM publishers have to work in. Five issues are identified: regulatory matters, new technology, the structure of the marketplace, competition, and governance.
We are likely to see increased mergers and acquisitions activity in the publishing world this year, and scholarly publishing is not exempt from this. There are many reasons for this, including such fundamental factors as low interest rates, but one reason is the growth of open access mandates from funding agencies, which is disrupting the way many organizations do business.
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.
Let’s imagine that open access publishing becomes the norm. What will the implications be? One implication is that it will likely create significant pressure on professional societies, which will seek new business arrangements to augment their income and keep their society together.
As Day 1 of the SSP Annual Meeting draws to a close, a few ideas seemed worth sharing.
There is a predictable path for society publishers as they explore their options. Their programs may be under pressure today, leading many of them to seek alliances with large commercial firms, though many societies are unhappy to do so.