How society publishers can accelerate their transition to open access and align with Plan S

Wellcome, UK Research and Innovation, and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers commissioned Information Power Ltd. to undertake a project to support society publishers to accelerate their transition to open access (OA) in alignment with Plan S and the wider move to accelerate immediate OA. This project is part of a range of activities that cOAlition S partners are taking forward to support the implementation of Plan S principles. The objective of this project was to explore with learned societies a range of potential strategies and business models through which they could adapt and thrive under Plan S. We consulted with society publishers through interviews, surveys, and workshops about the 27 business models and strategies identified during the project. We also surveyed library consortia about their willingness to support society publishers to make the transition to OA. Our key finding is that transformative agreements emerge as the most promising model because they offer a predictable, steady funding stream. We also facilitated pilot transformative agreement negotiations between several society publishers and library consortia. These pilots and a workshop of consortium representatives and society publishers informed the development of an OA transformative agreement toolkit. Our conclusion is that society publishers should consider all the business models this project has developed and should not automatically equate OA with article publication charges.     

Context First: A Unified Field Theory of Publishing

The way we think about publishing is unduly governed by the nature of the container—the physical book. Although demand for digital content has grown substantially, publishers continue to treat digital formats as a derived or secondary use. As a result, context is truncated or excluded, reducing the degree to which content can be discovered and consumed. At the same time, content abundance places pressure on publishers to find new and more effective ways to market content products. To address these several challenges, publishers should revise their content workflows to develop and maintain context throughout the publishing process.     

Penetration of Nigerian predatory biomedical open access journals 2007–2012: a bibliometric study

This paper presents the bibliometric characteristics of 32 biomedical open access journals published by Academic Journals and International Research Journals – the two Nigerian publishers in Jeffery Beall's list of 23 predatory open access publishers in 2012. Data about the journals and the authors of their articles were collected from the websites of the publishers, Google Scholar and Web of Science. As at December 2012, the journals had together produced a total of 5,601 papers written by 5,599 authors, and received 12,596 citations. Authors from Asia accounted for 56.79% of the publications; those from Africa wrote 28.35% while Europe contributed 7.78%. Authors from Africa accounted for 18.25% of the citations these journals received, and this is about one‐third the number of citations by authors in Asia (54.62%). At country level, India ranks first in the top 10 citer countries, while Nigeria, the host country of the journals, ranked eighth. More in‐depth studies are required to develop further information about the journals such as how much scientific information the journals contain, as well as the science literacy of the authors and the editorial.     

Territorial Rights and Wrongs

In this short article, Henry Rosenbloom, the founder of Australian independent publisher Scribe, complains about the tactic of UK-based publishers buying ‘Commonwealth’ rights and preventing Australian publishers from acquiring separate Australian rights. ‘UK publishers are not entitled to Australia as a territory. It is our country, our market, and our industry,’ he writes. This article was originally published in The Age newspaper in early 2008, then on Rosenbloom’s blog, and it was the catalyst for a spirited debate at this year’s London Book Fair.     

Building Your Licensing and Negotiation Skills Toolkit

The advent of electronic resources brought about the need for license agreements between libraries and publishers. Many librarians today are new to licensing and negotiating with publishers, or have received limited training and education. Based on her years of licensing and negotiation experience, Clair Dygert of the Florida Virtual Campus (FLVC) provided librarians with practical advice and tools for working with licenses and negotiating with publishers, as well as encouragement for entering into these new areas. She included examples taken directly from FLVC’s licensing guidelines and negotiation proposals and encouraged attendees to use those documents in creating their own local documents. She also drew on the book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher and William Ury to describe principled bargaining as the most effective and constructive method of negotiation.     

Analysis of predatory emails in early career academia and attempts at prevention

Predatory publishers—those who do not adhere to rigorous standards of academic practice such as peer review—are increasingly infiltrating biomedical databases, to the detriment of the wider scientific community. These publishers frequently send unsolicited ‘spam’ emails to generate submission to their journals, with early career researchers (ECR) particularly susceptible to these practices because of pressures such as securing employment and promotion. This analysis sought to record and characterize the emails received over the course of a PhD and post-doctoral position (~8 years), as well as attempts to unsubscribe from such emails, using a progressive and step-wise manner. A total of 1,280 emails identified as academic spam were received (990 journal invitations, 220 conference invitations, 70 ‘other’). The first email was received 3 months after registration for an international conference. Attempts at unsubscribing were somewhat effective, whereby implications of reporting to respective authorities resulted in a 43% decrease in emails, although did not eliminate them completely, and therefore alternative approaches to eliminating academic spam may be needed. Ongoing education about predatory publishers, as well as action by key academic stakeholders, should look to reduce the impact these predatory publishers have upon the wider literature base.     

Effect of cooperation between Chinese scientific journals and international publishers on journals’ impact factor

Growing cooperation between Chinese journals and international publishers invites an investigation of the effect of this cooperation, based on an analysis of journal IF changes. Data from 23 Chinese academic journals were chosen from about 50 English-language academic journals indexed by SCI or SCIE and with a long history of cooperation. The data do not suggest that cooperation has improved the journals’ IF thus far. It appears that cooperation is generally limited to international distribution, and this has a weak influence on the quality of the journal and its IF, even though the papers can be accessed by worldwide users through publishers’ international distribution networks. Cooperation with international publishers is one step, but actively working on the quality of the journals is a more important step.     

Standards for book and serial publishers

Although technical standards that affect the way publishers work have been in existence since 1935, publishers began to participate in the process only in the 1970s. Sandra Paul, who participated in the establishment of both the National Information Standards Organization and the Book and Serials Industry Systems Advisory Committees, reviews the role of publishers in using and developing relevant standards. She also offers some predictions about the standards areas in which publishers are likely to be active in the coming decades, especially those affected by internationalization of the industry and the exploitation of new technology. Sandra K. Paul is president of SKP Associates, past chairperson of the National Information Standards Organization, past chairperson, secretary, and subcommittee chair of BISAC, and treasurer of SISAC. Address for correspondence.     

Exploring Licensing Translation Rights in the Arab World

Gathering information about publishing industry in the Arab world is one of the main important challenges for either Arab publishers to develop there business or for foreign (scouts, agent, publishers and printers) to make business there. In this paper I tried to present a practical point of view of an Arab publisher who went deep in this business through the past year.     

The ABCs of private equity and venture capital data and information

ABSTRACT

In June 2017, the Business Reference & Services Section of the Reference & User Services Association organized and hosted an event known as the Publishers' Forum during the annual American Library Association Conference in Chicago, Illinois. The Publishers' Forum is a professional development event that brings together business librarians and publishers of business information to engage in a discussion about business information products. The theme of the 2017 Publishers' Forum was private equity and venture capital data and information, and three different publishers were invited to speak and showcase their information products. This article will provide an overview of the Publishers' Forum, discuss the selection of private equity and venture capital as the theme, and highlight the importance of private equity and venture capital to business librarianship. Finally, this article will include a discussion of each of the publishers who presented at the Publishers' Forum and the information products they showcased.     

Selling to the BRIC: China — understanding and improving your footprint

This article starts with a consideration of the demographic and economic background to China's development. It then goes on to clarify and explain unique factors of the Chinese academic journals market which publishers need to know about and consider. It looks at this from a sales market perspective and also from that of authorship and content creation. It helps give a roadmap and outline to publishers who want to understand and improve their local footprint.     

Sexual Minority Health: A Bibliography and Preliminary Study of the Book Literature

The literature on health in people who identify as sexual minorities is scattered in many types of resources and disciplines. To help address the need for relevant, well-organized information for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and health care providers, this study first identified books published in a ten-year period and then examined the topics, the number of books published per year, most prolific authors, and primary publishers. A wide range of publishers published a relatively small number of books (521). Most were about mental health or relationships and 24% were personal accounts. There were many subject deficiencies in the published book corpus.     

Library Collections for the Support of Academic Sport Management Programs

Sport management is a relatively new and rapidly growing academic discipline. Despite the proliferation of sport management programs in the United States, a review of the library literature reveals few publications concerning library support for such programs. In addition to providing background knowledge about the sport management discipline, this article provides practical information for academic librarians by recommending essential databases, journals, academic publishers, industry publishers, and associations in the arena of sport management.     

Perceptions of the customer

At a time when customer focus is an aim in many publishing companies, this paper looks at how people in publishing organizations think about customers, why they think like this and what this might mean to the products the company produces. It suggests that views of the customer are often internally constructed and become a self‐fulfilling prophecy, which could lead to publishers missing out on opportunities. The conclusion is that more and different interactions with customers are needed if publishers are to become truly customer focused.     

Mapping the journal publishing landscape: how much do we know?

In debates about journals, their publishers and the future of both, it is important to be clear about what we are discussing. In this article, the sparse existing literature is surveyed, and original sources examined to provide further detail. The membership lists of six leading publishing associations, and the websites of their members, were also studied. More than half of all peer‐reviewed journals in Ulrich's are published by or on behalf of/in association with nonprofit organizations. Other than the top few commercial publishers, there is little difference in size between the two types; the ‘long tail’ of publishers are small and therefore vulnerable, and yet most are not represented by any trade association. The majority of journals come from the USA or the UK. Nonprofits launch fewer new journals, but are also less likely to close journals. The quality advantage of nonprofit journals may be reducing, but nonprofit journals still predominate among the most highly cited journals.     

The ALPSP Learned Journals Collection

Selling journals to consortia and other large customers is increasingly difficult for small publishers, and yet libraries want their journals. The ALPSP Learned Journals Collection (ALJC) was put together, after considerable research, as an attempt to overcome this problem for ALPSP member publishers. Working through Swets Information Services, 247 journals from 25 publishers can be sold as a single package. Despite the difficulties, a single publisher agreement, customer licence, and pricing and revenue‐sharing model were all agreed upon. Customer reactions indicate that this is a real win–win solution for publishers and libraries.     

混乱时代里的永恒:美国数字出版和书籍销售的近期发展趋势

数字技术扰乱了图书出版的各个方面。40多年前这种影响就已开始,但最近几年随着电子阅读器的出现和廉价互联网的普及,它对大众出版的影响愈趋强烈。技术已经导致图书出版商的部分传统功能被其他领域的个人和组织取代。这种现象引起了出版商对价值链有何独特贡献的激烈讨论。出版商的传统角色和职责正在发生改变,未来这种变化将更加剧烈。