A presentation to a professional society on the context of scientific publishing. The context includes significant strategic issues that must be navigated for societies to operate successfully.

1. The Context of Scientific
Society Publishing
Joseph J. Esposito
February 2015

2. Processed Media is a
management consultancy working
in the areas of publishing,
software, and education. Clients
include both for-profit and not-for-
profit organizations.
espositoj@processedmedia.com

3. What Is the Context?
1. Regulatory and compliance matters
2. The Marketplace
3. The Competition
4. Technology and Platforms
5. Organizational Issues

4. Topics
1. Regulatory: How will the new open access mandates affect
professional societies?
2. Marketplace: How will the maturation of the institutional
market affect our program?
3. Competition: How do I navigate our organization through a
publishing environment dominated by huge commercial
concerns?
4. Technology: How should our program adapt to a rapidly
evolving mobile computing ecosystem?
5. Governance: Is the management and governance structure
of our society equipped to deal with pressing environmental
issues?

5. #1, Regulatory: OA Mandates
• Mandates now imposed by universities, funding
organizations, and by some government policies
• Growing amount of literature available—puts
pressure on search and discovery
• Likelihood of multiple versions of same material
online—making usage harder to assess
• In some fields, migration of papers, even some of
the finest, toward Gold OA services

6. But why not simply create our own
Gold OA service and migrate our
business from subscriptions to the
author-pays model?

7. The Structural Problem with OA
Economics
• Industry averages revenue of $5,000/article
(2mm articles, $10b industry)
• Many Gold OA services charge far less (PLOS
ONE is $1,350; new Elsevier service is $1,250)
• How to bridge the gap?

8. But There are Other Benefits
• Retains authors
• Potentially can be additive to subscription
journals
• Can Gold OA fees be combined with
membership dues, creating a path to a larger
and more engaged membership?
• Creates direct business relationship with
authors—potential new sales opportunities

9. #2, Marketplace: Mature Institutional
Markets
• For most STEM fields institutions make up
over half of revenue
• Library budgets are not growing at historical
levels
• Some portion of library budgets being
allocated to Gold OA APCs
• Rhetoric notwithstanding, libraries prefer to
acquire large packages from major publishers

10. Responding to Mature Markets
• Need to diversity revenue streams
• Downward pressure on cost structure
• Seeking growth in developing economies
• Gold OA and hybrid journals: additive market
• Developing new services that reach new
audiences (individual researchers,
administrators), which puts emphasis on new
product development

11. #3, Competition: The Battle of the
Behemoths
• The largest publishers have “won” the battle
for the library budget (Elsevier, Wiley,
Nature/Springer, Kluwer, Taylor & Francis,
Sage)
• More dollars coming from large aggregations
of content (the Big Deal) sold to large
aggregations of libraries (consortia)
• Smaller publishers are being marginalized

12. Prospects for Competitive
Environment
• Likely to see more consolidations (like Nature
and Springer)
• Short of acquisitions, more service
agreements (i.e., small publisher creates
arrangement with big publisher)
• Intensifying competition for library budgets
• The cycle thus repeats

13. The real issue for a society publisher
today is how to get access to the
library budget, and increasingly the
gateway to that income is controlled
by the largest commercial
publishers.

14. A Society’s Typical Path
1. Go it alone—no partner, use own tech
2. Outsource tech, but remain independent
3. Join a consortium
4. Place journals under the umbrella of a
university press
5. Place journals under the umbrella of a larger
not-for-profit entity
6. Create an arrangement with a behemoth

15. #4, Technology: Mobile Platforms
• Mobile computing is not just a format but is a
full ecosystem
• This ecosystem is just emerging for STEM
• Currently restricted to alerts and promotion
• Unprecedented issue: Gatekeeping by major
tech companies (Apple and Google)
• No publisher has a dominant or even leading
position here

16. Addressing Mobile Platforms
• Creative use of mobile properties (ubiquity,
location-based, availability of sensors, etc.)
• New information about user base (D2C)
• Gold OA may be harbinger or stepping stone
to more D2C services
• Creation of customer/user database
• Must navigate privacy issues
• Will require investment

17. #5, Governance and Management
• Need to be responsive to environmental
changes—and to anticipate them
• Efficient decision-making
• Open channel of communication between the
Board and the publishing management
• The narrower missions of for-profit entities
may provide an advantage to them (faster
reaction time)

18. HighWire Illustration
• Large group of all HW publishers
• Presentation: How will OA affect your
publishing program?
• Multiple requests for slide deck
• Need to inform society management of
publishing issues
• Concern that societies were not attentive to
business concerns

19. If governance is a problem, it is
likely to become the defining
problem for the entire program.

20. Practical Steps
1. Empower a special committee to oversee
publishing operations; put outsiders on that
board/committee
2. Hire “high”—that is, seek publishing
managers who are strongly qualified to run
operations
3. Exercise bias in favor of personnel with at
least some commercial experience

21. Practical Steps #2
4. Explore aggregating publishing operations
with other societies
5. Explore Gold OA programs that tie publishing
fees to society membership
6. Annual strategic planning review: place
program into context of marketplace
7. To reiterate: Put special emphasis on
diversifying revenue streams

22. Thank you!
Joseph J. Esposito
espositoj@processedmedia.com