Gap analysis tool introduced by Accucoms

Accucoms has recently announced the development of a gap analysis tool that will help publishers identify gaps in their market penetration and provide a highly qualified target list of prospective customers to use for direct marketing and sales activities.

The tool is the result of a large-scale research project undertaken by Accucoms and includes comprehensive information on the subject focus of institutions worldwide, as well as market segmentation data such as type of organisation (e.g. academic, corporate, government, hospital). This information is becoming increasingly important as publishers implement much more targeted sales and marketing campaigns.

The tool will help any publisher using Accucoms’ suite of direct marketing and sales representations services gain competitive advantage as it identifies potential subscribers in underrepresented geographic regions. It contains profiles of tens of thousands of institutions around the world and can be cross-referenced with the publisher’s existing subscription list to identify key prospects and help evaluate market share.

Pinar Erzin, Managing Director of Accucoms, says “Our gap analysis tool provides publishers with essential strategic information about possible growth in certain regions and on a tactical level, it offers qualified, relevant and up-to-date lists of prospects. Gathering this information is not a trivial task but it is information that every company needs. We have invested considerable time and effort in developing this tool and we believe it will significantly enhance our client’s sales and marketing activities.”

For more information please contact Egon Menardi, Tel: +31 (0)71 5247630, egon.menardi@accucoms.com

Certificate in Journals Publishing - enrolling now!

The Certificate in Journals Publishing is aimed at graduates currently working in entry-level positions in journals publishing and who have, ideally, between 6-12 months experience within that environment.  It offers delegates the opportunity to gain a good overall knowledge of the journals industry, and to gain credits towards a Masters degree at Oxford Brookes University.

The Certificate – provided by the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies (OICPS) at Oxford Brookes University in cooperation with the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) – is a two-module postgraduate programme open to holders of a good honours degree. The Certificate consists of taught lectures and group work, which take place one afternoon per week (on Thursdays) for 11 weeks, starting on February 11th, 2010 followed by a period of independent study to be completed in the delegate’s own time.

The course is also open to graduates from other relevant ‘knowledge industry’ sectors, such as academic libraries and learned societies.

More information is available on the Brookes website.

DataSalon and Ringgold launch new service to unlock the value of relationships between organizations

Ringgold and DataSalon have announced a new service to aid publishers in visualizing customer hierarchies.

DataSalon’s MasterVision platform has been enhanced with the addition of an interactive hierarchy viewer, providing academic publishers with a highly visual ‘family tree’ view of Ringgold’s entire Identify database and follows a strategic partnership between the two companies announced in March 2009.

Ringgold creates and maintains Identify, a hierarchical reference database of organizations subscribing to
academic journals, including information about location, size, and subject specialties and providing coverage of more than 150,000 academic, healthcare, government and corporate organizations worldwide, including all of the various parent/child relationships between them.

Designed and built specifically for the needs of academic publishers, DataSalon’s MasterVision is a web-based system which provides publishers with ‘complete customer insight’ – it integrates every source of customer information held by a publisher (including subscribers, authors, alert recipients, etc.) into a user-friendly web interface that includes flexible search, segmentation, visualization and reporting tools. MasterVision has been  and the new hierarchy viewer is fully integrated into the product.

The relationships between libraries, departments, universities and consortia form a fundamental part of the sales operation for all major academic publishers, with consortia agreements and other ‘big deals’ providing a significant proportion of revenues. However, existing publisher systems provide little support for searching and viewing these complex relationships between different levels of customer. By combining the rich data of Identify with MasterVision’s hierarchy viewer, publishers will be able to understand the relationships between direct sales and ‘big deals’ more clearly than ever before.

More information is available on the DataSalon website.

Academic Publishing in Europe Jan 2010 Conference

I thought ALPSP members would be interested to know that they receive a special “Members Conference Registration Rate” of €450 rather than the full €600 for the “APE1010” conference which is being held in Berlin on the 18/19/20th of January.

I attended last year and found it both stimulating and useful. With a strong European focus the contributors and attendees provide a unique take on our scholarly publishing industry.

You can find the programme at: http://www.ape2010.eu/05_19jan_fullconference.htm
And the registration form at: http://www.ape2010.eu/02registration.php
Pre-conference workshops: http://www.ape2010.eu/07_18jan_preconference.htm (these are not included in the standard delegate rate)

Yours,

Nick

Understanding E-Journal Technology

I thought ALPSP members would be interested to know that there are still places available on Renew Training’s “Understanding E-Journal Technology” course on 19th November in London. The course is aimed at anyone working in sales, marketing, editorial, customer service, or senior management in need of refreshing their understanding of this ever-changing part of the business.

The course has recently been updated to include information on new web-scale discovery tools and what they mean for publishers. Many libraries are now testing and implementing these types of tools and it is important that publishers stay up to speed with what is happening in this area of library technology. They will also include the latest on industry initiatives such as Shibboleth/Athens and Counter and take a peek into the future of e-journal navigation and use.

Full course information and a booking form can be found at www.renewtraining.com/uejt/uejt.htm