New to ALPSP - Association for Computing Machinery

We're pleased to welcome the Association for Computing Machinery as a member of ALPSP.

New to ALPSP - Journal of Sport & Health Science

We are pleased to welcome the Journal of Sport and Health Science as a full Member of ALPSP.

To Disappear or Not to Disappear? How to Avoid Dropping Out of Search Services During a Journal Transition

Ensuring ongoing visibility within search and discovery services is an important success metric for any journal or platform transition but requires careful planning. New sites can easily disappear from search indexes if best practice isn’t followed, resulting in a significant drop in traffic and negative PR. 

ALPSP's webinar To Disappear or Not to Disappear? held last week featured insights from Darcy Dapra, Partner Manager for Google Scholar, who is responsible for external relations with the scholarly publishing and library communities. Highlights from the talk were captured by Louise Russell from Publishing Technology.

Darcy Dapra shared practical advice from a Google Scholar perspective, although the general principles can be applied to other search and discovery services.

The webinar focussed mainly on the implications of a platform change but the advice also applies to any journal transition. The biggest and most common issue identified relates to URL changes. Redirection of URLs from the old to the new site is critical to avoiding being dropped from the search index but is certainly not the full story.

So how exactly do publishers’ avoid dropping out of the search indexes when changing platform? Darcy talked through a comprehensive check list of actions and considerations for publishers and vendors when managing a transition. Most are technical points but some relate more to the user experience and site design and therefore need to be factored into the early stages of planning for any new platform – to share a few nuggets of advice and housekeeping tips from the session:

• Ensure ALL URLs for a journal site redirect from the old location to the new via HTTP 301 (permanent) redirects for at least 12 months. 
• Avoid redirecting users to an interstitial page i.e. “this journal has moved” while potentially useful for a reader, it is not useful for robots. 
• Without redirects your old URLs will effectively disappear from the search indices – the black hole effect! 
• Article landing pages should include an abstract, ideally above the fold so the user can see it. If not abstract is available a readable image of the first page should be provided. 
• Ensure the crawler has acces to full-text articles (PDF or HTML). 
• The browse path or hierarchy for the new site should use HTML links rather than Javascript. Alternative measures should be taken if Javascript is used. 
• Include metatags to ensure your data is structured well. 
• If in doubt review with your platform vendor and Google Scholar. 

You can find additional useful resources on Google Scholar pages for basic start up information. The Transfer Code of Practice is a new version of the code that is due to be released shortly and will include further information on URL redirects in particular.

Open Access: Principles and Practice for Learned Societies

Kathryn Spiller at ALPSP's recent Open Access seminar

What are the guiding principles and practical actions a learned society should consider when it approaches open access models?

With the implementation of new funding guidelines from RCUK and the Wellcome Trust looming this spring, this has been a pre-occupation for Kathryn Spiller from BioScientifica and ALPSP Chief Executive Audrey McCulloch.

Both feel the learned publishing community needs to come together to discuss what particular issues need to be considered for not-for-profit scholarly publishers.

Too often the debate is polarised between ideological extremes. But, as the recent ALPSP seminar on open access Beyond the Rhetoric clearly illustrated, there is an increasing range of issues to consider. Whether you publish in the arts, humanities, social sciences or STM; have open access or hybrid journals; or are considering best steps for monographs and reference.

(You can read Kathryn's reflections on launching a new open access journal here in January's Research Information. There are a number of posts from Beyond the Rhetoric seminar here on the ALPSP blog.)

This challenge has prompted ALPSP to collaborate with Kathryn to try to tackle some of the issues. The ALPSP Open Access Workshop: Guiding Principles and Practical Action for Learned Societies will be held on Friday 1 February at the Royal College of Pathologists. Part ask-an-expert, part peer-to-peer discussion, the workshop will bring together a range of speakers with particular insight and expertise.

Confirmed speakers include Graham Taylor from the Publishers Association, Lucy Robinson, Journals Publisher at Sage, Jim Milne, Managing Director at RSC Publishing, and Sally Hardy, Chief Executive of the Regional Studies Association.

There will be a panel discussion and scene setting, but unlike our previous events, we will also include facilitated round table discussions with colleagues from learned societies to discuss guiding principles. ALPSP will take notes and these will be written up for all members and attendees.

Places are strictly limited and are going fast. Book online here.

New to ALPSP membership

We're pleased to welcome the American Phytopathological Society as a full member and Mark Ware Consulting as an Associate member of ALPSP.

New to ALPSP - the Association of Art Historians

We are pleased to welcome the Association of Art Historians as a full member of ALPSP.