Navigating Open Science and Open Access with Intelligent Automation

By Sureshkumar Parandhaman, AVP Publishing Solutions and Pre-Sales, Integra

Silver sponsor of the ALPSP Annual Conference and Awards 2023.

The democratization of research, spurred by the Open Science movement, is rapidly transforming the scholarly publishing landscape. Open Science promotes unhindered access to research findings and articles for the public, and collaborative research, supported by digital tools. It fosters greater transparency in research, creating an environment conducive to the sharing of knowledge and trust through open access.

The basic tenets of Open Science are open data, open materials, open analysis, pre-registration, and open access. By increasing transparency, Open Science increases the replicability of research, bringing a systemic change to how scientific research is conducted. According to the OECD, Open Science:

1. Fosters more accurate verification of research results.
2. Reduces duplication in “collecting, creating, transferring, and re-using scientific material.”
3. Enhances productivity, especially during times of tight budgets.
4. Leads to better innovation potential and improved consumer choice.
5. Promotes trust in science.

Challenges to Meeting Open Science and Open Access  Requirements for Journal Publishers

While Open Science has brought multiple benefits, it has also thrown up challenges for scholarly publishers, such as increased costs and time, reduced flexibility, incompatibility with existing incentive structure, the emergence of predatory journals, high article processing fees, open access charges, and lack of funding support.

Given that the majority of authors choose a journal based on its reputation, open-access journals are at a disadvantage due to the misconception that such journals are of lower quality. However, it is important to remember that most open-access journals ensure peer reviews and uphold stringent quality standards for all their published works.

Another area of concern is that the business models of traditional publishers don't align with the compliance needs of open science and open access.

 

Information Source for Image: Researcher.Life

To remain competitive against the backdrop of increasing open access, traditional publishers need to look at leveraging the power of technology to innovate and streamline with publishing process while maintaining integrity, quality, profitability, and compliance.

Intelligent Automation: A Game-Changer

Between 2012 and 2022, there has been a major shift from closed access accounting for 70% of all publishing to the open access model being adopted by 54% of publishers. An AI-powered content creation and publishing platform can bring multiple benefits for journal publishers looking to make the transition, not the least of which is intelligent automation to accelerate workflows.

Some of the key benefits that a cutting-edge technology suite offers include:

• Tracking and monitoring of detailed metadata across different publications with varied funding sources, multiple authors, etc.
• Seamless repository integrations without compromising on open access compliance.
• Capturing open access-related metadata from the inventory.
• Automating language quality checks, compliance with journal guidelines, relevance of research data and findings, etc., for faster TAT.
• Technical diagnosis to identify missing information and references, quickly and more accurately than manual checks. 
• Configurable cloud-based style managers to automate XML tagging to format each manuscript to the journal’s style guide.
• Analytics capabilities to support strategic decision-making for scholarly publishers.

Revolutionizing Every Step of the Publishing Cycle

Not only does AI-powered intelligent automation optimize workflows and increase productivity, but also supports DRM by effectively monitoring and detecting fraud and copyright infringement. By transitioning to a cloud-based publishing platform that offers such automation, scholarly publishers can also enhance user experiences for authors, editors, and peer reviewers. This is possible through incredibly user-friendly features that ease moving back and forth between runs at revising and updating the manuscript to meet quality standards.

In addition, all parties can be assured of transparency, replicability, and data sharing, while complying with open access requirements. Supplementary materials can be seamlessly integrated to add value for the end reader.

Elevating Open Science and Open Access via Automation

Automation is the key to creating and publishing accessible, user-friendly Open Access content. It offers multiple tools and functionalities to speed up the content creation, editing, and peer review processes, such as assessing language quality via automated grammar checks and offering recommendations and NLP-based editing tools to facilitate guided editing to enhance quality and speed.

By automating tasks, manpower and time are freed up, leading to reduced costs and faster time to market. All these benefits are available on Integra’s full-cycle authoring and publishing platform, powered by artificial intelligence. Its rich functionalities and intuitive interface can ease your transition to producing Open Access content. Integra can transform your workflows and ensure minimal disruptions and data loss while shifting to a cutting-edge technology platform.

Integra is pleased to be a Silver sponsor of the ALPSP Annual Conference and Awards 2023.

About the author

Sureshkumar Parandhaman is a publishing professional and AVP publishing solutions at Integra, with a distinguished background in scholarly publishing, particularly in journals and books. With over 20 years of experience, he has excelled as a Product Owner, Product Manager, and Business Analyst in the publishing industry, and has diverse experience spanning Information Services, Publishing, EdTech, Healthcare, and Enterprise software

Business Models for Open Access: How can I run a successful Open Access journal?

In this week's guest blog Martyn Rittman, Ph.D, Publishing Services Manager at MDPI, offers some words of wisdom for developing successful open access journals.

The Directory of Open Access Journals contains over 11,500 journals and more than 3.1 million open access articles. Our indexing database Scilit contains around 20 million freely available articles, mostly open access. Estimates put the amount of open access in the region of 15% to 20% of all published articles. Do these numbers represent a threat to traditional revenue channels, or is it possible to run a healthy business using this model?

MDPI started publishing free online articles in the late 1990s. At first, we were supported by other projects, conferences, grants, and a great deal of voluntary time. In the mid-2000s, along with other publishers, we adopted author-side charges for publication, commonly known as article processing charges (APCs). By separating the journal editors making final acceptance decisions from the publisher, we have been able to maintain a rigorous and objective peer review process alongside gold open access. However, we have spoken to other publishers who have found it difficult to adopt the open access model, don’t feel they have the expertise, or find it difficult to cover their costs. Here, we offer some advice for developing successful open access journals.

Sources of revenue

Assure yourself that revenue streams for open access are available, even in fields with high scepticism towards author-side charges.  An increasing number of national funding agencies and governments have open access mandates, and offer support for the payment of APCs. National agreements with publishers are also emerging. Many non-governmental funding agencies and university libraries have also embraced open access and provide assistance to authors. These include the Wellcome Trust, the European Union, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and many more. A useful resource to see the amounts paid by universities for open access publication is the OpenAPC platform (https://treemaps.intact-project.org/apcdata/openapc/). Other models include Knowledge Unlatched for humanities and SCOAP3 for high energy physics, where publishers receive a per-article payment out of a central fund collected from funders and libraries. Smaller journals may be able to find a single funding agency, university or society to cover all the costs of the journal, especially in niche fields. In fact, there are increasing opportunities that do not involve directly invoicing authors.

Providing a useful service

Do not assume that open access is enough. Look carefully at the scope of your journal to see whether it offers something unique in the field. This is especially critical for new journals. For many authors, the decision on where to publish is not primarily linked to open access: the scope, editorial board, and reputation of the journal are usually more important. Open access journals should be focused on providing a good service to authors and you can distinguish your journal simply by providing a better alternative to existing journals.

Workflows

Consider new workflows for your journal. There may be an initial cost to making changes in how you run the journal but it will pay off in the long-term. Authors publishing in open access are often looking for a quick decision and publication. This might mean revisiting how editorial decisions are made, and changing expectations among editors, editorial board members and reviewers about how quickly they provide feedback. On the marketing side, you will need to consider how to better reach your target authors, redirecting efforts from potential subscription customers. If you opt for an APC model, handling a larger volume of small payments may require a new approach to invoicing.

There is no magic formula for running an open access journal and much of the work is the same as for traditional journals. Open access journals now exist in all fields using all kinds of editorial and business models. At MDPI, we continue to see growth in the open access market across many research fields. We are convinced of the benefits of universal access through a large, broad readership, allowing ideas to shape those outside of the academy as well as authors from institutions with small subscription budgets. Open access supports the dissemination and sustainability of knowledge and we encourage all publishers to take advantage.

Martyn Rittman, Ph.D. is Publishing Services Manager at MDPI, combining a passion for open access publishing with an interest in new models for publishing and open science. He joined MDPI in 2013 following a research career covering physical chemistry, materials science, instrumentation, and mathematical modelling.


MDPI is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, with branch offices in China, Spain, and Serbia. It runs over 200 fully open access journals, including some in collaboration with scholarly societies, and in 2017 published over 35,000 peer-reviewed articles. MDPI also provides publisher services through its JAMS software (jams.pub) and offers academic communication tools, including a conference management platform, at sciforum.net.

JAMS website: http://jams.pub
MDPI website: http://www.mdpi.com/publishing_services
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MDPIOpenAccess
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MDPIOpenAccessPublishing/

MDPI are proud silver sponsors of the ALPSP Annual Conference and Awards 2018

Spotlight on Delta Think - shortlisted for the 2017 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing

In the second of our series of interviews with our ALPSP awards finalists we talk to Ann Michael, President of Delta Think.

·         Tell us a bit about your company

Delta Think is a business and technology consulting firm focused on innovation and growth in scholarly publishers and membership organizations. Founded at the height of the transition from print to digital, our core purpose is helping organizations to manage change. We live at the intersection of content, technology and user experience, and help our clients through the many changes impacting scholarly publishers and membership organizations.

·         What is the project that you submitted for the Awards?

The Delta Think Open Access Data & Analytics Tool  (OA DAT) is a living compilation of industry data, anonymized private data and analysis, which provides a comprehensive view of the OA market.

The idea originated with questions arising during consulting engagements. We found commonality in questions clients asked about OA, with no clear consolidated, reliable data source to address them. We saw an opportunity to serve the industry more effectively by curating such a data set, and supplementing it with analysis, commentary, and visualizations.

·         Tell us more about how it works and the team behind it

The OA DAT includes several levels of analysis and data access to accommodate any organization’s available bandwidth, comfort level with data analytics, and budget. We’ve worked hard to build a consistent view of the market and to make existing silos of data interoperate to deliver new insights, supplementing them with publisher confidential data (de-identified and aggregated).

The tool includes interactive visualizations so users can extract meaning for real-world decision-making, while providing a quick way to tailor the tool to areas of interest with a few mouse clicks. There is a sample interactive visualization and a brief video on our website , and a few static images below.

Additionally, we curate and aggregate OA industry news and combine it with a short analysis to publish Delta Think’s OA News & Views, which is available free of charge with registration.

We launched the Delta Think Open Access Data & Analytics Tool in beta to pre-launch subscribers in December of 2016, with our full launch in January of 2017. The tool is continually updated. To keep the product current and the user base growing, we work with two core data analysts (one with deep database experience), a research associate, product manager, project manager, marketer, and a business development resource

© 2017 Delta Think, Inc. All rights reserved. May not be reused without permission

·         Why do you think it demonstrates publishing innovation?

We had two key motivations in developing the tool: generally increasing industry data proficiency, and specifically supporting organizations as they make data driven strategic and ongoing decisions around Open Access. While several organizations have the bandwidth and budget to develop data analytics expertise, most find using data in decision making aspirational and, at best, episodic. It is not a part of their normal workflow.

On one level, our innovation is pulling disparate information together and continually updating it to provide benchmarks and genuinely novel insights into the Open Access market.

But the innovation goes much deeper: In a single product, we have created the means for any organization to use data in OA decision making on an ongoing basis.

·       Organizations not equipped to interact with the underlying data can read the analysis and benefit from its regular updates. They don’t have to wait a year or two for an analyst report to be refreshed.

·       Organizations looking to interact with the data can manipulate visualizations, narrowing in on elements important to them (e.g., geographic region, subspecialty, year, etc.).

·       Organizations equipped to gather, normalize, and analyze data and knowing the questions they want answered can export OA DAT data, combine it with proprietary data, and complete their own analyses. They can also use OA DAT to save time and effort in data collection, allowing them to focus more on their proprietary analysis.

·        For any of the above, our consulting resources support targeted research or produce custom reports.

The tool is valuable and accessible to the expert or the novice.

·         What are your plans for the future?

We currently focus on STM + Social Science, OA, Journals, as well as not-for-profit and commercial publishers. We plan to extend product coverage to books, open data, and even overall scholarly output (overlaying analytics on top of the usual indexes). We also plan to extend to institutional markets (both librarians and research departments) and other industry players interested in Open Access. Additionally, we are in confidential discussions with many potential data and tech partners.

Our bigger picture goal is to create extensions to the Delta Think Open Access Data Analytics Tool and develop other products or services supporting scholarly publishers, membership organizations, and the multitude of players in the scholarly communications ecosystem to build data and business analytics into their culture and their workflows.

Ann Michael is President of Delta Think, a business and technology consulting and advisory firm focused on innovation and growth in membership organizations and scholarly publishers. Ann is a Past President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), an NFAIS board member, a Board Director at Joule (a Canadian Medical Association company), a frequent organizer and speaker at industry conferences, and is a contributor to the SSP’s blog, The Scholarly Kitchen. 

Website: https://deltathink.com

Twitter: @deltathink @annmichael
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annmichael
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/delta-think
Facebook:  facebook.com/deltathink

See the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing Finalists lightning sessions at our Annual Conference on 13-15 September, where the winners will be announced. 

The ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2017 are sponsored by MPS Ltd. 

What societies need to know about Creative Commons (CC) Licensing - free webinar

Want to know what a CC license is and what all the different types mean?
Which CC license is best for your journal’s authors and the future of your journal(s)?

What societies need to know about Creative Commons (CC) licensing
Tuesday, September 30th, 8-9am PDT/11am-12pm EDT/4-5pm BST

With new mandates being announced by funders globally for Open Access archiving of their funded research, societies need to understand what the different CC article licensing options mean, both for their journals’ and their members’ needs.  This webinar will provide society executives with an overview of what they need to know about CC licences. Do you know your CC BY from your CC BY-NC-ND?  What are the pros and cons of different CC licenses for society journals? What options should you give your authors?

With speakers from Creative Commons, Copyright Clearance Centre and Wiley.

To register your place, visit http://goto.copyright.com/LP=981

This webinar is organised by Wiley in conjunction with the Copyright Clearance Center

Open Access rules OK – almost? Kurt Paulus reflects one week on from the ALPSP International Conference

Toby Green (centre) asks 'Why are we still not there?'

“Twenty years since Harnad, ten years since Budapest, but why are we still not there?” asked Toby Green in the second Plenary at ALPSP 2014. Well, the venerable Royal Society has launched its first OA journal, Open Biology, and has survived the experience. They are only one of many scholarly publishers: Phil Hurst of the RS claimed some 50% of learned societies are planning OA journals. Jackie Jones from Wiley gave structured advice on how and when to ‘flip’ the revenue model from subscription to Gold OA. So where are we?

It seems that much of the hesitancy surrounding this topic is fading away and we are now looking at how rather than whether to do it. Practical questions come to the fore: how long do we give authors APC waivers before they become fully liable (1-2 years), and what groups are entitled to more permanent waivers. The key customers continue to be the authors, but so too are funding bodies who underwrite APCs, and institutions who are targets for membership schemes. More internal customer service silos must disappear as the whole workflow is rethought.

If everything is rosy in the garden, why did Open Access pop up in almost every session? Well, we are still in the transitional stage between Hybrid, Green and Gold, and progress towards a more common approach is still patchy. The mandating issues are very much on the table, with only the UK and USA relatively self-assured. In the EU the new Commission will need time to settle in, and mandating policy may not be its first priority. Thinking about OA in Australia and New Zealand is positive, as it is in China – where scientific research output is blossoming – while developments in South America, perceived as a significant future market, are less coherent.

Hybrid, Green or Gold? You decide.

Behind the front line of even small publishers taking the plunge, there are other developments that shine a light on the changing landscape. Ottawa University Press is in partnership with the university library which financially supports some OA book titles. OECD, amongst others, uses the 'freemium' model, where read-only is free but download, print and other services are paid for, and it claims it works. OA repositories are adding to the exposure of published works, and bring PhD theses and research reports to readers’ attention. Scholarly publishing in libraries is growing the younger author pool, a trend rather more prominent in the USA than the UK.

Simon Ross (left) presents Fred with his Award

Many details remain to be chewed over: Should APCs apply only to published papers when rejected papers also incur a high cost? ‘Value for money’ becomes more of an issue now that the cost of publishing is out in the open. It is in the joint interests of libraries and publishers to support each other; what’s the best way to maximize exposure and discovery of the work? Almost the last comment of the last Plenary was that most if not all new journal launches will be Open Access; another example of the glass half full.

There was genuine delight when Fred Dylla, CEO of AIP and a driver of clear thinking about OA policies was announced as the winner of this year’s ALPSP Award for Contribution to Scholarly Publishing.


Kurt Paulus
kurtpaulus@hotmail.co.uk

Learned societies more confident about future – and a ‘new pragmatism’ on Open Access

Rod Cookson, Editorial Director at Taylor & Francis reflects on the findings of the Open Access Learned Society survey produced in conjunction with ALPSP.

"Attitudes to Open Access are changing, with learned societies beginning to see Open Access as a business opportunity as well as a means of increasing outreach.

ALPSP and Taylor & Francis conducted a survey of learned society officers in April 2014, following up a similar survey from 2013. The sample size (139 responses, a 7% response rate) means this is a snapshot rather than a comprehensive poll, but it provides intriguing insight into the priorities of senior society officers today.

Societies finally seem to be shaking off recession and looking at the world with greater confidence. More than twice as many societies report rising member numbers rather than falling (42% up, 16% down), where last year nearly three out of ten were experiencing decline. Likewise more than a third of societies (35%) say that income from journal publishing is up, and half (51%) have flat financial performance.

Priorities have also changed. Two-thirds of societies (68%) strongly value a predictable financial return, rating this above a ‘healthy’ or ‘growing’ return. In 2013, ‘healthy’ scored highest. In uncertain times, societies desire an absence of financial surprises above all else.

Perhaps the most striking manifestation of greater self-assurance comes in the field of Open Access. A large majority of respondents (68%) believe that research published by their society should be free to read for all – intriguingly, identical to last year. Similar if less emphatic positivity has been reported in other surveys, including those by Wiley and EDP Sciences.

Many fewer of our respondents, however, are prepared to lose money making Open Access happen. Only 18% of societies say that they are willing to earn less money in an Open Access world, against 46% who are not. This is a 10% swing away from the ‘earn less’ position compared to our 2013 survey.

Anxiety remains that Open Access reduces the appeal of society membership. Close to half our respondents (45%) agree that OA gives members less reason to belong to societies, versus 30% who disagree. The gap is smaller than last year (a 20 percentage point differential has dropped to 15 points), but this issue clearly troubles many societies.

The biggest change of all comes in whether Open Access is opportunity or threat. Almost a third of respondents (30%) now see OA as an opportunity, compared to 41% who view is as a threat. Whilst ‘threat’ is still the larger number, the difference between these two camps has halved since 2013.

Is this the start of a ‘new pragmatism’ for societies about Open Access? Certainly fear seems to be giving way to a sense of practical opportunity. Looking ahead, nearly half of respondents (47%) say they are planning new Open Access journals. If OA is the new rock‘n’roll, societies are looking for a little less conversation, and a little more action…"

Rod Cookson is Editorial Director at Taylor & Francis. View the full survey on their website.

What are researchers’ views on Open Access publishing? How do we ensure research has impact and that the public engage with it? How are such developments affecting learned societies?

Here, in a guest post, Elaine Devine from Taylor & Francis, asks these key questions for scholarly communications, and teases us with some answers from forthcoming Taylor & Francis surveys.

"In my role as Communications Manager for Author Relations at Taylor & Francis, I'm often asked what researchers really think and what impact their articles have within their discipline and in the wider world. We also publish on behalf of many learned societies, who have a huge stake in the success of their community's research, and we conduct a range of studies ourselves to track and monitor these trends.

Recent surveys conducted by Taylor & Francis show:

• Almost half of Taylor & Francis authors plan to choose green Open Access, and a third plan to choose gold, for future publications. (2014 Open Access Survey) 
• 80% of respondents feel researchers think societies are relevant (2014 Society Survey)
• Rigorous peer review is still seen as the most important service to authors in 2014 (2014 Open Access Survey)
• Society conferences and annual meetings remain most valuable to members (2014 Society Survey).

Supported by the Academy of Social Sciences and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, Taylor & Francis is hosting seminars on ‘Open Access and Society: Impact and Engagement’ to discuss and debate these findings, and much more besides.

With speakers from publishing, learned societies, academia, funders and policy makers, the seminars offer an opportunity to hear views from all sides. From the European Commision to HEFCE, Society for Research into Higher Education to the National Library of Sweden, CrossRef to Deutsche Forschungsdemeinschaft, you’ll be able to hear them discuss the challenges and opportunities they currently face and, crucially, how to deliver research impact and public engagement in an Open Access context.

Free to attend, the seminars are in London on 19 May and Brussels on 17 June. If you are interested in Open Access these promise an engaging and exciting day. Read the full agenda, register to attend by clicking on the links above, or follow us on Twitter at #oaandsociety.

We look forward to seeing you there."

Elaine Devine is Communications Manager (Author Relations) at Taylor & Francis, who partner with researchers, scholarly societies, universities and libraries worldwide to bring knowledge to life. Their published content spans all areas of Humanities, Social Sciences, Behavioural Sciences, Science, and Technology and Medicine.

May Festival of Open Access

Never mind May Day. This month it's more like 'OA Day' for me.

Open Access continues to be one of the foremost issues when we think about scholarly communication. While policy developments continue to set the framework within which researchers, institutions, societies and publishers operate, myriad practical issues are also paramount in everyone's mind.

Perhaps this is why May is turning into a bit of an 'Open Access Month'. It's an unofficial festival of talks, seminars and fact finding events that will support us in our quest for successful Open Access publishing.

Here's a round-up of events we are aware of. Have we missed anything? Just comment below and let us know. You can also add your event to the ALPSP website. Complete this simple online form.

Clear your diaries and brace yourself for the May Festival of Open Access!

14 May
The Mechanics and Reality of Open Access 
An ALPSP seminar in London
A packed day that will focus on providing best practice tips and experience to meet the practical needs of publisher teams when providing green, gold and hybrid Open Access options.

19 May
Open Access and Society: Impact and Engagement
A Taylor & Francis Seminar, in association with ALPSP and the Academy of Social Sciences to be held in London
An overview of the latest results from the OA author and societies surveys with policy updates on Horizon 2020, RCUK mandate, HEFCE, REF2020 and beyond. This free seminar also includes discussion on impact and engagement.

20 May
UKSG Managing Open Access London
A UKSG seminar from the library perspective to be held in London
Overview of OA workflows and case studies from the library perspective.

22 May 
Implementing Creative Commons Licenses
An ALPSP webinar to be held online
Brief, practical overview of what CC licenses are, how they can be implemented by publishers, and how authors are likely to respond to them. Drawing on real experiences of publishers and on a recent large-scale author survey. It will also look at how CC licenses can be used with third-party material, such as images and figures that the author is reusing from another source.

17 June (OK, I'm sneaking this in to May...)
Open Access and Society: Impact and Engagement

A Taylor & Francis Seminar, in association with ALPSP and the Academy of Social Sciences to be held in Brussels
A re-run of the May seminar in London for European colleagues. An overview of the latest results from the OA author and societies surveys with policy updates from Europe, funders and internationally. This free seminar also includes discussion on impact and engagement. 

Countdown to the London Book Fair: Academic Publishers: still open for business?

Monday 15 April, 11:30 – 12:30, Cromwell Room, Earls Court 1

Join ALPSP Chief Executive, Audrey McCulloch, as she chairs what should be a lively debate on open access with David Tempest from Elsevier, Mandy Hill from Oxford University Press and Richard Fisher from Cambridge University Press.

The panel will discuss reactions to the Finch Report on Open Access. Each publisher will share their views on the Report and how they plan to address the Finch recommendations in the short to medium term.

This is sure to be a popular event so make sure you arrive early to guarantee a seat.

Further information is available on the London Book Fair website.

Planning for the unknowable: Sue Thorn gets to grips with scenario planning and the future of journals

Sue was CEO of the Society for Endocrinology for 20 years and set up its trading subsidiary, BioScientifica, which provided secretariat and publishing services for a range of other societies in the UK, Europe and USA.

She has been using her combined publishing and society management experience to identify the key variables that will affect journal income and sustainability in the future, and to establish a range of potential scenarios, which can then be modelled quantitatively and followed over time.

Sue says:

“I've been using scenario planning techniques for many years to aid strategic planning by quantifying uncertain variables. The advent of the financial crisis led me to use the technique to develop a spreadsheet to track the effects of changes in key financial variables at the touch of a key. So, if the value of the society’s investments went down, or journal attrition varied from budget, I could put this in the spreadsheet and immediately see the effect on the society’s surplus and total value over a two-year period.  It became clear that only a relatively small number of variables really made a difference, and I am now using a similar technique to model society publishing incomes for STM and AHSS journals. 

The results are really interesting and occasionally counter-intuitive. Some scenarios that seem quite worrying actually make little difference to net income, although most of these scenarios are likely to represent an interim point, not an endpoint, so this apparent steady state may well be illusory. Changing one variable can then make a difference of 20%.”

ALPSP is delighted to be working with Sue Thorn Consulting on the Open Access: Scenario Planning for Societies seminar on 20 March at the Royal College of Pathologists in London. It is an opportunity for our society members to share in Sue's expertise as she introduces delegates to the concept of using scenario planning to model potential changes to journal income.

Sue will be joined on the day by ALPSP Chief Executive, Audrey McCulloch, Caroline Black from The Biochemical Society at Portland Press, Victoria Gardner from Taylor & Francis, Judith Willetts, CEO of the British Society of Immunology, and Jane Winters from the Institute for Historical Research, for panel discussions that will explore what societies may be able to do to deal with any potential drop in their income.

The day will be held under Chatham House rules and will be interactive, with delegates encouraged to bring forward particular issues for discussion. Book now on the ALPSP website where full details are available.