What does academic engagement mean now?

Isabel Thompson, Market Research Analyst at Oxford University Press, chaired the morning plenary on Thursday at the ALPSP conference with a session focusing on the changes in publishers' engagement with academia and researchers. She noted that academics don't care how publishing works, they just want it to work. Researchers are readers, authors, peer reviewers and editorial board members. As a publisher, you have to find right voice for each one. Without academic engagement there is no publishing.

Thompson: one researcher told her that many of his colleagues view publishers as somewhere between pure evil and a necessary evil. #alpsp16

— ALPSP (@alpsp) September 15, 2016

Dr Philippa Matthews us a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow based at the Nuffield Department of Medicine in the University of Oxford. She is also Honorary Consultant in Clinical Infection at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Hospital Trust. She talked through the results of a survey she conducted in advance of the conference. She is very interested in engagement with schools, also infographics. Wants to share results and resources. As a researcher, life is complicated, a simpler publishing process would be preferable. There are significant penalties imposed if her work isn't open access. She outlined a few gripes around the publishing process:

• we don't accept pre-submission enquiries
• hard copy signed conflict of interest statements are required before submission - can be a very long-winded process!
• COI statements need original signatures from all authors... on six continents... at submission!
• multiple revisions before rejection for incorrect trial format
• new reviewers introduced after rounds of revision
• length of time between submission and publication.

Matthews sent a survey to colleagues and received over 100 responses. Results showed that researchers are happy with peer review, but not the timeline and available support. 47% felt the publication process didin't support innovation or allow creativity. People obsess on the Impact Factor, but it's broken. She closed on a more optimistic note: there is a willingness to discuss this from all parties.

These insights from Philippa Matthews are gold: understanding pain/frustrations of authors is springboard for change #alpsp16

— Alison Jones (@bookstothesky) September 15, 2016

Dr Emma Wilson is Director of Publishing at the Royal Society of Chemistry. She outlined how much effort they put in to maintaining a two way dialogue with their community. This involved a lot of scientific conference, international engagement, and by building in-house teams in other countries. They support students and early career researchers via poster prizes and emerging investigator issues of journals. They use social media, but mainly for broadcasting information about them. However, it is growing in importance through initiatives such as through the Twitter-based poster conference.

Great examples of academic and policy engagement from Emma Wilson of @RoySocChem. It is easy to overlook the value of learned socs. #alpsp16

— Rob Johnson (@rschconsulting) September 15, 2016

Dr Sacha Noukhovitch is Executive Director and Editor in Chief at the STEM Fellowship/STEM Fellowship Journal. He feels that with open access, an unexpected, uninvited readership appeared spontaneously - students. A new generation of data-native students is tapping directly into research papers alongside professionals. These students lack the background knowledge, but they use their data skills to understand and interpret the world. If one students finds a paper interesting, others swarm to it creating a real buzz and students use academic communities to help understand complex concepts. They approach parts of the editorial process in a very different way, something that publishers need to follow and engage with.

Students have a different review style free from bias #alpsp16 @STEM_Fellowship pic.twitter.com/LOUxePqUkG

— Ann Michael (@annmichael) September 15, 2016

The ALPSP Conference was held at Park Inn Heathrow London on 14-16 September 2016. View the videos of the session on the ALPSP YouTube channel.

RSC Advances: using a topic modelling text mining tool to improve discoverability

RSC Advances has been shortlisted for the ALPSP Award for Best New Journal 2013. Here in a guest post the publisher, Emma Wilson, explains how they developed the journal to find a home for research that does not fit in within the existing Royal Society of Chemistry journals programme.

"Over the last 5 years there has been a significant shift in both the global output of scientific research and in the growth of funding levels, through which we identified several emerging markets. From discussions with key scientists working in these areas we received feedback that the Royal Society of Chemistry is seen as a fair, inclusive, well respected, and high quality society publisher. However, it also highlighted that some authors felt they did not have a “society home” for their work, due to their research not fitting within the journals published by the RSC.

This community feedback led us to shape the idea and strategy for RSC Advances. The Journal’s vision is to provide a high quality society publishing option for all sections of the community, including emerging research areas and markets. The Journal is aligned to the Royal Society of Chemistry’s charter objective of ‘advancing the chemical sciences’, including the specific mission “to foster the chemical sciences by the dissemination of chemical knowledge”.

Topic modelling to improve discoverability

The ethos of the Journal is to be innovative and inclusive, providing exceptional levels of author service and support during the publication process, thereby facilitating the publication process and dissemination of the authors work. 


The Journal is supported by an international Editorial and Advisory Board led by Professor Mike Ward from the University of Sheffield, UK.

An innovative topic modelling tool was developed for RSC Advances. A sophisticated, behind the scene, text mining tool (developed in-house) classifies all the published papers into one or more of twelve main subject categories in the chemical sciences. The online functionality improves discoverability of authors’ research, ensuring readers go directly to the content of interest to them.

The success of the Journal has exceeded our high expectations. In just over a year after the publication of the first issue we celebrated publishing our 2000th article, and have moved to weekly publication. The Journal has also attracted many new authors to the Royal Society of Chemistry. The acceptance of the Journal by the community has also been further demonstrated by the release of its first (partial) impact factor of 2.56, placing it above the median impact factor for chemistry journals.

At the RSC we are constantly looking to improve the author and reader experience and RSC Advances, as an innovative online Journal, is pushing these boundaries."

RSC Advances was launched in 2011 by the Royal Society of Chemistry. It is an online Journal publishing well conducted research that furthers the field from across all the chemical sciences, with a particular focus on interdisciplinary and emerging areas.

Emma Wilson is Publisher for RSC Advances and has worked at the Royal Society of Chemistry as a journal publisher since 2006. She has strategic oversight and responsibility for 16 titles in the General Chemistry, Organic, Environment Science and Biological portfolios. Prior to working at the Royal Society of Chemistry Emma worked in a variety of roles in Elsevier’s Life Science Division.

The ALPSP Awards finalists will be given the opportunity to showcase their journal or innovation in a rapid fire session at the ALPSP International Conference on Wednesday 11 September.

The winners will be announced at the Conference Awards Dinner on 12 September. Book now to secure your place.