Marketing Open Access programmes and publisher case studies

Caroline Sutton, Co-Action Publishing

In the final afternoon session at The Mechanics and Reality of Open Access, Caroline Sutton from Co-Action Publishing talked about marketing. They have seven employees publishing 34 journals with most income coming through APCs. For them, Open Access equals free access with re-use under a CC BY licence to keep it simple and easy to use.

Marketing channels are similar to subscription publishing. Promotional activities are run in conjunction with conferences. They have outreach to libraries, social media activities, email campaigns, etc. To some extent they are seeking to meet the same needs: access to peer reviewed literature and a publication outlet. But she believes that OA and hybrid journals are two very different products.

Open Access is knowledge as a network; knowledge as infrastructure; Open Access as a key infrastructural element. It's about creating connectivity within this network. Traditional publishing recognises knowledge as property. One of the biggest challenges in OA publishing is to get your head around the non-proprietary mindset around content. Sutton believes she acts as a midwife trying to get content out into the world. They keep this in mind when developing marketing strategy. But they also have to keep in mind where they make money (subscription income versus APCs). Sutton feels that the hybrid approach contradicts these two views.

At Co-Action, their customer groups are researchers, funders, institution/library, others (practitioners, political leaders, patients, citizens, journalists, etc). They consider consumers of content (reader) and contributors to content (author). In subscription publishing, the key market is the institution/library as you sell subscriptions to them. The researcher as reader is also important to drive usage to help secure renewals. There is also some interest in the 'Others' category.

With OA publishing the researcher as author is central to publishing: to buy the service and submit papers and then to recommend to others. They also provide a lot of services post publication. As publishers they have had to rethink what their role is. What do they contribute? They need to communicate this in the marketing. With the hybrid model the Funder is the primary target group, but there is also a lot of work with other groups.

One final question that Sutton posed was is advocacy marketing? Why have some OA publishers engaged in advocacy? She believes they had to go to market and make their presence felt. Have we seen advocacy in the marketing content of hybrid models? She concluded they have to be careful with their email marketing as predatory publishers spamming research communities has created a bad reputation for all.

The final session included brief case studies from a variety of publishers.

Nicola Gulley

Nicola Gulley, Editorial Director at IOP Publishing outlined how they researched what the best model would be that worked for their research communities. The findings indicated that the hybrid model was the best option.

What they have seen so far is a similar pattern that they have seen in existing journals. In the first quarter of 2014 there was increased uptake in hybrid. Gulley also noted increased interest in the business model from researchers. The big message was - and continues to be - flexibility in the model is key.

Hazel Newton

Hazel Newton, Head of Author Services in the Open Research division at Nature Publishing Group/Palgrave Macmillan reflected on how the wholesale application of the STEM approach to Open Access in relation to the humanities and social sciences (HSS) had worried the research community. There were also concerns about quality and lack of choice. Researchers felt bamboozled by CC options.

In their 2013 author survey, 84% said they would publish OA if the best or most appropriate journal was OA. 68% thought their specific area of interest would benefit from OA journals. Interdisciplinarity is an exciting area in research and funders are increasingly thinking about it. However, the smallest area for funding is in HSS.

As a result they are launching Palgrave Communications later in 2014. Offering choice spanning humanities and social sciences it will champion interdisciplinary research. It will be about quality and furthering the discipline, not just methodologically sound. There are more than 80 international editorial board members. There will be no restrictions on the length of papers and licences will be CC BY (but alternative licences are available). The APC is set at £750.

Kathryn Spiller

Kathryn Spiller, Head of Publishing at Bioscientifica recounted that when she took over, they launched an OA journal. Their societies wanted it, but it also reflected market demand for an interdisciplinary journal. They didn't intend to publish Open Access only products. Subsequently, everything they have done has been market driven and it so happens has all been OA.

They have doubled their publishing programme, all with OA products. A potential new approach they are exploring is for a niche, interdisciplinary project to secure grant or sponsor funding so it can be OA, as there is no research funding available.

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.

How to Launch an Open Access Journal

Kathryn Spiller, Head of Publishing at BioScientifica Publishing, kicked off the seminar Beyond the Rhetoric: New opportunities in open access this morning. She provided a step-by-step guide on how they launched their new open access journal, Endocrine Connections: An Interdisciplinary Open Access Journal.

BioScientifica Publishing publishes biomedical and life science journals on behalf of client societies. In 2011, their portfolio included: Journal of Endocrinology; Molecular Endocrinology; Endocrinology-Related Cancer; European Journal of Endocrinology; and Reproduction.

Their open access policies in 2011 were:

• All journals offer OA option - £2000
• Half price APC if corresponding author's institution subscribes (they proactively told them)
• Where funders mandate OA they insist on APE payment
• 12 month embargo
• License retains commercial rights
• Low take up - range 2-7% of content across the portfolio

During 2011, the Society for Endocrinology and the European Society for Endocrinology strongly felt they needed to launch a new open access journal. Working with TBI Communications, they undertook a programme of market research. This included comprehensive market research of the target community; identification of a real gap in the market; identifying true USPs that are meaningful to that community; levels of significant investment; and no impact factor.

They also wanted to explore non-traditional areas such as:

• how researchers now take on a third role: not only author and reader, but also paying customer
• the willingness and ability to pay for OA
• the strengths and weaknesses that an OA journal can bring.

Their primary market research objectives were:

• to identify the gap and define the scope of the new journal
• assess the value their brand might add to a new journal
• define criteria for naming it and understand attitudes to key terms
• assess factors most important to the community in deciding where to submit articles

Their secondary market research objectives were:

• to understand awareness of - and attitudes to - OA in the community
• to understand current costs of publishing paid by authors in the community
• to understand the level of APC that would be acceptable and would be funded

They delivered the research to just under 50,000 names including approximately 4,000 members of both societies and there were 904 (1.8%) participants. The majority were from Europe and North America, but the rest of the world were also represented. Most respondents were based at a university or hospital and there was a good spread of researchers working in different specialisms related to endocrinology with an equal number of clinician and scientists.

Key findings: positioning
They identified a gap in the market for a broad scope journal linking endocrinology with intersecting disciplines. The two society brands had positive associations for than half of respondents, even though the majority weren't members, but the publisher brand had neutral response. The word 'endocrinology had very positive associations for most respondents, but the word 'hormone' had negative connotations!

Author preferences
The key factors influencing respondents' choice of where to publish were ranked as follows:

1. reputation of journal
2. impact factor
3. relevance of publication to your work
4. speed of publication
5. free access to your work
6. reptutation of associated society
7. reputation of publishers
8. funding body

Attitudes to OA
78% had some or good awareness of OA as a new model for publishing research articles (the lowest response was in Latin America and Asia). 44% had published in an OA journal, 26% of which had published frequently or occasionally. Of those with experience of publishing in OA, 47% strongly support the principle, but have trouble paying fees. 39% support it and are preprepared to pay reasonalbe fees. PLoS One was the most popular OA journal.

Cost of publishing
72% had experience of paying page charges and almost half of those said the average cost of page charges per paper is between $101 and $500. Over 50% of these authors fund charges from grant agencies with just over 30% funding them personally. The range of journals where people have paid to publish OA is large, as is the price range.

APC positioning
When participants were asked what a reasonable APC would be 20% said it is not acceptable to charge, 41% stated below $500, and only 11% stated over $1000. Of those who fund fees personally, 44% believe under $500 to be fair and 24% believe $501-$1000 to be fair.

Adopted model
As a results of the research they adopted an online only CC-BY licence. The full price for an APE is £700 with a launch offer of the first 200 published at half price. They are cascading articles rejected by the Societies' high impact journals and these submissions account for 50% of submissions consistently throughout the year. They are also undertaking marketing for direct submissions.

Achievements

• very short timeline of 6 months for launch
• response to the first announcement resulted in 700+ signing up for more information
• 3490 signed up for alerts
• monthly enewsletter has 40% open rate
• 58 submissions in the first six months
• two issues of seven articles with five more articles online, in first six months
• average receipt to accept times of 27 days

Success factors

• user-led research to define clear gap in the market, name and scope of product
• owned by two prestigious societies
• being agile - from sign off to launch in six months
• mixed model of cascaded papers and direct submissions
• a new product that starts with our core market
• significant investment in launch showing measurable ROI

Interestingly, only 22% of those offered a transfer have submitted when their research suggested 60% would. The acceptance rate is 25% where they had budgeted for 70%. The key lesson they have learnt is not to be afraid to take risks and invest in new products. It is a far greater risk to do nothing.