London 2015 Digital Book Printing Forum

Organised annually since 2010, the London Digital Book Printing Forum provides an update on key trends and issues in the book market, in the evolution of the supply chain and book manufacturing, as well as the status and inroads of digital printing.

Once again, we are delighted that the Forum's organisers, INTERQUEST, are offering ten free places to ALPSP publisher members on a first come, first served basis. If you would like to save the £235 registration fee, please contact Sabia Morrison (info@alpsp.org) no later than Thursday 4 June.

The Forum will be held on 25 June at The Royal Society in London. Registration opens at 8 am and the programme runs until just after 5 pm. Full details available online.

This year the event will focus on three major areas:

International trends and success stories: U.K. and international printers and publishers will gather to share their experiences and success stories in digital book manufacturing, discuss challenges, and express their vision of the future.

Streamlining the supply chain: leading players (publishers, distributors, and printers) will provide an update on the progress of their initiatives in this area.

New opportunities generated by innovation and technology developments, evolution in terms of communication, changes in consumer habits and needs, environmental protection, etc.—for both printers and publishers.

The following topics will be covered:

• Market trends and forecast
• Printed books and eBooks
• Supply chain evolution
• Impact of self publishing
• Move towards POD
• Adoption of colour and personalisation
• Distribute-and-print developments
• New applications and opportunities
• Status of inkjet presses
• Drivers and barriers
• Trends in workflow, finishing, inks, and paper
• Publishers' perspectives
• Recent technology developments
• Key players and solutions

Open access: the daily challenge (new customers, processes and relationships)

Phil Hurst, Jackie Jones, Wim van der Stelt

Springer's Wim van der Stelt chaired the final panel at the 2014 ALPSP International Conference. The panellists reflected on the daily challenges of starting an open access product and how the new business model fundamentally alters the publication chain.

Phil Hurst from the Royal Society talked about how they approached launching OA journals. They had a gap in their portfolio and they thought the best way to do this was to launch an OA journal. Open Biology was their first online only journal.

They learnt that many things are the same. Getting the right people on the board is key: you need top people. Content is still king and they need to get the journal in the right places. Open access is a big benefit to everyone. They didn't really realise until they launched the journal. The benefits to stakeholders include speeding up science. There is greater visibility for universities and funders. For researchers there is increased visibility and results. It was good for them to get involved in the OA community.

Much of the marketing is the same, but they supplemented this with an OA membership. Authors from member institutions receive a discount on pure or hybrid access. They incorporated a wider range of metrics including DORA and Altmetrics as a range of measures of research impact. It has also provided them with a springboard. They launched the journal to learn and prepare for the future. OA is consistent with the mission of learned societies. Sustainable? The jury is still out, we will only learn by putting OA journals to the test.

Alex Christoforou from BioMed Central asked who is the actual customer for an OA publisher? They have hundreds of journals across BMC and Springer with hundreds of members, thousands of authors and transactions. What they all need is access to the publisher, support and excellent customer service.

Alex Christoforou

They continue to provide some good old fashioned and reassuring tools to support authors such as a fax number, photos of the team on the web and lots of different ways to contact them. They have 4000 customer service queries each quarter that they deal with. It's increasing as well. They have to provide some kind of service 24 hours a day so they can turn around queries in one day. They even provide online banking for those that spend large amounts of money.

Customer services is not just complaints, payments and author services. It's a way of thinking across the organisation so that all stakeholder groups can build a constructive relationship with them and business can grow over time.

Jackie Jones from Wiley talked about subscription versus open access and 'flipping' journals. They have flipped eight journals so far and it is early days. Some of the key flip criteria they assess include
whether it has a modest subscription revenue. Typically these are young journals that haven't achieved predicted revenues. They also look at areas where there is evidence of good OA funding and existing hybrid activity. Where there is longer term growth potential or attractiveness to authors. They also consider ratio of current revenue to articles.

For publishers flipping can lead to potential for faster growth, but there is higher volatility of revenues. From a society perspective, it provides an opportunity to explore OA. However there is risk commercially and editorially. From the funder point of view some prefer full OA journals but Gold OA is the only option. From an institutional point of view there is no subs fee, but you have to track APCs and costs. For tools and modelling they have flow charts and decision trees to help monitor and track submissions and revenues.

EMBO Molecular Medicine launched in 2009. It had modest subscription sales and the society had concerns about visibility. There was an 85% rejection rate. The per page publication charge was 125 euros and pre-flip the average author cost was 1600 euros. They set the APC at 3000 euros in line with other journals in the society's portfolio. Submissions doubled in the launch period. However, on other journals there was a dip in submissions initially, but they do recover.

They have learnt you need to plan ahead and time communication really carefully. Make sure papers in hand are under the new model so you don't have to waive fees. Don't flip mid year and avoid complications of subs reimbursements. Undertake submissions and publications surveys.

Setting up Open Access policies and the different business models

Vicky Gardner from Taylor & Francis

The second half of the morning at The Mechanics and Reality of Open Access seminar covered practical implementation issues for setting up internal policies. Vicky Gardner, Open Access Publisher at Taylor & Francis, described 'the third age of publishing' as subscription, site licence and OA. There is the increasing influence of funders and policy makers and changing roles for libraries and publishers.

What does it mean? Operational challenges include:

• increasing granularity with article-level workflows.
• increased variation
• APC mechanisms
• implications for subscription business (conversion to full gold) OA would render many journals unsustainable
• anticipating OA policies and mandates - impact on institutional processes
• internal and external reporting
• cost.

Questions to ask yourself when implementing Open Access include: Do we hold publication until payment is received? Should we offer multiple APCs? How much information do we provide to authors? How can we consistently capture data for reporting?

Underlying considerations for consistently capturing data have a cross-industry element (FundRef, CrossMark, Prospect, NISO standards). There is classification (research funder vs APC funder), accuracy of data inputs (eg APC funding). You also need to consider how the data might be used (future proofing): it takes investment. And don't forget about past articles. With embargoes do you increase (will it protect subscriptions? Link to article half lives?). Should you decrease? (But some think you can't put genie back in the bottle... and what is the value of the version of record?)

Areas to consider with waivers include whether they are regional (corresponding author, offer only on full? What about local titles?) or no questions asked (is this sustainable? It allows those in genuine hardship to publish.)

Considerations for double dipping

• Global offset - equitable to subscribers, but difficult to calculate.
• Local offset - can accommodate in bulk deals. Equitable to those investing in OA. Is there granularity? Can be difficult to calculate.
• Top up model - avoids double dipping issue. Maintains the subscription market.

Thinking about licence choice

• How many?
• Which ones?
• What do authors want?
• What do funders want?
• Subject differentials?
• Permissions and third party content.

What are the lessons learned? Flexibility is key: sometimes a small tweak is all it takes. You need to engage with many different departments, editors, societies, librarians, funders. Make sure to use the talent in your business. Accept that you don't have all the answers - new workflows won't be right straightaway, strategic planning can only anticipate future developments.

We're all on a learning curve - manual workarounds are easy to implement in the short term and more practical in many senses than immediate investment in automation. Keeping staff informed about OA developments is just as important as external communications. One size does not fit all - there are many different preoccupations, perspectives and opinions, not just funder, policy maker, publisher. Consultation is key.

It is early days and the market is immature. This relates to APC intermediaries, HEI and publisher knowledge, and the take up of OA by researchers. Internal workflows are short to medium term. Change and complexity will be constant. And it is not just about research, also think about grey literature. But remember, OA is scalable.

The Royal Society's Phil Hurst

Phil Hurst from The Royal Society provided an overview of the different business models. At The Royal Society, their subscription model dates back to c1800. Originally, RS Fellows (400) received copies as part membership dues (no opt out). There were 300 on general sale through the Society's bookseller, and the Society received income, minus fees and expenses. External sales did not recoup the cost of printing. Only in recent years has the subscription model become more profitable.

Now? They use a subscription and green OA model. The institution or individual pays a regular fee for access to content, it is free to submit articles, but access is only available to subscribers. The advantages are that it is a proven model and infrastructure; the subscription supply chain is relatively efficient; there is no processing of APCs. The disadvantages are that the dissemination of content depends on budget availability. There is more content, but stagnant library budgets are a challenge. While it is relatively easy to manage, they still need people or agents to develop new business. Green OA requires repository infrastructure and it can be a challenge to get authors to deposit post prints.

Hybrid gold OA is relatively easy to implement. You retain the subscription income and it can be a transition to full OA as authors choose preferred publication model. However, there is potential for double dipping. It can be difficult to provide subscription discounts in a granular way and it is not always compliant with OA funders/mandates. Practical considerations include setting the price, collecting payments and a transparent pricing mechanism. At The Royal Society they have 'no fee, no free' model, but authors can retrospectively convert to OA.

Pure gold OA is a model where cost scales with submissions. It can lead to a more effective market (cost competition) with greater dissemination of content and potentially faster/higher citations. However, funding sources are not always available and quality and income are in conflict. Predatory publishers hinder OA reputation and can undermine authors' trust. Practical considerations include the need to collect a greater number of payments and the need to promote online payment (by credit card). The customer (author) will often not fund payment, so you need to demonstrate quality.

OA membership is where authors from member institutions receive a discount on pure or hybrid OA. This can take the form of a supporter or pre-pay (eg PMC, Hindawi) or postpay approach. The Royal Society has an OA 'supporter' membership. The benefits are that authors receive 25% discount on APCs, it increases research awareness about options, provides a customised institutional web page and is a cost-effective flat annual fee. Practical considerations include linking the author with institution, dealing with multi-authored papers: which institution gets the discount? You need a new system, have to set the price and while it is proving cost-effectiveness, they still need sales people. Other examples include PeerJ, IOP Publishing OA funding pilot in Austria and the RSC gold for gold programme.