ALPSP Annual Conference 2024: A Review by Ella Gibbs

ALPSP Rising Star Awards Winner, Ella Gibbs, Journals Executive at Bristol University Press & Policy Press

Being relatively new to the world of scholarly publishing, the ALPSP Conference was my first proper industry conference experience and I was initially very uncertain about what to expect. On the day of the conference I travelled to Manchester with my colleague who was also attending for the first time, which eased my nerves slightly. Any remaining nerves were quickly assuaged when I arrived at the conference venue and was struck by how welcoming everyone was.

A key theme of the conference was undoubtably AI and how the industry is responding to rapid changes and general uncertainty brought about in a world of generative AI. It was interesting to hear some of the conversations on AI that’ve been ongoing at my own workplace play out amongst the conference speakers and delegates: fears of the threat to research integrity, copyright concerns in an open access landscape, the implicit bias of Large Language Models (LLMs) and, more positively, the potential of AI to assist with tasks that are increasingly falling out of budget. 

The session on ‘The role of human editors in an AI world’ explored the role of editorial decision making and how this could develop in the future due to the increased use of AI tools by both authors and editors. One of the questions that was discussed was whether publishers have given authors enough guidance on how or when to use AI tools when preparing their research for publication. This is problematised by the fact that the industry hasn’t arrived at a single standard that authors should adhere to, which could lead to confusion. Although it was clear from the discussion that as an industry we do not yet have all the answers where AI is concerned, there was a clear sense that it should be embraced for its potential to support aspects of the editorial workflow and decision making rather than replace them.

One of my personal highlights from the conference was watching the award finalists lightning presentations. It was truly inspiring to hear about some of the innovative projects taking place within scholarly publishing communities. I was particularly impressed with the Forest of Biologists initiative which partners with the Woodland Trust to plant a tree in a UK forest for every research or review article published by The Company of Biologists. It was great to hear how this initiative aims to combat the loss of biodiversity within the UK and also how it directly involved young people from the local community. 

I am very grateful for the opportunity to attend the ALPSP conference. The conference really helped me understand more about the scholarly publishing industry as a whole, outside of my day-to-day role. It was great to be able to talk to people from a range of different publishers and  at various stages within their careers. The conference ultimately made me feel very excited for my future in scholarly publishing and I hope to be able to attend again in the future.

About the ALPSP Rising Star Award 2024

This award aims to recognise potential in early career individuals. The winners are given the opportunity and financial support to attend the ALPSP Annual Conference in person and write a short review of their experiences of the meeting. The ALPSP Rising Star Award is sponsored by Publishers' Licensing Services.

The winners of this year's Rising Star Award are:

• Hazel Rowland, IOP Publishing
• Anna Savage, BMJ
• Ella Gibbs, Bristol University Press
• Heather Townsend, Bristol University Press
• Melody (Zhuxin) Zhang, Wiley

ALPSP Annual Conference and Awards

Thank you to all our speakers, sponsors and attendees for making the ALPSP 2024 Conference and Awards such a success. Catch up on the session recordings. We will be returning to the Hilton Manchester Deansgate Hotel next year from 10-12 September 2025. For more information, visit our website.

About the author

Ella Gibbs is the Journals Executive at Bristol University Press. 

She is the primary editorial contact and development lead for a number of journals, supporting editors, authors and reviewers. Ella began working in scholarly publishing in 2021 as an Editorial Assistant.

ALPSP Annual Conference 2024: A Review by Hazel Rowland

ALPSP Annual Conference 2024: A Review by ALPSP Rising Star Awards Winner, Hazel Rowland, Associate Marketing Manager, IOP Publishing 

My first ALPSP Conference Manchester 2024

My usual experience of conferences is manning the booth and talking with delegates. Being on the other side of the table was a fun experience, and receiving a Rising Star Award was an honour. You could feel a buzz in the air throughout the week. Everyone was eager to discuss interesting topics and innovations. It was very inspiring.

I found discussions on the accessibility of research extremely interesting. Highlighting barriers such as language, funding, and limited internet access in some regions. Solutions included AI for translation and editing, tailored OA models and initiatives supporting access to research in various formats, especially in the global south.

A debate I found very interesting was on what makes research “impactful”, and the importance of research visibility. Knowing your audience and understanding what the research is for is key in order to determine its impact. For example, local research is integral for sharing important knowledge about specific elements relevant to the local region, but might be understood, or cited less, on a global scale. How can we (and should we) define global impact when research may be highly impactful locally?– a very interesting question. But one that highlighted the importance of knowing your audience and understanding who and what the research is for to recognise its impact.

I cannot leave out the topic of AI ─a regular discussion in more than just scholarly publishing. AI is a tool that we can use to make our industry work more efficiently, more accessible and more innovative. Discussions pointed out that it can be used to analyse and understand our marketing audiences so we can connect the relevant audience with the research. Additionally, it can be used in innovative ways to help identify and detect bad actors in research integrity. AI can also be used to aid accessibility, reducing language and accessibility barriers.

There were discussions on whether AI would be taking over and an inspiring point was made by the opening keynote speaker Jake Okechukwu Effodu, who said “think back to when the internet was predicted to eliminate the need for libraries, or when ebooks were thought to signal the death of print publishing. These technologies transformed but they did not replace, so generative AI cannot replace”. Despite AI’s issues like inheriting bias and regurgitating content, discussions focused on harnessing it for the benefit of scholarly publishing.

About the ALPSP Rising Star Award 2024

This award aims to recognise potential in early career individuals. The winners are given the opportunity and financial support to attend the ALPSP Annual Conference in person and write a short review of their experiences of the meeting. The ALPSP Rising Star Award is sponsored by Publishers' Licensing Services.

The winners of this year's Rising Star Award are:

• Hazel Rowland, IOP Publishing
• Anna Savage, BMJ
• Ella Gibbs, Bristol University Press
• Heather Townsend, Bristol University Press
• Melody (Zhuxin) Zhang, Wiley

ALPSP Annual Conference and Awards

Thank you to all our speakers, sponsors and attendees for making the ALPSP 2024 Conference and Awards such a success. We will be returning to the Hilton Manchester Deansgate Hotel next year from 10-12 September 2025. The call for topics is open until 1 December. For more information, visit our website.

About the author

Hazel Rowland, Associate Marketing Manager, IOP Publishing

Hazel Rowland is an Associate Marketing Manager at IOP Publishing, in the Content and Engagement Marketing department.  She works primarily on developing and implementing strategies and campaigns focusing on author loyalty, author awards and early career researcher support initiatives.

Hazel joined the scholarly publishing world in 2017 as a Marketing Assistant for IOP Publishing, and has been continuously developing her knowledge, career and experiences to aid the global scientific community.

The Ability to Capitalize on Timely Research

In this guest blog, Mr. Srinaath Krishnamachari, MD of UI Tech Solutions, draws on his experience of over 17 years in the publishing industry to write about the changing face of content creation. As the Chief Evangelist for technology-driven publishing solutions, he seeks to address the need of publishers to provide relevant customized content separate from freely available information.

In the last five years, publishers have seen readers’ relationship to content change dramatically.  A 2016 Pew Research study stated that a majority of the public—62% in the US—get their news from social media rather than traditional media outlets.  A 2016 BioMed Central study states that physicians are rapidly turning to social media in order to immediately share health and research information with their patients and each other.

RESEARCHERS PUBLISH DIRECTLY

The constant access to breaking news, studies, and research through websites and social media, often for free via social media or open access, has challenged the timing of traditional publishing cycles and threatened the methods by which publishers tend to generate revenue. Researchers are turning to publishing directly themselves to publicly accessed websites, as Nobel Laureate Carol Greider did last year, or via other channels in order to get the information out into the world, taking valuable information out of the hands of traditional publishers.

As publishers try to adapt to this changing face of their audience and the industry, they must focus on trying to release research more quickly in order to respond to time-sensitive issues and creating sophisticated metadata that allows for content to be easily found amid the deluge of content.

PUBLISHERS ADAPTING TO THE SPEED OF RESEARCH

To help publishers adjust to this brave new world, PageMajik has created a product suite based on the personal consulting model their parent company S4Carlisle has offered publisher clients for nearly two decades.  PageMajik allows publishers to automate significant portions of the publishing process from author submission to final production in order to improve efficiency and timeliness of content. Current publishers using the system have noted that their efficiency has improved by an average of 40%.
For publishers and authors publishing time-sensitive research, cutting the publication cycle in half can not only make their research more relevant but also speed up technological advances, scientific discovery, and medical breakthroughs.

SIMPLIFYING THE PROCESS

By simplifying the publishing process and automating some of the more detailed and time-consuming technical work, publishers can focus more directly on the much more important task of identifying notable research.

PageMajik simplifies the process by optimizing and organizing existing content and resources while adapting to a publisher’s current systems and workflow.  Working in a web-based authoring environment and InDesign, PageMajik does not require additional training and allows everyone along the publishing cycle to work on the document.  PageMajik also performs a number of detailed tasks that are time-consuming for publishers, such as identifying inconsistencies and anomalies in usages and forms of words (hyphenations, allowed prefixes, precise usages) using pattern-based rules, and grammatical discrepancies using built-in English language rules.

MAKING RESEARCH EASY TO FIND

A challenge that publishers and researchers alike face upon release of published research is how to reach the audience for the work.  Significant studies have been done on the lag between publication and discovery of research, with academics struggling with how to find the right information amid the deluge of content.

PageMajik has created the ability for publishers to do chapter level metadata tagging, allowing for a deeper level of search functionability and, thus, easier discoverability.

As the audience for research and scholarly publishing expands and changes even more toward the digital and direct outreach, publishers must find the ways to work quickly and easily adapt their current systems to stay not only competitive but viable.  PageMajik provides a simple, cost-effective method for publishers to continue to be a vital part of the publishing and research process.

About PageMajik:  PageMajik is a publishing workflow management system that combines all of the individual steps of the publishing process into a seamless product suite to improve workflow and efficiency.  PageMajik’s product suite has an in-built Content Management System that facilitates storage, retrieval and reuse of data at any given time. The CMS has been customized to suit publishing workflows, with version control features and user access control.

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PageMajik-145323369390543/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WeArePageMajik
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/13394487/

PageMajik is a proud sponsor of the ALPSP 10th Anniversary Annual Conference 

Laura Ceballos from CEDRO reflects on the future of scholarly communications and a little thing called Brexit...

At the recent ALPSP Conference we caught up with Laura Ceballos, from the Spanish RRO CEDRO, who chaired the Digital Business Models session. We asked her about the latest developments in scholalry communications and her reaction to that little matter of the Brexit vote. Here's what she said...

What is the most exciting opportunity for scholarly communications in the next two to three years?

In the last five years, we’ve seen a burst of digital innovation across the scholarly sector with hundreds of digital initiatives aiming to transform and enrich the publishing sector. It’s extremely positive to see that many young entrepreneurs believe that there’s a promising future for scholarly publishing related businesses in the digital age. A closer relationship with future entrepreneurs of the 21st century will allow long-established publishers to gain access to new and innovative products and services and provide them with a fuller knowledge of the advantages of business models in the digital economy

And what is the biggest challenge?

There is no doubt that open content is the biggest challenge for the scholarly sector. We are entering a change of era that is radically transforming the publishing sector. We are currently in the midst of a major transformation of cultural habits that is dramatically altering people’s behaviour in acquiring and consuming all kinds of academic and professional content.

Book industry professionals will have to accept that the main channels of growth will not involve mainly the sale of print books, but rather the sale of new kinds of digital content (audiobooks, transmedia books, fragmented eBooks, etc.) via yet unimagined new business models. Like it or not, the way culture is being created, accessed, and consumed is itself going through a historical transformation. In the next few years, consumers will have never-before-seen access to staggering amounts of user-generated information and knowledge which will require a reorganization of the scholarly sector.

What were your thoughts when the results of the UK referendum on the EU were announced?

It is in the interest of all parties (UK and EU) that the UK exit of the EU is managed in a gradual and orderly way to avoid a bigger disruption between both of them. Both sides have to come to terms and understand that they are destined to get along.

Laura Ceballos is Business Development Manager for CEDRO. She chaired the Digital Business Models panel discussion at the ALPSP Conference in 2016. You can watch the full session on the ALPSP YouTube channel.

Digital Business Models

The evolution of long standing publishign models is continuing and there are pressures on the underlying business models. What different business models have developed? What opportunities do they present? How have they evolved across books and journals?

The Digital Business Models panel at the ALPSP Conference provided different perspectives on what's new and developing in this area. Chaired by Laura Ceballos Watling from CEDRO, speakers included Jose Fossi, Vice President of Client Services for PubFactory, O'Reilly Media, Phill Jones, Director of Publishing Innovation at Digital Science, and Dr Julia von dem Knesebeck, Found of Open Publishing GmbH.



The ALPSP Conference was held at the Park Inn Heathrow in London on 14-16 September 2016. View the different sessions on the ALPSP YouTube channel.

Industry Updates: RedLink, PaperHive, COUNTER, Crossref, Coko and OA Mega-Journals

The 2016 ALPSP Conference Industry Updates session provided a round up of the latest new developments, major project and industry standards updates. Chaired by Louise Russell from Tutton Russell Consulting, here's a round-up of the projects that were covered.

Improving the Standard for Credible, Compatible and Consistent Usage Statistics

COUNTER usage statistics are an essential tool for librarians in their evaluation of online resources and are used to demonstrate of the value of the library. Lorraine Estelle, Director at COUNTER, updated the audience on the latest release. After feedback from publishers that told them that they are eager to support librarians, but that the COUNTER standard can be complex and costly to implement, they have used this insight to inform the development of Release 5 of the COUNTER Code of Practice, to be published in the summer of 2017. The new release will see COUNTER move to a mode of continuous maintenance, will reduce the number of reports required, clarify definitions and remove ambiguities. Further information about the release will be made available on the COUNTER website. https://www.projectcounter.org

The RedLink Network

Libraries and publishers face challenges managing their IP, Shibboleth, and link resolver information in order to ensure access for their mutual customers – researchers, students, and academics. RedLink’s CEO Kent R Anderson outlined how the RedLink Network provides a free, networked solution that allows library and site administrators to manage their IP addresses and authentication tokens in one location. The Network broadcasts changes to publishers and publishing platforms with one click, monitors uptake of changes and sends reminders, updates and broadcasts their branding, connects with contacts and peers, and manages hierarchical relationships among partner libraries (consortia relationships and departmental libraries, for example). https://www.redlink.com

PaperHive: A co-working hub for researchers that makes reading collaborative

PaperHive is a new web-platform for collaborative reading and a cross­-publisher layer of interaction on top of research documents. It lets researchers communicate in published documents in a productive and time-saving way. Co-founder Dr André Gaul explained how PaperHive puts academic literature, which is integrated with the platform, in the limelight and increases reader engagement. It extends the concept of a living document and offers an innovative way of displaying content without hosting it, enabling readers to stay in touch with the articles of interest beyond just saving them in an offline folder. Transforming reading into a process of collaboration incentivises researchers to return to the content and discover new enrichments they can benefit from. In addition, functionality like hiving, deep linking, and the PaperHive browser extension embeds communication in the researcher’s workflow. https://paperhive.org

What you Thought you knew about Crossref is Wrong

Ginny Hendricks, Director of Member & Community Outreach at Crossref, updated delegates on how they have recently reshaped in order to meet the new dynamics of their community. They’ve added new staff, new members, new affiliates, and are shifting their focus to scale up and do more. There are new and imminent developments coming. They also give a glimpse into the changing world of scholarly metadata from the viewpoint of a registry for it, introducing you to the new kinds of publishers that are emerging, and the surprising consumers of their metadata. http://www.crossref.org

Re-imagining Publishing Workflows

Scholarly publishing today is a convoluted, expensive and slow process that is mired in print paradigms and the final product is missing key components such as the data, protocols, code and materials needed for other scholars to reproduce the work. Adam Hyde, Co-Founder of The Collaborative Knowledge Foundation (Coko) explained how they are building open source tools for a digital-first workflow in which all aspects of the editorial, peer review and production work are done in a collaborative webspace. http://coko.foundation

Open Access Mega-journals: Research in progress

Stephen Pinfield, Professor of Information Services Management at the University of Sheffield provided an over of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded research project investigating open-access mega-journals and the future of scholarly communication. The project, which is a partnership between the universities of Sheffield and Loughborough, is cross-disciplinary and international in its coverage. Key features of mega-journals, such as their broad scope and their novel approach to peer review, have given rise to controversy, and are central considerations. The different strands of the project are contributing to an emerging picture on the role of mega-journals now and their potential impact on the wider scholarly communication environment in the future. The project incorporates quantitative analysis, including a bibliometrics study, and qualitative research, including interviews with senior figures from the publishing industry. http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/is/research/projects/openaccessmegajournals

Shifting Sands: What's affecting your business?

Robert Kiley from the Wellcome Trust

Much has been said about disruption in the publishing industry, with a focus on the changes that digital developments have brought. But there are many other disruptions facing publishers, not least the shifting political landscape throughout the world.

Rober Kiley from the Wellcome Trust outlined their plans for opening up access to the research outputs. It helps to accelerate discovery and its application for health benefit, but also provides great return on investment.  Challenges include tackling infrastructure and changing culture and incentives. There are issues around having the right skills and capacity to do this.

The publisher requirements have come about to simplify the whole process and ensure they get what they pay for. There are still instances where articles have been funded and published as open access, but still behind paywalls on publisher sites.

Their key requirements for deposit are that the final version of peer reviewed articles should be available in XML and PDF and deposited in PMC. Material changes must be made to PMC and include Crossmark where available. The Licence must be made available via CC-BY and the statement must be included in XML and be human and machine readable. The invoice must include the title of the articles and publishers must have a refund policy. They have been in contact with a number of the larger publishers and see trade bodies such as ALPSP as being key to reaching out to other organizations.

Other Wellcome developments include Wellcome Open Research. Researchers will be able to get their research published quickly and it will include all research outputs. It fulfils all their open access requirements and the data is published alongside so the research is reproducible. It is transparent - open, author drive, peer review. Finally, it is easy as the costs are met directly by Wellcome.

Wellcome is also looking at preprints. It reflects the growing interest in this area as they provide researchers with a fast way to disseminate their work, establish priority of their discoveries and obtain feedback. They also offer a more current understanding of an investigator's work. They are working within Wellcome to amend grant application EoG forms so preprints can be cited. They are developing grant reviewers and are working with ASAPbio. They are keen to change the culture by encouraging researchers to publish preprints.

Alex Hardy from Harbottle & Lewis

Alex Hardy is a publishing lawyer at Harbottle & Lewis. She covered the legal status of the results and four key areas of IP law, contract law, data protection and copyright law.

What the referendum DIDN'T ask is when and how we should leave the EU as well as what kind of relationship should the UK and EU continue to have.

Article 50 is the legal mechanism by which to serve notice. But it has never been invoked before so it is unknown territory.

The short term impact involves currency fluctuations as well as changes in the trade relationships outlook. We are proceeding with caution with refocussed lobbying and campaigning. Alternative models are being explored including European Economic Area, European Free Trade Area or a more bespoke arrangement.

For intellectual property rights including copyright, departure from the EU would leave national law and international treaties largely as it is. For EU harmonisation, the UK has been heavily involved and very influential. But there is a risk the UK will lose it's influence. For the EU, there's a risk they will lose UK content. It is possible the UK will leave the EU during the EU Digital Single Market. There is still an opportunity to continue to engage, comment and contribute to discussions.

EU trade marks will continue in the short term, but you may need to move to a UK trade mark. It might be worth registering both in short term to minimise risk if you can afford it.

For contracts, consider reviewing the territorial scope, trade and IPR licences. You should also take into consideration governing law and jurisdiction. EU courts are likely to continue to respect English law contracts. Arbitration is likely to be more popular. You should consider alternative dispute resolution.  You should think about termination rights. Does the EU constitute a force majeure that mean you can review pricing or service terms review? There might be opportunities for renegotiation.

Consumer contracts are heavily shaped by EU law. There may be a post-Brexit review, but if you want to do business with the EU you will need to continue to comply. The EU General Data Protection Regulation is automatically and equally enforceable in all member states to have a single EU law. It provides stronger rights for consumers and stricter obligations for companies. Penalties are harsh with 4% of turnover or 20 million euros. It has been four years in the making and comes into force in May 2018. Brexit is no excuse for not complying for the UK as they will still be in the EU when it comes into force. It also applies to anyone outside EU processing data to offer goods/services to EU citizens. There also needs to be adequacy of law required for data protection. The UK will likely fully adopt the GDPR regardless of Brexit. Act now before it is too late. May 2018 is not far away.

With employment law, free movement of people is a key political issue. There is no clarity on the post-Brexit position. Businesses are starting to audit and assess opportunities for claiming rights to work in the UK and EU. Companies might want to consider diversifying recruitment policy and must be aware of discrimination. Review your policies and make sure you remain compliant with existing UK law. She closed asking how can you survive the shifting sands of Brexit? Her answer is to take stock, be prepared and try to influence.

Andrew Tein from Wiley

Andrew Tein provided an updated on open science in the EU and called for engagement and leadership in this area. The open science policy agenda is driven by economic pressure, technology and innovation as well as the evolution of research practice. In terms of policy practice there is open access and copyright reform and protection. How do we engage and how do we lead the conversation with the rest of the community? How do we develop the rights tools and services? How do we deal with the SciHubs of the world?

There are some fundamental principles. Research stakeholders should advance sustainable open access and open science policies that ensure flexibility aligned with needs of discipline communities avoiding imposing unnecessary burdens on researchers. Brussels is a slow, steady and confusing place. In May 2013 Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) was launched with general principles on OA and Open Data. In May 2015 'A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe' was released which acknowledged the importance of science and research to boost innovation. In May 2016 the Competitiveness Council Conclusions on the Transition Towards an Open Science System were published.

The OSPP process is design to advise the commission on policy development and implementation. It will serve as the primary mechanism for stakeholder engagement. It has five policy action areas: incentives for open science, removing legal barriers, making OA policies mainstream, develop research infrastructure for open science and particularly open data, and to embed open science in society as a socio-economic driver. They have broken this out into eight work streams:

1. Fair open data
2. European Open Science Cloud
3. Altmetrics
4. New business models for scholarly communication
5. Rewards
6. Research integrity
7. Open science skills
8. Citizen science

It is expected there will be three different mechanisms for consultation: digital consultation, working and steering groups and the Commission has clear goals they want everyone to work towards. As ever, there will be a number of opportunities and challenges around these areas.

Plenary 1: The Conversation: Research and Scholarly Publishing in the Age of Big Data

Ziyad Marar is Global Publishing Director at SAGE Publishing. Chairing the first plenary session of the ALPSP conference, he engaged his colleague Ian Mulvany, Head of Product Innovation, and Fran Bennett, CEO and co-founder of a big data company Mastodon C in a conversation about publishing in the age of big data.

Is big data hype and nonsense - just an exciting term that let's an agency sell their services? Fran Bennett believes there are some fundamental things that have changed that mean it is so much more than that. It can help companies open up new insights, generate additional income and lower barriers to technology entry. As the technology gets better it can do different applications. There is more data and cheaper processing.

Big data challenges for #socialscience - is there a role for #publishers to better serve scholars "drenched in data"? @ZiyadMarar #alpsp16

— Lettie Conrad (@lyconrad) September 14, 2016

Mastodon C are working with the UK Government department responsible for animals and farming. They are collecting all the data of dead livestock. They don't have enough staff so sometimes patterns get missed. They use computers to identify any of these threads to analyse post mortem. They can take messy structural data and sorts it out so expert humans can use their time more effectively and in a targeted way.

Ian Mulvany thinks high quality content is what we do as an industry, but it's all digitally mediated content. All publishing organizations need to be technologically competent. We're in a mixed world of software solutions that are beginning to be commodified. But the variety of the services around them are living in a handwritten world: a dilemma he is endlessly fascinated by.

#alpsp16 Mulvany: The crucial thing is how you wrangle data ... the industry has been doing it for many years, but in different ways

— Research Information (@researchinfo) September 14, 2016

Corporate applications of big data can transfer to publishing in market projections, customer retention, internal SWOT analysis and with hiring. Mulvany asks how many publishers have tried to re-analyse their entire corpus using big data techniques? Not many hands went up... there are lots of opportunities here. Bennett observed that a good data scientist is a statistician who can code and understand the context of their data and warned against tracking things purely because you can: the risk is you create 'data exhaust' that you can't do anything with.

Here is the essay "Why software is eating the world" by Andreessen to which @IanMulvany just referred to: https://t.co/AxAencXIOJ #alpsp16

— Jasmin Lange (@JasminLange) September 14, 2016

Mulvany noted that some fields have long worked with big data and have good standards and procedures to deal with it. He is particularly interested in working with researchers that have realised they have a whole load of data and don't know what to do with it. There is a 'data under the desk' problem. Data is collected sporadically, is not necessarily kept well, and isn't large scale.

Caution was called for by delegates in the audience and on Twitter when using algorithms for peer review: it can and will be exploited by researchers. The panellists all agreed that machines can do the dirty work for us, but not all the work.

Marar outlined the work of the Berkeley sociologist, Nick Adams, who is using crowdsourcing and algorithms to look at reports on the Occupy movements in nine cities. Analysis that would normally have taken 15 years has actually taken one year, and is finding interesting patterns. He also cited the work of Gary King, a Harvard social scientist who is developing and applying empirical methods in many areas of social science research, focusing on innovations that span statistical theory to practical application.

Social researchers are coming more slowly to big data analysis, but are doing some unusual work with it. SAGE Publishing has conducted a massive survey into the area of data and social science with over 13,000 responses. It's something they are focusing on as a priority.

An interesting side issues when looking at social data is sometimes, when you look at the data, you find that the quality of it is not what it might be, with potential to lead to data protection breaches on a grand scale. There are differences between ethical and legal behaviour concerning datasets. it may be cheap to capture and hold data, but expensive to extract, clean and deliver it.

Mulvany closed with the observation that there are researcher needs, potential development tools, but why should the industry care about these things? Because at our heart we are about democratising knowledge and finding the right solutions and people around that knowledge. If we look purely at their purpose it will give us the realisation on how we make it happen. Those tools are becoming cheaper to experiment and innovate with. So we should do so.

Ziyad Marar is Global Publishing Director at SAGE Publishing where Ian Mulvany is Head of Product Innovation. Fran Bennett is CEO and Co-Founder of Mastodon C. They took part in a panel discussion at the ALPSP Conference 2016.

Zoe Harris, Trinity Mirror on Embracing Disruption in the #alpsp16 Keynote

Zoe Harris, Group Marketing Director at Trinity Mirror Plc kicked off the ALPSP Conference with the keynote. She has worked in TV, magazines and advertising: who better to hear from about how other industries have dealt with and embraced disruption?

Trinity Mirror have learned that the local, regional and national press can no longer be suspicious of each other. Tabloid newspapers have a bad reputation, but The Mirror is passionate about being different. Yes, they want to entertain, but they also want to inform, investigate and campaign.

In such a challenged market revenues with 10% year on year readership decline 20% year on year advertising decline, with digital revenues slow to make up shortfall, how do they adapt?

They have looked outside and inside for inspiration. They have learnt to have a thick skin and be resilient. Disruption is everywhere. Netflix is disrupting pay TV. Airbnb has in five years become the main hotel chain rival selling more rooms than the whole Hilton group worldwide. Uber has totally changed the taxi business forever. You no longer give an address, you give a postcode: a fundamental change in behaviour. Online estate agents like Rightmove hit Trinity Mirror hard. Five years ago they had £150m revenue in this area. It dropped to around £30m in 2015. There has been an explosion of disruptive news brands including: HuffPost Buzzed and Facebook.

For Trinity Mirror, they have skilled journalists, trusted brands, scale and reach, experienced commercial teams as well as strong branding nationwide. It's easy to get stuck in a rut becoming afraid to change anything from the past.

Audi asked their engineers how could they win a race if our car could go no faster than anyone else? By phrasing it that way, they looked at other areas of development. The answer was fuel efficiency. They won the next three years.

Newspapers often look at problems the wrong way. The decline in The Mirror readership isn't a recent trend. It's been happening over decades driven by digital, behavioural trends and competitor activity. Crucially, the demographics of the UK have changed. it has gone from a pyramid upper class, middle class, working class to a diamond shaped elite, bulging middle classes and breadline existence.

The three forces of change they face are the recession as a social leveller, connectedness available to all, and a post-industrial workforce. Today, their readership have inherited values, achievable aspirations, and a tighter network. In addition, traditional news is less valuable than before. The main issues lapsed readers have with current offerings have:

• not enough breadth in content
• people don't define themselves as working class anymore
• in a time when we are less defined by political bias we switch political allegiances
• newspapers that are perceived to be written for and by men means a disconnect with readers can happen
• newspapers haven't changed approach in many years
• also an issue of journalists as part of the establishment, chummy with politicians and big business alike. 

There are a number of initiatives they have tried. You need to have a thick skin, fail fast, and work fast to adapt to disruption and change. One part of their response was to launch a national newspaper - New Day - which shut two months after launch. They always had a plan to have a go and if they were going to fail, to fail fast. 

With data journalism they have built a specialist team that monitor, scrape, analyse and use Freedom of Information laws to research and find new stories. Looking through data to create news stories for their titles. They also create engaging and interactive gadgets to make the news personal to the audience. By making data personally relevant to them they can make them care about issues that should matter to them all as well as hold councils and governments to account.

They have also used content curation. Clipboard, News 360 and other services have built big markets quickly. New and different opinions rarely get seen where we have our filter bubbles of online services that use algorithms to find content you will like. Trinity Mirror launched a new app - Perspecs - a curated news application. It offers three different perspectives on each news story from other sources. It adds diverse opinion and transparency. It also facilitates the discovery of new sources.

The fast reproduction of content is a real challenge and the speed and breadth of local coverage. For their regional titles, being part of that local life is what they've always done. Now they're doing it differently, because that's what readers want. They work with police forces, local courts and sport clubs reporting on their own matches. They have seen huge increases in local traffic. They have set about doing this by focusing on local knowledge and building a connect with local readers who want to reach out to them. This also builds a strong local advertising platform for sustainability.

How? They've focused on audience data. While page views are their primary metric, they listen to others such as time spent on page, bounce rate and percentage of readers who are local. While journalists have strong gut instinct about the local audience wants, but it's important to get out to meet people combined with understanding the audience.

They have also doubled down on audience analytics, finding out what they know works and ask themselves what else might. It is passion and belief that will give you determination to meet changing needs of your communities. But it is the ability to expect the unexpected and adapt that will see you through.

Zoe Harris is Group Marketing Director at Trinity Mirror Plc. She provided the opening keynote address at the 2016 ALPSP Conference. 

Why is the business technology side of eJournals so unnecessarily complex? Tracy Gardner reflects...

eJournal technology is an essential part of the scholarly publishing industry. It is also the topic of one of our most popular training courses. Here, we spoke to Understanding eJournal Technology co-tutor, Tracy Gardner, about the challenges of keeping up-to-date in this area.

"One of the biggest challenges publishers face is making sure their content can be easily found in the various discovery resources readers use to find journal articles, and then to ensure the steps between the reader finding the content and reading it are seamless and without barrier. There are so many potential pitfalls along the way, and this issue therefore concerns people working in production, IT, editorial, sales, marketing and customer service.

The pace of change is fast, technology is evolving all of the time and the driver for much of it has come from the libraries. Libraries are keen to ensure their patrons find and access content they have selected and purchased and by keeping them in a library intermediated environment they feel they can improve their research experience overall. Ultimately the library would like the user to start at the library website, find content they can read and not be challenged along the way.

Simon Inger and I have been running the Understanding eJournal Technology course two or three times a year for ten years now and we have never run the same course twice - it constantly needs to be updated.

Those working in customer facing roles such as sales, marketing and customer service may not fully appreciate how much library technology impacts on the way researchers find and access their content. Many people are surprised to learn that poor usage within an institution is often because something has gone wrong with the way the content is indexed within the library discovery layer, how it is set up in the library link resolver, or issues with authentication.

For those in operational or technology roles, the business technology side of eJournals can seem unnecessarily complex and, especially for those new to the industry, the way the information community works can seem counter to the way many other business sectors operate. What makes sense in classic B2B or B2C environments will not make sense within the academic research community.

By helping people who work in publishing houses understand how the eJournal technology works and how they can most effectively work with libraries to maximise discovery and use of their content. Many people who have attended our course have not been aware of the impact some of their decisions have had and our course has helped them understand why they need to work in certain ways."

Tracy Gardner will tutor on Understanding eJournal Technology in March and October 2016. Book your place now.

Mind the (data) gap… Learned Publishing special issue

Fiona Murphy (centre) talks Data at the ALPSP conference

For anyone who has ever travelled on the London Underground and endured endless repeats of ‘Mind the gap’, this special issue of Learned Publishing is your equivalent warning on data.

As funders make open data a policy stipulation, publishers must prepare for these requirements. In fact publishers are well placed to support open data, and society publishers are uniquely well placed to be a part of the solution: they are at the heart of their community and understand their needs.

But what do you do next? How can you mind your data gap and understand what it means for your organization and its community?

In this special online-only issue of Learned Publishing, the focus is purely on data. Guest edited by Alice Meadows, Director of Communications at Wiley and Fiona Murphy, STM Publisher, it is published open access with the support of Wiley.

We caught up with Alice and Fiona (who was just back from last month's European Research Council Workshop on Research Data Management and Sharing in Brussels), to talk data deluge and why now for this special issue.

So why focus on data now?

Alice: The OSTP memo from 2013 and the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Research Data Pilot are two examples of funders driving open data. Meanwhile, more data than ever are being collected. Technology is improving our ability to analyse and share them, but there are still huge barriers to that being done effectively; you’d be surprised how much data collection is still manual.

Fiona: And we still lack globally standard ways of collecting, managing, sharing, and storing data which creates a whole new set of challenges when the ultimate aim is to enable re-use and interoperability. Susan Reilly's paper provides a librarian's perspective of some of these issues, while Varsha Khodiya and her F1000 colleagues tackle data sharing, citation, and more.

What can publishers to do help?

Alice: If publishers and societies aren't careful, they will once again be playing catch-up with the funders on a growing requirement in their research communities. This is a golden opportunity to lead from the front and help researchers. In the words of Mark Hahnel in this interview on the Wiley Exchanges blog, open data can help “Opening up research data has the potential to both save lives (say with medical advances) and to enhance them with socio-economic progress.” That’s a pretty compelling argument. And societies and society publishers have a particular part to play here, as demonstrated in the paper by Hazel Norman of the British Ecological Society. 

Fiona: That’s not to say that publishers aren't already working on opening up data. My paper Data and Scholarly Publishing: the transforming landscape sets the scene and provides an overview of how publishers are responding to date.

ALPSP: What is the most important theme to emerge from the issue?

Fiona: Without a doubt, it’s the importance of collaboration. Cooperation between stakeholders is crucial to successfully opening up data. Andrew Treloar reflects on the work of the Research Data Alliance in his paper. Having recently returned from a European Research Council workshop attended by a whole cross-section of stakeholders, I can only agree that these types of coordinated action are the best way forward.

Alice: Similarly, Sarah Callaghan's paper on preserving the integrity of the scientific record shows how the scholarly community is collaborating to solve issues around data citation and linking. But if they’re not familiar with recent developments or with networks like RDA, I’d urge readers to access the articles, share with colleagues and talk through what it means for their organization. This special issue is a snapshot of views from right now - things are likely to change rapidly. We’d love to know what ALPSP members think and if they have positive examples and experiences they can share.

Learned Publishing special data issue is available now online open access on the Learned Publishing site.

Does innovation help smaller publishers?

These are exciting times in scholarly publishing, as ALPSP 2014 so amply demonstrated. But is technical innovation leaving the smaller publisher trailing behind better-resourced and larger competitors and the big technology companies? It ain’t necessarily so…

The early ‘electronic’ decades were characterized by high entry costs, modest technical skill levels, uncertainties and risk aversion. Only the larger publishers would venture to take the first cautious steps. Now the pace of technical change is almost dizzying, innovation is rampant, entry costs have fallen, skill levels are higher and, despite some apprehension, even small publishers are more comfortable with taking risks.

The fundamental elements of scholarly publishing haven’t changed that much. Authors still want to publish in the ‘best’ journals representing their community, with fast, reliable and responsive peer review. Libraries and readers still want affordability, timeliness, responsiveness to their needs. Price is important but quality and impact weigh heavily. None of these criteria are barriers to the smaller scholarly publisher.

Despite the rapidity of change, technical innovation has lowered the entry barriers, making it easier and less risky for smaller publishers and start-ups to provide new products and services: think of Peerage of Science for peer review, figshare for managing and sharing research output, DeepDyve for low-cost full-text preview, PACKT using Google to monitor technology trends and turning them into publishing opportunities, and many more initiatives reported at ALPSP 2014. Vast collaborative effort is going into standardization, data structuring, interoperability to level the playing field and make it easier for players to concentrate on their own USPs. A whole industry of service providers and outsourcers ensure that small scale is not an obstacle: intermediaries, hosts, discovery services, technology partners, CCC, CrossRef, COUNTER and more.

With all this help, small operators have the additional advantage that they can be more nimble and exploit opportunities more quickly than larger organizations. The proviso is that they understand their role, that they stay in close touch and work with their chosen academic communities, respond to their needs and constantly reinvent themselves (Coco Chanel: “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different”). Even the big beasts in the field can be helpful: Google does offer well-used, free discovery services and is responsive to complaints about the negative impact of search algorithm changes. There were calls for more lobbying of services like Google, but the question of their market dominance is perhaps best left to the competition authorities.

‘Bells and whistles’ was the somewhat pejorative term used for service characteristics that are nice to have but miss what is really important to authors. For example publishers and librarians care deeply about version control, but researchers don’t. There are a fair number of ‘predatory’ journals that offer little or no peer review even though the research community still values it highly. Impact factors are important for publishers but researchers, particularly younger ones, care more about the societal impact of their work, also reflected in the changing criteria of the Research Excellence Framework. Small publishers need to have these conversations with the research community and understand what matters to them.

It is to the credit of ALPSP that it has always been aware of the special concerns of niche publishers. It has done its best to foster skill building, provide networking opportunities, encourage standards and service provision and bring the different parts of the scholarly publishing universe together. No wonder its international conferences have been so successful!

Kurt Paulus
kurtpaulus@hotmail.co.uk

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.

The e-volution of publishing: what's new, what's changing and what's staying the same

Youngsuk 'YS' Chi, Chairman, Elsevier

The keynote opening talk at the Association of Subscription Agents annual conference was from Youngsuk 'YS' Chi, Chairman of Elsevier. he reflected on what has changed, what continues to evolve and what stays the same in the publishing industry.

The role of academics in research and teaching is evolving. There are parallels with publishers who face increasing criticism about the value they provide. Many people perceive publishers as relics from the past.

With the pace, breadth and complexity of change, the community of publishers is becoming more inclusive, more flexible and yet more nebulous. Tech companies are increasingly called publishers.

Readers habits and expectations are changing. They read an ebook and expect it to be available on any tablet format anywhere in the world at the same price.

So what does this mean for publishers' new roles? They need to provide:

• experiential content
• social media and social networks
• digital tools and solutions
• big data
• text and data mining.

Content-based experiences
The value of raw content will continue to decline with abundance. People will pay for 'content based experiences' (as compared to a football match where you pay more for a pitch-side seat for an immersive experience rather than in the 'nose bleed seats'.) With content this is happening in ways such as integrating note taking, multi-media, annotated links. All this turns content from static or dead into live and interactive.

Importance of social media and social networks
There are a number of social networks for our communities and not just Twitter (e.g. growing community of researchers on academia.edu/, ResearchGate Scientific network, Mendeley, etc). These site users can connect and come together to share papers. There is a role for publishers to facilitiate this sort of interaction for their audiences.

Digital tools and solutions
Content will always be king. However, publishers will increasingly develop tools, solutions and experiences around content. Many publishers are now technology providers, particularly in STM where they are developing digital tools to help researchers research (e.g. Digital Science exploring workflow efficiencies in science research).

Big data
Publishers must use power of big data to their advantage - to understand consumer and viewer preferences then use this insight to help improve use of content in fresh ways and understand more about the communities they serve.

Text and data mining
Increasingly more publishers are opening up content to text and data mining. Examples include CrossRef's Prospect linking text to license service, PLS Clear, a digital clearing house to allow researchers to request rights from multiple publishers from one easy to use form, and CCC has service linking to repository of XML content. This will ensure a role for publishers moving forward.

Publishers are experimenting with agile publishing, subscription models, technology, business models. Experimentation is key. We need to fail, do it often, but do it early. Innovation always moves faster than adoption. Consider where will technology exist and pave the way for the future. Chi reflected on slower take up of ebook readers than expected - according to Digital Book World statistics, 20% of US adults have downloaded an ebook; 21% in UK - where there is still lots of print use.

Chi quoted Michael Mabe about scholarly publisher functions in a digital environment:

• Registration - e.g. DOI
• Certification - e.g. CrossCheck
• Dissemination - e.g. ScienceDirect, ProQuest
• Preservation - e.g. Portico, CLOCKSS

The value of publishing: is it mind the gap or fill the gap? There's a balancing act between innovation and improvement.

Countdown to the London Book Fair: What next for data analysis? A scholarly publisher’s guide

Tuesday 16 April, 13:00 – 14:00, Thames Room, Earls Court 1

ALPSP is delighted to be hosting a panel discussion at the London Book Fair. It will bring together experts from the scholarly publishing community to demystify key terms and emerging trends in data analysis.

What next for data analysis? A scholarly publisher’s guide will help you will understand key terms and the fundamentals of data analysis. This session will provide you with an overview of the latest trends in data analysis for the scholarly and academic publishing community.

The seminar will be chaired by Lee-Ann Coleman, Head of Science, Technology and Medicine at the British Library. Lee-Ann will provide further information on the DataCite project that publishers are involved with. Panellists include:

• Brian Hole, Founder and CEO of Ubiquity Press, who will discuss linking data with humanities and social science books.
• Richard Kidd, Business Development Manager at the Royal Society of Chemistry, who will discuss RSC projects such as their semantic enrichment programme and building a domain repository for chemistry research data.
• Phil Hurst, Publisher at the Royal Society, who will discuss how the Royal Society has approached the challenge of outlining how their authors can share data associated with their journal articles with their data policy.

Entrance to the seminar is free, but you will need a ticket to the Fair. If you unable to make the session, we will be live tweeting using #alpspdata and will post a blog and photographs after the event.

Bill Matthews discusses data analytics on 15 November

HighWire is excited about contributing to the ALPSP webinar this month entitled "Analyzing Customer Data to Create Competitive Advantage".   I have been a 'numbers guy' since early in my career at A.C. Nielsen, so I understand how powerful data can be if transformed into actionable information. There are mountains of data which can be analyzed, but In order to find unique insights, you need to not only access to the information, but also the tools which allow you to manipulate, store, and create custom data sets in real time.  

Analytics touches many aspects of scholarly publishing; content creation, editorial, marketing and sales, product packaging/pricing, and audience development.  Typical business questions can include most read articles, turnaway reports, usage for a specific event such as an annual conference, or simply tracking your content's overall performance. For my section of the webinar, I plan on examining a few of these potential questions and how to extract "valuable nuggets" from data analysis which can provide powerful editorial and marketing insights.

I hope many of you can make it on November 15th!

Bill

For more details on the webinar and to sign up, visit the ALPSP website.  If you can't make the 15th, make sure you sign up to get access to the webinar later.

Bill Matthews
Director of Business Development
HighWire Press | Stanford University

(o) 650-725-9279
(m) 650-208-4643
bmatthews@highwire.stanford.edu

HighWire:  Pathfinders in Scholarly Publishing