Disruption, development and divestment: lessons to learn from the B2C market

Richard Padley, CEO, Semantico

Richard Padley, Chairman and CEO of Semantico kicked off the Disruption, Development and Divestment seminar with a session reflecting on what publishers can learn about providing services to the end-user. How are the 'new' users actually buying and consuming content and services?

There has been a shift for publishers from Intellectual Property landlord to IP traders. (This model is drawn from an MIT study on business models).

Search exerts incredibly powerful forces on all our business. There is a whole industry of search engine optimisation. But we don't seem to spend a lot of time thinking of that. Some businesses have a focus on it, some don't. We don't have nearly enough emphasis or ownership on SEO in the industry.

When Semantico implemented SEO strategy on one product they saw 3000% increase in unique users - new and repeat. But then it flatlined - clearly Google changed the rules. What they essentially had was a freemium model, but Google decided that this could only apply to newspapers. In the end they had to change the strategy for that product to respond. Google have a thing for free content - politically as well as from search point of view.  A couple of years ago they stopped indexing content behind paywalls, except for journal articles. There is a whole range of virtuous properties of doing search right. Search is incredibly powerful and incredibly important because of that.

User experience is the manifestation through products and services of business needs and the expression of customers needs. UX runs entirely through a business. You can liken it to an iceberg: there are the elements above the water you can see (MS submission, etc). But what about those underneath? In some cases, we have incredibly byzantine routes to content (number of clicks for a Shibboleth login). We still force our users to use logins, passwords and other protocols in a way that would never happen in the B2C world.

With mobile there's a bit of 'build it and they will come' mentality. But if you are seeing low levels of usage, that will probably be because your site is not responsive and users can't use it effectively. Responsive design makes your site fluid and flexible so you can retain, branding, user experience and flow of site. Think about the proportion of users that will instantly benefit. On PDFs: are we going to build faster horses? PDFs are incredibly difficult to read on mobile. ePub3 is far superior. Again, build it and they will come.

Richard finished by considering big data asking: how scientific are we being in deterring growth areas for programme development? Exactly who are we turning away? Are we looking at analytics in a way B2C businesses do? Are we considering conversions? It's not just about sales, but also downloads - how well are you converting user journeys from Google through into actual downloads? Some of this is about being proactive rather than reactive. Also about looking at the net effect on consumers.

Richard Padley spoke at the ALPSP seminar Disruption, development and divestment held in London on Tuesday 17 March 2015.

Don’t let disruption scare you, it’s just another word for opportunity

Don't be scared, it's only disruption

Phill Jones is Head of Publisher Outreach at Digital Science. Here, in a guest post, he argues that disruption isn't scary...

"For publishers, societies and other stakeholders in scholarly communication, innovation and its scarier sibling, disruption can be seen either as a threat, a challenge, or as an opportunity. Particularly for smaller players, it can be very tough to look at the innovation landscape with it’s plethora of technologies, start-up companies and initiatives and decide just where to invest valuable time and effort, not to mention development budget.

The problem doesn't begin and end with technology either. Business models are evolving and the nature of sales channels is beginning to change. At the recent Association of Subscription Agents conference in London, Derk Haank, CEO of Springer, pointed out that in the past 4 years, the journal market share for subscription agents has fallen from 54% to 40%. That’s a massive shift in such a short time. Particularly in light of the recent SWETS bankruptcy, it’s important to go beyond thinking about revenue sources and try to figure out what the sales and revenue channels of the future may be.

On the 17th of March, I'm going to be chairing a seminar for ALPSP at SCI in London titled Disruption, Development and Divestment where we’re going to try to get at some of these complex questions. In the mean-time, here are some of my own thoughts about the state of innovation and what’s next. These may or may not reflect the opinions of the other speakers, you’ll have to come along to find out.

There’s more to platform innovation than user experience

Platform innovation can get a bit of a bad name. The traditional view of web design, focusing on stickiness and design layout can often be dismissed as mere bells and whistles. The persistence of the PDF as the dominant container for academic articles supports this view but is this finally beginning to change? Platform innovation that makes a difference adds real value in the form of new functionality and information. Data sharing, altmetrics, and multi-media all represent new but very real needs of today's authors and readers.

If you want to know what authors will need next, follow the money

Academic researchers are pressed for time and like it or not, they’d actually far prefer to be in the lab, the field, or the library doing research than sat at a computer figuring out how to upload a data set or even write an article (at least that’s true for most of them). So why do researchers communicate at all? Because funders insist that they do so. For some reason, they feel that they’re entitled to proof that their money is being spent wisely. Emboldened by the growth of open access publishing, that has in part been driven by mandates, funders are increasingly asking authors and institutions to communicate in new and diverse ways. In short, funder mandates and funding preferences dictate author needs.

Open access won’t be the last new business model to make an impact

With the role of the subscription agent under threat due to falling margins and market share, the question of what the intermediary of the future will look like is becoming pressing. The major players in the space are already pivoting to become more like technology providers and technology providers are creating connections throughout the industry that organically lead to new distribution channels. What will these new revenue sources and channels look like? Well that remains to be seen, but some people have been arguing for some time that publishers can identify sources of revenue outside of selling licensed content.

My three predictions above pose more questions than they answer. Innovation is a complex subject and there are many questions still to be addressed when it comes to open access, open science, data publication, business models and sustainability. On March 17th, myself and a number of wiser speakers than I will try to get to the bottom of some of it. We’ll try to put some of this into perspective and hopefully, there will be some take-home lessons that will help put all this scary talk of disruption into perspective.

See you in London."

Book online for Disruption, Development and Divestment.

Follow coverage on the day via Twitter #alpspdisruption

The Future of Reference Publishing

David Hughes from Wiley

Reference publishing has undergone a truly profound change in the last decade, from an almost exclusively print-based business to one where online delivery has become the norm, with regular updating, live integrated cross-references, multiple concurrent users, intelligent use of colour and increasing functionality.

David Hughes, Editorial Director for Major Works at John Wiley and Sons, outlined the challenges publishers face to ensure reference is to retain its place as an important gateway to knowledge and learning. The Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry was first printed in 1914 in the German edition. The first English language print edition was in 1985. It was first online in 2000 and the seventh print edition was published in 2011 (40 print volumes, 30,000 pages).

Online is now the driving force behind the project. It is updated six times a year and they introduce new initiatives (for example the 'smart article', shorter versions to entice people in). Online is the new norm for reference publishing now. They publish high quality, fantastic reference content, and do exciting and clever things they couldn't do in print. But is that enough for their librarian and end user customers? No. The main challenge for reference today is to ensure the use of reference mains relevant and important to a new generation of librarians, educators, students and researchers.

One challenge is that of free content, specifically, Wikipedia. It's not going away, everyone uses it. For many purposes it is good enough for what is needed. They need to articulate what makes their content better and more relevant.

Usage is a deciding factor for librarians. If they don't see products being used, they won't buy it. As a result, more thought has to be given about the pain points for end users to encourage usage. They need to articulate and enhance its value. Reference doesn't exist in a vacuum, and is not an end in itself. It is used more widely with other resources. End users need to see improved outcomes in their daily work whether finding information quickly or improved references in an end of term paper or research project. They need confidence in the content. Where does it come from, who from, is it up to date?

They have analysed and researched the student workflow for the Blackwell's Encyclopedia of Sociology. The key parts where reference came into play was when they get background information and narrow the topic down and then when they move on to research via the university library database. In the former, they want to make sense of the topic, play with keywords, feel confident in the subject. It has provided insight into how to improve the reference product: fitting into the workflows of end users is critical.

Wiley StatsRef: Statistics Reference Online was developed to be an dynamic online reference resource for the global statistics community, covering fundamentals and applications areas. They used Wiley's rich statistics reference portfolio as a starting point, carefully editorially curate and enhance the content to develop a product much greater than the sum of its parts. It was launched in 2014 with more than 6,000 articles with a bespoke taxonomy to help users have a logical and straightforward way to browsing through the content. They plan to grown and enhance by regularly adding new and updated articles, add whole new topic areas and develop new functionalities e.g. to enable users to interact with charts and data.

For the future, they will develop a bespoke new platform for reference publishing to host all major reference works to make it easier and more intuitive to use, more discoverable and to enhance the collections. These elements go hand in hand with user needs and individual collection development.

Hughes feels confident about the future of reference content. High quality is crucial, but not enough. We need to address end user workflow requirements and to be differentiated from freely available content.

Books. Pah! It's all just stuff

Toby Green from OECD. And sheep.

Digital puts the user in the driving seat, and from a user's perspective, the content in books is no different from the content in journals, grey literature or even databases. It's all just stuff that answers a question the user has or gives them tuition or the tools to do their work. But why do publishers still insist on presenting their stuff online in containers that replicate those determined by analogue processes?

Toby Green, Head of Publishing at OECD explained how after user research, they created a new portal for datasets that allows users to discover all of OECD's data-driven content, and especially the content found in its books. http://data.oecd.org

The OECD has lots of stuff that they produce. It might be a journal article, a dataset, a working paper, book or not-really-sure-what-it-is. Generally, the books they produce are written and produced in two weeks. The Secretary General of the OECD needs to turn things around very quickly to make available for national governments. People don't want a product, they just want the relevant stuff on a topic. So they went out to talk to users to see what their tasks were.

User profiles were generated with typical tasks. What they also said is that they don't want a data portal, they just want to find the answer to their query. They knew it was there, but didn't know how to find it. It was a big change to the project as they had to change the scope. They ended up with a data rebuttal engine. Within a few minutes you can get answers to so many questions or assertions.

The OECD iLibrary enables people to download, embed and share data. If they want premium content to print and download they can pay. Green calls it premium open access, which he believes is a much better model than other existing ones. They offer web, spreadsheet, book, chapter and document. By allowing embedding, they aren't giving away content, they are gaining usage statistics on traffic as well as promotion. The idea of letting go of content which is a vital part of their mission, but also of their business model so they can be sustainable and pay the bills.

They have a technical term for their programme: Russian Doll publishing. It has had an extraordinary impact on their readership. They have seen growth in chapter downloading, but they still see strong demand for books.

Transforming the RMM: A case study in health sciences

Antonia Seymour from Wiley

There has been significant investment in digital transformation of book content in the health sciences. Antonia Seymour, VP and Publishing Director for Professional Practice and Learning at John Wiley and Sons, explained how they had developed the Royal Marsden Manual of Clinical Nursing Procedures (RMM) for the nursing community.

With the RMM, they are simultaneously publishing in 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. The book is published against a background where the NHS is in a challenging environment. Hospital admissions are growing every day, there's an ageing population, patents have complex conditions, more people are waiting (and queuing) in A&E departments. Important to understand nursing requirements within that.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council states that nurses have the knowledge and skills for safe and effective practice without direct supervision. Nurses also have to keep knowledge and skills up to date throughout their working life. The RMM is designed to address these needs and pain points.

The Royal Marsden Trust is a Centre for Excellence for cancer. Wiley have a publishing partnership with them. RMM started out as an in-house manual of best practices. An astute editor suggested this could be useful more widely and that it should be published. It is now the nursing bible for clinical skills. Evolved over 30 years to be the market leader.

In 2004 after extensive research, they went into four different editions, in colour, in a pocket book to take round the ward, in a ring binder with laminated procedure cards. These may seem parochial now, but were all about portability on the ward. They now have the professional edition, student edition (full of pedagogical features), and a truly online edition which is increasingly favoured by the market, which includes a workflow tool. The success has been based on continuous refinement in response to research with nurses.

Market research is conducted with newly qualified nurses, experienced staff, mentors/preceptors of students and newly qualified nurses, ward managers and clinical governance nurses. It is a multi-million dollar product so they invest a lot. The market wants quick and easy answers to their question.

There are over 200 procedures (including hand washing) which has been tabulated online so you can get to equipment, procedure or medication part of it. All content is graded by level of evidence. They've made an incredibly google-like search on the home page. Customisable content is included so Trusts can clarify local policy, annotate procedures guidelines and support information to reflect local practice. The online edition is now contributing just over 60% of revenues. For hospitals and trusts is sold on a three year licence based on number of beds. In academic institutions, it's based on number of students.

Institutional sales team, roadshows, webinars, case study in journal, corporate marketing and telemarketing all tools used to sell and market the product. In the future they will continue with market research, look to expand the franchise, develop the online edition, continually update and hopefully include broader Wiley content.

What next for humanities books?

Anthony Cond, Liverpool University Press

Many publishers now spend less time understanding the underlying cultures of the specific research communities they serve. The humanities has been accompanied by rhetoric of perpetual crisis, with contemporary concerns over utility, research income generation, the allocation of resources and the quest for impact, all in a digital context. Anthony Cond, Managing Director of Liverpool University Press, asked how publishers can speak to these concerns, support authors, build readership and understand how innovations are received by the community.

When it comes to understanding the present, we need to take into account the historical performance of humanities students. As a discipline it peaked in the 60s. What we're seeing now is a fairly consistent level. Today, in the UK just over 10,000 full time equivalent researchers were submitted to the REF 2014 with quality coming third.

In 2014 the JISC survey found 95% of humanities respondents viewed writing a monograph as important or very important for career purposes. Half felt it was difficult or very difficult for someone at their career stage and in their discipline to do so. Only 10% found it difficult or very difficult to access a monograph. There was also an even preference for print and digital books.

Is there an issue around understanding (or not) of DDA or STL? The primary purpose of DDA is to align library purchasing with scholarly activity. Not about saving money. Social scientists are more likely to buy a book, humanities scholars more likely to borrow from the library.

When understanding impact, publication is dissemination, impact is about getting outside of the academy. In the UK, research publications have to have a wider application. They need to be written to be read. This shows the editorial craft value that publishers can add. They need to capture its use, citation and influence. Consider having an impact section on your book proposals.

The humanities remain viable and the monograph is still important. Scholars will want books with greater potential for impact, greater editorial input, available in print and digital. Cond closes by quoting Rick Anderson: it's not about innovation, it's about relevance.

Frances Pinter, Manchester University Press

Frances Pinter is CEO of Manchester University Press and Founder of Knowledge Unlatched, a new approach to funding scholarly research.

She reflected on the challenges and opportunities afforded by the impetus towards digital research tools, digital output, multiple formats and open access in a humanities context.

Characterising the humanities is difficult because the boundaries are least well defined. Everything about digital means that these boundaries are being redrawn. As publishers, we need to better understand what is happening to the knowledge infrastructure in and between disciplines.

What's changing? Selecting and analysing data is transforming how humanities can describe what they do. Control of dissemination is evolving and changing. With scholars and scholarship, using digital techniques is not new, but it's becoming more visible. In the US, there is more recruitment in digital scholarship, peer review is changing and there is a new role called 'Alt Ac' - not tenured and happy with that. Part teaching, part practical, part interdisciplinary. Crucially, interdisciplinary is not on the table, it IS the table. How do scholars go about managing that?

There is a real opportunity with the long tail of humanities publishing - the ongoing longer life of sales. Publishers can lead in helping with new forms of peer review. They can be clear about the value of brands. They can help authors in this transition to be better communicators. Not everyone can be a Brian Cox, but publishers can help with initiatives such as Thema (a new coding structure to deal with interdisciplinarity), Kudos, etc.

Paul Spence, Digital Humanities, King's College London

Paul Spence is a senior lecturer in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London. He observed that it is often stated that the humanities have been slower than other academic sectors to react to the information age. Yet they have the most to gain from digital innovation.

With a background in collaborative scholarly resource projects in the humanities, often with a strong emphasis on modelling and XML and semantic web type technologies. He doesn't have a particular vision as the longer he's worked in this area, the more questions he realises there is.

Web technologies are increasingly open so that humans and machines can analyse. In the humanities, when compared to huge transformations in society, this isn't the same in these disciplines.

The biggest criticism of digital humanities at the moment is that it mimics non-digital version. They also tend to be very textual without connecting to geospatial evidence for example. There's also not much evidence of the performance related (e.g. for drama). There is potential to develop new visualisation using textual and historical data. There was much made of the social potential breaking down walls between creator, writer, audience. That's not really come to fruition.

In the digital humanities, a lot of time is spent trying to enrich what is essentially inert information, meaning that it's not that dynamic or engaging for the user. We should also consider if there is more potential for aggregation and disaggregation?

Integrating Digital Papryology is a Mellon funded project that attempts to document group collaborative peer review. Another interesting aspect is the idea of the enhanced publication model. Rich internet publication is not limited to report the results, but also allows interrogation of underlying data sets and models. Not common at the moment, but may become more prevalent in the future. They have a number of ongoing partnerships - including with publishers - that are very important in rethinking the future of the scholarly book. 

Books and scholarly communities: retrospect and prospect

Richard Fisher, formerly CUP

Academic books are a rather more complex and variegated subset of scholarly communication than is often articulated. Publishing has often remained fragmented and sometimes defiantly artisanal in approach, particularly in the arts and social sciences. Have book publishers drawn the right inferences from the digital transition, and have they forgotten some of the most important early impacts of that transition which nonetheless retain significance today?

Richard Fisher, formerly Managing Director of the CUP's Academic Division considered these issues while looking ahead, to the myriad of disciplinary, institutional, financial and access issues with which academic book publishing is confronted.

He noted that we have a curiously unchanged publisher landscape. There hasn't been a PLOS or BioMed Central in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Why is this? High entry costs relative to publishing opportunities. Long term gestation, scholarly conservatism and the complex interaction of career tenure and the continued rise of American University Presses might be other factors.

Is there a crisis in scholarly book publishing? Monograph outputs have doubled in the past decade. It is impossible to read all of them. So what is the crisis if there is still plenty to publish and read? So far, e-publishing has not yet disturbed the continuum of publishing formats in these disciplines. What has happened to the course-book used for graduate and undergraduate teaching. Small scale adoption is possible with short print runs. The retail presence is chipped away by Amazon. Is this type of research book facing extinction or will it carry on? (He suspects that latter). What caused the shift of focus even more onto the backlist? How much emphasis is placed on the backlist with marketing and sales efforts?

Are these factors indicative of a blip or part of a more fundamental shift and evolution of the research book market? Why do we discuss non-institutional customers so little? The majority of sales come from institutions, and yet we don't engage with the readers/users of monographs.

Is there a transatlantic divide in open access? The role of UK governmental agencies in OA and other initiatives within EU/ESF, HEFCE and RCUK/Wellcome research funding is counter to the international structure of publishers. Academic book publication in the UK is fundamentally an export activity, and potentially only viable in that context. It is often undercapitalised and under digitised. International markets and translations are also at risk with the uptake of Creative Commons.

Fisher cites how emphatically scholarly books can be cross-over trade books. Serious historical research, for example, can have a popular appeal unmatched by any other subject. If you look at the conclusions of the agent Andrew Wylie and HEFCE/RCUK (who both want the widest possible dissemination) they draw vastly different conclusions.

Much of the most powerful and polemical OA advocacy come from those outside the formal academy, or the marginalised within: for those inside, different motivations need to apply. Fisher believes there still needs to be a step change in consumption of and enthusiasm for long form e-outputs among humanities and social sciences scholars. Yet the rate of transition is very slow.

Intellectual Property is a growing arena of contest. It is a huge issue for humanists and social scientists. Arguments are fierce around licensing (including Creative Commons). It's sets authority against collaborative working. You also need to bear in mind that law does not necessarily mean US or California law. US and UK law are very different. This needs to be taken account of.

Fisher is a great advocate for campus calling and going to see people in the institution. We need to look afresh at what we do and ensure that we ask the right questions. In a world of scarcity (above all of time) we must ask ourselves, is it any good?