What societies want from a publishing partner

Abstract

Societies, whose publishing programmes are primarily mission‐driven, play a unique role in funding and disseminating research. But by their nature – often small and with limited resources – they are particularly prone to the turbulence currently affecting scholarly publishing. BMJ Journals is itself a society publisher but also publishes under contract for other societies. During 2008, we carried out research to assess societies' evolving needs from their publishing partnerships. The changing expectations and behaviours of the next generation of researchers are considered to be as much of a threat as declining revenues. Societies are planning to expand professional development activities and to maximise their use of emerging technologies to help maintain and grow membership. Although surplus is a low priority for societies and, accordingly, for their publishing programmes, a high financial return is nonetheless a key criterion when choosing publishing partners – as are reputation, technological innovation, and individual title development.

The journal publishing services agreement: A guide for societies

“…Societies enter into PSAs for a variety of reasons (Ashman, ). Those societies contemplating such an agreement must weigh the potential benefits a PSA might bring against its possible pitfalls (Ware, ).…”

The Two-Way Street of Open Access Journal Publishing: Flip It and Reverse It

“…One common trait among these instances seems to be connected to society or association journals entering into a partnership with a professional publisher. Previous research on the aims of scholarly societies entering into publishing partnerships revealed predominantly financial motives and, hence, a preference of commercial publishers over non-profits [98]. Fyfe et al [99] (p. 9) explain, "The role of society publishing and university presses in relation to their parent institutions has been tacitly recast: rather than a direct service to scholarship, publishing has become a tool for generating income that can be put to good purpose (for instance, by funding conferences, travel grants or student bursaries)."…”

A Team Approach: Library Publishing Partnerships with Scholarly Societies

“…Interestingly, Waltham (2008) determined that the primary rationale for society memberships is the professional networking available through annual conferences and member activities. Ashman (2009) reported that events were nearly equally important as journals to members of 22 societies surveyed. Suzuki summarizes this for the Journal of Neurochemistry: "Although the Journal is the major source of income of the ISN [International Society of Neurochemistry], one of the major pros of society-owned journals is that their predominant purpose is not commerce but service to their membership community" (Suzuki et al, 2016, p. 23).…”

“…Business models employed to publish scholarly society journals vary. It is not uncommon for scholarly societies to work with for-profit publishers through collaborative or contracted publishing services, particularly since the advent of digital publishing raised the costs for publishing technology and expertise that is out-of-reach for some societies (McGonagle-O'Connell & Ratan, 2019;Schloss et al, 2017;Ashman, 2009). However, there is growing concern that for-profit scholarly communication undercuts scholarly society publications, and through loss of publication revenue, society missions (e.g., Nugent, Edriss, Ball, & Bjork, 2019;Schloss et al, 2017;Suzuki et al, 2016).…”