Strategic Assessment to Answer the Question: Should We Launch Our Own Society Journal?
Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions
Strategic and Operational Guidance
A society involved in editorial leadership (but not ownership) of a medical journal explores the idea of launching its own journal.
Background
For many years, SCAI had been providing successful editorial leadership for the Wiley-owned journal Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions (CCI). Upon the start of a renewal process to continue the SCAI/Wiley relationship, SCAI determined that it would be valuable to take a closer look at both the intellectual and the financial aspects of its CCI editorial activities, and to assess whether they were well aligned with the Society’s goals. At the same time, SCAI was conducting a search for the next Editor in Chief for CCI. C&E was retained to assist in advisory guidance on the EIC search and to help SCAI develop a long-term publishing strategy.
What We Did
To assist with both SCAI’s current publishing arrangement and its potential publishing aspirations, C&E first provided a series of briefings on editor compensation and management structure, EIC performance evaluation, and EIC selection processes. We then undertook a landscape analysis to look at the competitive journals space in cardiology and conducted a series of interviews with SCAI volunteer, editorial, and staff leadership to identify key priorities of the Society. The resulting Situation and Options Analysis Report served as the basis for a C&E-facilitated publishing strategy workshop in which SCAI discussed potential options. A C&E presentation to the SCAI Board served to conclude the project.
Outcome
Having reviewed its strategic priorities as a Society and the benefits and risks of its current publishing activities (including financial impacts on making changes versus maintaining the status quo), SCAI determined that launching a new, fully owned journal would better serve both SCAI and its membership than continuing in its current position with CCI. SCAI immediately retained C&E to manage a request-for-proposal (RFP) process to select a publishing partner for the new journal. After a highly competitive process, SCAI selected Elsevier as its partner and successfully launched JSCAI, a gold OA journal, in January 2022. The journal is outperforming early estimates.