Perspectives

In a podcast episode of Reboot IT, Dave Coriale, President of Delcor, enlists the help of C&E’s Colleen Scollans to explore customer data platforms (CDPs), why CDPs are gaining traction in the 501c community, and whether (and why) one might be in your future. It is 44 minutes of distilled wisdom (perfect for your next dog walk) – well worth the time of anyone working at a professional association or academic society in any capacity.

C&E Practice Lead Colleen Scollans is interviewed in an article by BlueConic, a Customer Data Platform. In the article, she shares her perspectives on how scholarly and professional publishers and associations today are shifting to a broader audience mindset, and the importance of first party data in this transformation. Colleen also offers her views on how a disciplined and iterative approach to marketing technology selection and adoption is essential – with business goals, use cases, and talent aligned to tech capabilities.

Marketing Technology (MarTech) is transforming how organizations market, optimize customer and user experience, and leverage data and analytics. With over 8,000 tools, the technology landscape is complex and MarTech projects are notoriously hard. Succesful marketing technology adoption requires discipline and a focused strategic approach. This article presents a framework for successful marketing technology adoption.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in trade book publishing has accelerated over the last two years, a trend that is expected to continue post-pandemic. In a low-growth publishing environment and in an industry that increasingly rewards scale, M&A activity is a useful growth strategy for publishers and a plausible exit strategy for owners of independent publishers.

Societies have two fundamental choices when it comes to publishing their journals: they can remain independent, managing all facets of the publication business, or they can work with a larger commercial or not‐for‐profit publisher. If a society chooses to work with a larger publisher, it will invariably do so via a publishing services agreement. This article discusses the challenges and complexities facing independent society publishers and the reasons why some societies choose to enter into publisher services agreements, whereas others choose to remain independent.

Community perceptions of peer review have significant stakes for publishers of medical and scientific journals. The value delivered by peer review in the eyes of the community is directly tied to the value of a society’s journal portfolio. Given its critical role in the research ecosystem, we must consider the future of peer review as well—whether it is delivering on its promise, how it might evolve, and what implications this may have for journal publishers, authors, and readers.

Scholarly publishers – especially those in the STM fields – are increasingly enriching their content with an array of metadata with the aim of ensuring that content is distributed broadly, adaptable for multiple purposes, and rendered interoperable with other relevant content. The options available continue to grow, and the value added to content grows as well. Semantic enrichment is an additional class of metadata that further improves the utility, discovery, and interoperability of content.