Perspectives

C&E Practice Lead Colleen Scollans spoke on a panel at Silverchair's 2023 Platform Strategies on how open access has shifted publishers to B2C data-driven marketing with a focus on the author and author experience. This requires new technologies and new ways of working – along with new skills and strategies. Here are our key takeaways from the session.

An audience-centric mindset is table-stakes to growing revenues and competing in the OA world. A data-driven audience strategy serves not only an organization’s current customers, but also the broader global audience that engages with its products, content, and brand. In this article, we explore what it takes for publishers and associations to build an effective audience strategy.

In this insightful Q&A with Nicko Goncharoff of Osmanthus Consulting, with whom C&E partnered to develop International STM Publishing in China: State of the Market Report 2023 – we explore China’s recent publishing sector and research assessment reforms. We demonstrate how international publishers and publishing service providers can navigate the dynamic and unique China market.

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.

This article is part two of our Author Experience (AX) series, where we anchor the concept of AX more concretely. We present our model for working towards AX maturity: positive author perceptions that translate to increased article submission, resubmission, and referral. As organizations advance the six pillars outlined in this article, they progress their AX maturity and set themselves up for success in today’s evolving publishing landscape.

A seismic shift has taken place in scholarly publishing, putting authors forefront of marketing efforts. This is not just a shift in messaging. Marketing to authors requires new tools, techniques, and expertise. Publishers that are able to make this transition more rapidly are gaining a competitive advantage over those that move slower.  

At the heart of all successful organizations is a well-planned and executed marketing strategy. While successful marketing strategies incorporate some tried-and-true practices and marketing disciplines, increasingly, they rely on understanding and harnessing marketing technology.

The last few years have been a period of rapid market consolidation in scholarly publishing. In addition to publishers acquiring smaller publishers, we are seeing an ongoing decline in the number of the independent society publishers as more and more continue to sign on with larger publishing partners.

The optimal marketing structure is a critical component of a successful marketing function. It is also an intensely debated topic. The structural debate is often framed as a binary choice between a centralized structure and a decentralized structure. Since both centralized and decentralized structures have compelling advantages and notable drawbacks, organizations feel as if they are faced with an impossible choice. Fortunately, there is another, and much better, way forward.

The recent announcement that Penguin Random House is pursuing an acquisition of Simon & Schuster points to an emerging paradigm, the publishing company that serves as a nexus for much of an industry’s activity. There are lessons here for STM publishing, too, as one can imagine Elsevier (or even ResearchGate) moving in this direction. A 360° competitor not only looks to its legacy customer base but also develops a strategy that radiates in all directions, becoming the partner of friends and rivals alike. Scale and imagination are prerequisites for this strategy, but the strategy also demands a willingness to unbundle the primary publishing platform and make it available to all comers.