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Publishing Services Agreements

The Most Important Decision Your Organization Will Make

The selection and successful negotiation of a publishing services agreement often represents the single largest contract an organization will sign.

The Publishing Services Agreement

Associations and other not-for-profit organizations that produce journals have two broad options: They can remain independent (self-publishing), managing all facets of their publication business. Alternatively, they can work with a larger commercial or not‐for‐profit publisher. Under this later arrangement, the association will continue to own the journal and maintain full editorial control, but will outsource production, distribution, and other business matters to the publisher.

If a society chooses to work with a larger publisher, it will invariably do so via a publishing services agreement (PSA). For most associations, their PSA represents the highest value contract entered into by the organization. The choice of publisher — and negotiation of terms — may be the most consequential financial decisions your association will make over the next decade.

High Stakes Negotiations

The most prominent scientific and scholarly organizations in the world turn to C&E for high-stakes publishing negotiations. In aggregate, we have negotiated over a billion dollars in journal contracts — including nine-figure deals. We have successfully successfully negotiated placements on behalf of our clients with all the major publishers in the market, including Elsevier, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and Wolters Kluwer.

C&E routinely works with both societies that already work with a larger publisher and are seeking to renegotiate their PSA or evaluate other options, as well as societies that are currently independent and are exploring a PSA for the first time. While we work with the largest professional associations, we also work with smaller organizations, many of whom own high-quality titles that are essential for their communities.

We have developed a market-tested approach that is commensurate to the stakes involved for our clients.

The Agency Model

C&E approaches the selection of a publishing partner and negotiation of publishing agreements differently that other consulting firms. We believe that the selection of a publisher and the resulting negotiations should not be run as procurement or vendor selection process. This is because it is a licensing negotiation. And one that often represents the single largest source of revenue for our clients. Societies (and consultants) that do not realize this distinction — and run publishing services RFPs like vendor selection RFPs —  are likely to leave (what can be large sums of) money on the table.

C&E’s agency model is designed specifically for the complexity and nuances of journal PSAs. It combines a high level of financial analysis, a strategic perspective, and point-by-point deal making, with a content licensing orientation. The agency model is focused not simply on running a process but on delivering an outcome. That outcome is a strong strategic relationship underpinned by favorable financial terms.

Information Asymmetry

The leads to the primary reason for issuing an RFP: the asymmetry of information between societies and large commercial enterprises. This asymmetry arises because commercial publishers negotiate and sign a great number of PSAs with societies every year (and indeed, in some cases, every month). Because of this, they have far more information at their disposal about journal valuation, market conditions, competitive dynamics, typical financial offers, and contract terms than a society that has never issued a publishing services RFP before or only does so once every 5–10 years. It is therefore incumbent upon a society contemplating entering into negotiations with a larger publisher to work to reduce this information asymmetry. The RFP process (especially when accompanied by a situation analysis) is designed to do exactly this.

Emerging Issues

Through our broad base of consulting work and analysis for our industry publications, The Brief and our Industry Trends Report, C&E stays on top of emerging issues in scholarly publishing. We routinely study the strategies of the major publishers and how those strategies interplay with society journals. Several emerging areas of publishing strategy are becoming decision factors and/or negotiation points in publisher selection and publisher agreements. Examples include the issue of data sovereignty, AI licensing, transformative agreements, and research integrity. These topics were uncommon (or unheard of) a decade ago but now are factoring into most publisher agreements. C&E has been out in front in considering their implications for society journals and helping our clients think through the issues that will be important to them not just on the day they sign their contract but through the end of the contract term. Topics that are emerging now may loom much larger in 7 – 10 years.

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