Key points

• The UK policy landscape supports access for the users whilst allowing publishers to maintain business models.
• Advancements such as EPUB 3, aligning publishing with web technologies, and the Inclusive Publishing hub help publishers reach accessibility compliance.
• Print impairment is not an on/off switch, and each reader has his or her own unique set of requirements – a fact that is supported by EPUB 3.
• The time is ripe for publishers to make firm commitments to accessibility initiatives.

Key points

• Current publishing restrictions cause duplicated – and wasted – effort to delivery of accessible information to students.
• Universities have a legal obligation to provide access, but this is not required from publishers.
• Initiatives to support access are helpful, but do not completely resolve the accessibility problems.

Key points

• Early career researchers (ECRs) consider journals the central form of communication – but are concerned about pressure to publish.
• ECRs want to share but currently accept the closed publishing system because of the need to build a traditional reputation.
• ECRs know – and appear to care – little about publishers but trust them as publishing and reviewing facilitators.
• Editors are criticized for not managing peer review with better selection of reviewers.
• Megajournals are not seen as the future journal form and criticized for lack of selectivity.
• ECRs want open access/science in principle but are circumspect about their contribution to it.
• ResearchGate is a key force for change as ECRs consider it a mainstay communication and reputation platform.

Key points

• Instructions to authors about submitting papers for publication vary hugely – from none at all to whole handbooks.
• Online submission systems have not reduced the complexity of submission and may have increased the work of authors.
• Electronic submission processes do not appear to have been adequately ‘road tested’ with authors.
• Some publishers are introducing more flexible submission rules that may help authors.

Key points

• Most employers offer skill‐based training, but formal mentoring programmes are rare.
• Training tends to be responsibility‐specific and organization‐centric, with fast‐tracking of stand‐out individuals.
• Cross‐organizational mentoring can be more objective and multidisciplinary and support publishers’ needs for innovation.
• Mentoring programmes usually focus on early careers, and there is little support for senior publishing professionals.
• All professional development requires engagement from all parties – no pull without push!

• Access management (AM) is a critical, but often overlooked, enabler for publishers looking to expand the appeal of their online resources.
• This article examines why publishers underinvest in AM, and provides practical examples of how this impacts productivity and growth across the organization.
• Three AM trends that offer new growth opportunities are also explored: (i) enabling a wider range of customer types and business models, (ii) supporting a more diverse range of access scenarios, and (iii) facilitating greater personalization through identity management.
• Publishers need to review their AM strategy in light of these opportunities. In particular, publishers that currently support AM in‐house should outsource to specialist vendors if they are not fully committed to investing the expertise and time needed to support this increasing sophistication.

• Access to Research is an online service for local libraries across the UK.
• Many large STM publishers have provided free walk‐in access to their content.
• The initiative is in response to a recommendation in the government‐commissioned ‘Finch Report’ on improving access to publically funded research.
• The service has just completed a 2‐year pilot, and toward the end of the pilot, research was commissioned to understand its impact.
• The research demonstrated the value of the service to local library users, so publishers’ local libraries have decided to continue providing the service.

Key points

• Although ‘peer review’ has quasi‐sacred status, times are changing, and peer review is not necessarily a single and uniformly reliable gold standard.
• For publishers, peer review is a process not an outcome.
• Academics understand peer review, but are often ignorant about the quality checking mechanisms within wider publishing.
• Self‐publishing has led to the much wider availability of publishing services – these now being used by all stakeholders in publishing.
• How should universities evaluate comment and ideas that were first disseminated within a non‐academic market?
• Rather than an upper house, is peer review today more of a galley kitchen?

Key points

• With increased pressure on longstanding society business models, society journal publishers must pursue more aggressive growth strategies to remain competitive.
• A practitioner‐focused book portfolio that translates research into practice offers an opportunity to establish an alternative revenue stream and an additional path for society member engagement.
• Societies are in a unique position to capitalize on their existing connections to industry via their membership base.
• Brief, easy‐to‐consume content and interactive tools are of the greatest appeal to the practitioner audience.
• Focusing on shorter, template‐driven formats and more frequent updates allows society publishers to develop content more rapidly and at lower cost.
• Challenges include incentivizing society members to author and review the content, identifying individuals who are capable of doing so, and obtaining adequate internal resources.

Key points

• Publishers must think of their websites as marketing tools as well as content delivery systems.
• The five major strategies of content marketing are promotion, personalization, targeting, consumerization, and analysis and optimization.
• Publishers must treat readers as customers, not simply as end users.
• Content marketing is about the environment in which content exists, as well as the form that it takes.
• To compete with pirate sites, publishers need to provide a richer user experience.
• Content marketing benefits authors and readers as well as publishers.
• Readers want the same enjoyable user experience and tailored content on all sites they visit.
• Content marketing can increase site traffic, lengthen visits, boost revenues, thwart piracy, and heighten brand impact.

Key points

• Centralizing discovery knowledge can improve operational efficiencies while educating and empowering publisher staff.
• Streamlining publishers’ metadata creation and distribution can help improve relationships across the supply chain.
• Working together to optimize discovery workflows benefits publishers, discovery service partners, and institutional customers.

Key points

• Publishers should layer on the right standards to create accessible publications.
• Accessible publications have accessible content at the core, wrapped in semantic structure, and topped off with accessible metadata.
• Resources to help publishers implement accessibility in their programmes are available.

Key points

• Library discovery systems have become successfully embedded in many academic and specialist libraries.
• Such systems require excellent metadata to ensure discoverability of content and increasingly publishers are charged with delivering that.
• Libraries’ traditional role in organizing their collections for effective discovery is being usurped by these outsourced systems.

• Collaboration between publishers and learned society partners can accelerate and amplify DEIA outcomes.
• 97 HSS titles have adopted alt-text publication workflows and this change has been welcomed by journal authors and editors.
• Efforts to promote global inclusivity do not always result in greater membership diversity, retention and growth.
• Top-down, publisher-led DEIA initiatives are effective when they are aligned strategically to pre-existing society initiatives.
• Bottom-up, member-led DEIA initiatives benefit from publisher support to mitigate financial and time-based barriers to active participation.
• To reliably track DEIA outcomes, publishers ought to adopt systematic data collection strategies through initiatives like C4 and the Joint Commitment.

• WeChat is one of the most popular social media applications in China and is widely used by publishers to promote their journals and activities.
• The Chinese Laser Press (CLP) has four WeChat accounts; approximately 1 million reads were recorded in 2018.
• The most influential WeChat account of the CLP had almost 43,000 subscribers at the end of 2019.
• WeChat is a successful tool for connecting journals with readers and can increase the visibility of the journals both within China and elsewhere.
• Connecting with researchers via WeChat is helping CLP maintain relations with researchers throughout their career.

Key points

• Convergence of international standards has made requirements for accessible multimedia content clearer.
• Legal and commercial pressure for accessible content is mounting for higher education institutions (HEIs) and publishers as highlighted by recent high‐profile settlements in North America.
• Accessibility requirements for multimedia can be met by setting realistic, progressive goals and focusing resources on key content.
• Multimedia accessibility benefits range from wider audiences and increased user engagement to greater discoverability and improved search engine optimization.
• Vendors are ramping up their offerings for accessible production, and costs are going down.

• A group of UK-based learned societies were anonymously interviewed to understand how trends are affecting their missions, strategies, and operations.
• The societies' missions focus on supporting academics and disseminating knowledge, with publishing being a means to achieve those goals rather than an end in itself.
• The responses were concerned about addressing open access (OA) but, particularly in the post-COVID-19 era, this was not necessarily their highest priority.
• The societies expressed reliance on larger corporate publishers on them to navigate the transition to OA publishing.
• The societies' focus is on evolving their missions to meet the changing needs of their academic communities, with issues around premises as a result of COVID-19 being more pressing than publishing industry changes.
• The societies face challenges in adapting to the shift to online and digital operations, particularly in regards to maintaining engagement with their members.

Key points

• Sci‐Hub has made nearly all articles freely available using a black open access model, leaving green and gold models in its dust.
• Why, after 20 years of effort, have green and gold open access not achieved more? Do we need ‘tae think again’?
• If human nature is to postpone change for as long as possible, are green and gold open access fundamentally flawed?
• Open and closed publishing models depend on bundle pricing paid by one stakeholder, the others getting a free ride. Is unbundling a fairer model?
• If publishers changed course and unbundled their product, would this open a legal, fairer route to 100% open access and see off the pirates?