1. Fighting on Three Fronts
Joseph J. Esposito
CSSP
Washington, D.C.
April 27, 2013

2. Processed Media is a
management consultancy working
in the areas of publishing,
software, and education. Clients
include both for-profit and not-for-
profit organizations.
espositoj@processedmedia.com

3. Topics
• How will the new open access mandates affect
professional societies?
• How do I navigate our organization through a
publishing environment dominated by huge
commercial concerns?
• Is the management and governance structure
of our society equipped to deal with pressing
environmental issues?

4. Varieties of OA Mandates
• Mandated deposits into institutional
repositories (Green OA)
• Stipulations by funding organizations (e.g., the
Wellcome Trust)
• Government policies (e.g., recent statement
from U.S. OSTP)
• Some mandates may include embargoes
• Let’s not forget piracy (unmandated!)

5. Implications of Growth of OA
• Growing amount of literature available—
putting increased pressure on search and
discovery
• Likelihood of multiple versions of same
material online—making usage harder to
assess, driving down measurable accesses
• In some fields, migration of papers, even some
of the finest, toward Gold OA services

6. OA Implications #2
• Rapid growth of new OA services to absorb all
the new material
• Greater competition—likely to result in
downward pressure on pricing and a need for
greater investment in technology
• New premium on marketing
• No clear path to long-term preservation
• Overall, higher expenses and less revenue

7. But why not simply create our own
Gold OA service and migrate our
business from subscriptions to the
author-pays model?

8. New OA Service: Benefits
• Retains authors
• Potentially can be additive to subscription
journals
• Potentially Gold OA fees can be combined
with membership dues, creating a path to an
enlarged membership
• “If we don’t do this, someone else will”

9. New OA Service: Limitations
• Competitive environment
• Could cannibalize subscription revenue
• OA revenues typically lag behind traditional
journals
• Could challenge standards of peer review
• More speculatively, likely to change the nature
of desirable content over time (e.g., more
topical)

10. The second front: commercial
behemoths (John Wiley, Springer,
Elsevier, WoltersKluwer, Sage)

11. Structure of the Marketplace Today
• 85% of journals revenue derives from libraries
(percentage varies by discipline)
• Libraries prefer to purchase aggregations
• Large aggregations marginalize small
publishers, including many society publishers
• Market is growing modestly, mostly
internationally
• Largest publishers are well positioned to
remain dominant for the next several years

12. A Society’s Typical Path
1. Go it alone—no partner, use own tech
2. Outsource tech, but remain independent
3. Join a consortium
4. Place journals under the umbrella of a
university press
5. Place journals under the umbrella of a larger
not-for-profit entity
6. Create an arrangement with a behemoth

13. The real issue for a society publisher
today is how to get access to the
library budget, and increasingly the
gateway to that income is controlled
by the largest commercial
publishers.

14. The Third Front: Governance
• Need to be responsive to environmental
changes—and to anticipate them
• Efficient decision-making
• Open channel of communication between the
Board and the publishing management

15. HighWire Illustration
• Large group of all HW publishers
• Presentation: How will OA affect your
publishing program?
• Multiple requests for slide deck
• Need to inform society management of
publishing issues
• Concern that societies were not attentive to
business concerns

16. If governance is a problem, it is
likely to become the defining
problem for the entire program.

17. Practical Steps
1. Empower a special committee to oversee
publishing operations; put outsiders on that
board/committee
2. Hire “high”—that is, seek publishing
managers who are strongly qualified to run
operations
3. Exercise bias in favor of personnel with at
least some commercial experience

18. Practical Steps #2
4. Explore aggregating publishing operations
with other societies
5. Explore Gold OA programs, tying publishing
fees to society membership
6. Annual strategic planning review: place
program into context of marketplace
7. In working with large partners, seek to retain
rights for markets outside libraries

19. Thank you!
Joseph J. Esposito
espositoj@processedmedia.com