OA Monograph Publisher Workflows & Impacts
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Presentation on initial findings from the interviews with publishers conducted as part of the OAPEN-UK project. This presentation highlights some of the key pressure points, identifies where workflows need adaptation and presents recommendations on best practice processes to help publishers transition to open access monograph publishing.
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OA Monograph Publisher Workflows & Impacts
- 1. Open Access monographs and impacts on publisher workflows Caren Milloy, Head of Projects, Jisc Collections @oapenuk #oapenuk
- 2. The research programme 1.How policies, processes and mechanisms need to change in order to enable OA publication of monographs? (4 year research programme) 2.What are the measurable effects of a move to OA monographs? (3 year pilot) 3.How do perceptions of OA monograph publication change among participants during the project? (authors, publishers, funders) @oapenuk #oapenuk
- 3. In-depth interviews Publisher Interviews with 8 – 10 publishers including OA and Ups - initial findings (not yet complete) - focused on practical issues including workflows and systems - sharing insights - subset of the interviews
- 4. Insights 1. Editorial (with a bit of legal) 2. Sales and Marketing 3. Workflows and Systems 4. Lessons for us all?
- 5. Editorial (with a bit of legal) • • • • • Company mission and values Cost recovery Tending authors Timescales Costings
- 6. Editorial (with a bit of legal) • • • • Quality and selection Contracts and legal What about green? Awareness
- 8. Sales and Marketing • • • • What am I selling? Intermediaries and Vendors Opps I already sold that title! Sales predictions / speculation
- 9. Sales and Marketing • Why bother, we’ve got the money • A new way to engage • New measures of success
- 10. Processes and Systems • • • • In-house v purchased Standards adoption Timings Scalability
- 11. Lessons for us all? • • • • • • • Get your project team set up now Question every process Internal corporate education Think about standards now not later Map the timescales for the models Think about what success would look like Participate in experiments
- 12. Thank you & Further Info OAPEN-UK website: http://oapenuk.jiscebooks.org/ Caren Milloy c.milloy@jisccollections.ac.uk Twitter: @oapenuk Twitter: @carenmilloy Diigo Group: OAPEN-UK @oapenuk #oapenuk
Editor's Notes
- Session: ebooks, pbooks and free books Talk title: Open access monographs and impacts on publishers workflows Abstract: The OAPEN-UK project has interviewed a range of humanities and social science publishers including university presses and born OA publishers to explore impact of open access monographs on publisher’s processes and workflows. This presentation will highlight some of the key pressure points, identify where workflows need adaptation and present recommendations on best practice processes.
- OAPEN-UK is a four-year research project that is exploring an OA model for publishing HSS monographs in collaboration with publishers, research funders, learned societies, researchers and institutions. JISC and the AHRC have provided funding for the OAPEN-UK project. The project is exploring open access scholarly monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences. It is an innovative and highly consultative project – working in an area where little research exists and connecting with all the key stakeholders to identify and discuss concerns, challenges, perceptions and opportunities related to a transition to open access monographs. OAPEN-UK recognises that open access will require changes to current working practice as well as cultural change and that resistance to change is inevitable. By working with each stakeholder and sharing findings between stakeholders, the project promotes understanding and knowledge and enables stakeholders to make informed decisions based on evidence, rather than assumptions.Our 3 research areas are:
- One of the work packages we are working on at the moment is the Publisher interviews: interviews with 8publishers, including open access publishers and university presses.Presenting some initial findings from the interviews that we have been conducting with publishers in the UK about the impact of moving to an open access model on their monograph publishing.Whilst the interviews have covered open access in general and policy, we have focused more on the practical issues including workflows and systems and changes to roles.Today I am going to provide you with some insights, which may or may not seem common sense to you depending on how far internal discussions have progressed, but often articulating these can really help those that have not really started to think about OA monographs in depthThe last point I would like to say before I proceed is that this is a based on a subset of the interviews, mainly university presses and larger presses rather than those born OA publishers. We still have more interviews to conduct and plan to release results towards the end of the year.
- I have rather crudely split the insights into 3 areas: Editorial and LegalSales and MarketingWorkflows and SystemsWithin each area I will give an overview of what issues arose and then highlight some lessons for us all to consider.
- Companymission, ethos and values:Editorial staff mentioned company ethos, mission and values as a factor that requires consideration in a move towards OA monograph publishing and implementation. For example, a company that has a very educational focused mission will react differently from a company that has innovation as its core driver. For university presses, there is also the consideration of the university to which they are attached and how this institution responds to OA. Company requirement to cost recover for each title v across all titles:Editorial staff were very clear in stating the policy of their company with regards to cost recovery – some having the requirement to cost recover for each title and others having to cost recover across a whole area as opposed to individual titles. This has implications for the ‘fee’ that is charged to an author under a gold type model and whether the fee would remain the same for all titles or vary to account for book lengths and sales prospects. There is also the implication for the ‘surplus’ that is made and whether this continues to exist and if so is it still to be used to cover other overheads.Tending authors:Editorial staff spoke of the years (lifetimes!) that they spend tending their authors in the HSS area, although there are of course subject differences. They reflected on how the gold approach and how this might impact on the pressure to the author to complete the writing in a tighter timescale, which may not be a bad thing but could change the workflow of editorial staff, trying to fit more into a tighter schedule.Timescales:Timescales was a major issue for editors who are fully aware of the drift authors experience. In terms of open access, the most important point for their authors would be to know that something they are doing now or in two years time will not impact on their ability to submit the book to the REF. Therefore the policies and processes of the research funders, institutions and internally within the publishing house needed to be carefully thought-out and never restrict the author from a future REF submission. This could also require some level of flexibility to be built into processes so that the author may decide later down the process to move to an OA model. Costings:Editorial staff spoke of the costings process which is often undertaken at two stages, with the last being done just before approval. There was general uncertainty about how an authors decision to move to OA should they get funding would impact on this process – would the decision not be allowed at the later stage and if it was, how would this affect the approvals?
- Quality and Selection:Editorial staff spoke of the prestige and quality associated with their company. One of the critical factors in this was the role of editorial staff in selecting proposals or fostering them from the conceptual stage through to completion. The reviewing process was also spoken about by staff in terms of improving quality. When it came to discussing OA, editorial staff spoke of how the institution deciding which title was to be funded could introduce bias. They felt that publishers operate a much more neutral process which is not subject to internal institutional politics and were concerned of the impact of this new approach on the overarching quality of the publisher’s brand. Contracts and legal:In terms of contracts and legal issues, the standard licence to publish would need to be adapted to support OA and the adoption of Creative Commons. The contracts would need to flexible to allow for receipt of funds at a later stage or perhaps a move to a different model. Royalties were discussed by editorial staff in terms of formats and how the OA model would affect this and how authors would react. One other point that came up which has surfaced in the journals arena is the issue of image subsidies for example in art areas or where an author would like a high proportion of images in their monograph. The was uncertainty about how this would work with OA models and creative commons licensing.What about green?It was interesting that hardly any editorial staff spoke about a green approach to OA publishing, all focusing on the standard APC model that is used in the journals market. Awareness raisingEditorial staff spoke about the awareness within the teams about open access and how this is spreading but it was clear that having training, seminars, discussions are critical to the understanding of the issues by staff and their ability to respond to potential questions.
- We know from our 2012 survey that authors really value the sales and marketing work of their publishers as it was ranked the highest, even over the editorial work (sorry editors).So what did the sales and marketing staff say about OA book publishing?
- What am I selling?The focus in the sales and marketing team is on selling and so there was obviously a lot of discussion about what they would be selling in an open access model and how marketing would change. An example was a discussion around sales to libraries which often tend to be in the form of collections of titles. Would sales staff incorporate OA titles into a collection with other ‘for sale’ titles or would OA titles have to be kept separate?The type of OA model would also impact on sales – would the sales team be up-selling the epub and print versions and would they even sell or would libraries be happy with the PDF? The current co-existence of print and electronic was noted by some who suggested that libraries would still want the print copies but this was questioned by others.Intermediaries and Vendors:The sales channels include intermediaries and vendors who each have their own models and discounting methods and there was a concern that an OA title could be picked up and sold by a vendor, or that even if the publisher set the price at zero, the intermediary would sell it for a cost. This lack of control of third parties would have quite an impact on the success of the title and potential cost recovery.Opps I already sold that one:Linking into the supply chain was the issue of pre-sales. If the decision that a title will be made open access comes at quite a late stage in the publishing process, there is a chance that sales will have already been made. Does the publisher continue to make the sale even though the title is now available OA in all formats or not?! The same might apply to a collection – where a title suddenly becomes OA. The point being that the timing of the decision has major impacts on the sales and marketing team.Sales predictions:Predicting sales is unique to each title. In a move to an OA model, such as where the PDF is free and the epub is sold – how do the sales team provide predictions and what price should they set each format at when there is little data to base it on? How can they know how libraries will react? Will they want an enhanced version or is the PDF enough? The monograph long life makes it difficult to collect data on this quickly (hence our 3 years for OAPEN-UK).
- Why bother, we have got the money:Staff did raise the questions of what the incentive would be to even bother selling or marketing an OA title if they had been paid already but they also spoke about new opportunities and the need to cover marketing and sales overheads and the importance of equality for authors.A new way to engage:Discussions were held around the future of the sales and marketing teams in the context of OA models for monographs. There was a feeling from some that it would be as simple as getting staff to engage and promote in a different way rather than focusing on the sell. There was a suggestion that the sales and marketing team might focus more on services to authors rather than revenue streams and that this would in return support the brand and help attract authors. New measures of success?In relation to the new focus of the team, there would also need to be new measures by which success is evaluated. Currently sales revenue is the main method but staff suggested that it might change to be much more usage focused where higher usage might enable the publisher to charge high OA fees.
- It was in this area where a lot of the discussion focused – workflows, processes, systems – they would all need adapting and this requires adoption and change by staff. I don’t have time to go into all the issues that arose so I have picked 4 key ones:In-house v purchasedStandards adoptionScalabilityTimingsIn house v purchased:Each publishing house uses a mix of in house purpose built systems and externally purchased systems, enterprise wide. And there are lots of them, all interacting or attempting to integrate or not integrating at all much to the despair of staff. In addition, if the company has international premises, there may be a whole other set of systems being used there or they are perhaps global. Staff spoke of bolt-on, workarounds and internal projects to better develop the systems. In a move to OA for monographs, whilst adaptation of systems would not be insurmountable, it would certainly be a major challenge, especially for the purchased systems which are not under the control of the company and also for a system that is global across a range of office locations. One staff member highlighted that whilst an OA model that sells enhanced versions may be acceptable in one country, it may not be worldwide and that Gold OA may not be the model in other countries – therefore the systems need to be adaptable which makes it much more complicated if they are company / global wide.Standards adoption:This was quite an interesting area and of course metadata came up several times! But staff also spoke about systems to unify all formats to release simultaneously or how they have been implementing an ISBN for each format and ONIX feeds. In a move to OA there is the possibility that the publisher may change its approach to format releases – perhaps opting for simultaneous release or the OA PDF if a green model. One of the major challenges is that some of the standards that will need to be used, particularly in the area of metadata, have not yet been developed and that even if the publisher adopts the standards, this doesn’t mean that third party vendors will and so the environment becomes mixed and means even more work as publishers have to cater to specific requirements.Timings:In order for the systems and workflows to work, the input and the output of data must be done to a schedule. Sales staff were very clear in stating that they would need to know if a title was going to be made OA a minimum of 6 months prior to release and editorial staff would want to know at the earliest possible opportunity to feed into the development of the proposal and contract negotiations. This is not just in terms of completing processes, but in terms of feeding into sales and financial systems, royalty systems, metadata systems etc. The sales staff were keen to make sure their librarians would have the data they need in advance to make good decisions about their purchasing which means that the metadata needs to go out the intermediaries and vendors too. This would help to overcome the issue of pre sales for titles that later become OA. On the financial side, there were questions about how the current systems would cope with funding coming in but the book taking 3 years to come to fruition. Scalability:The last point that came out strongly in the interviews is scalability. Whilst it may not be an issue for a year or two, with the changes in the scholarly landscape, the number of OA titles could dramatically increase at which point the systems and workflows would not scale well. For example, while the author depends on the publisher to follow up on legal issues, in a move to OA with CC licensing, there could well be an increase of issues that the author expects the publisher to deal with. Another example is royalties, one publisher said that they have over 4 million different rules in their database, if royalties differ for each OA model this could also increase. Another issue with scale is the temporary fixes that are put in place will not work when volume increases, or that manual processes such as spreadsheets that are being used to manage any current OA activity for monographs, suddenly become inadequate. Of course trying to predict when the switch from periphery to central will take place is difficult in its self!
- So, whilst I am unable to draw conclusions from this sub-set of data, especially as these are initial findings, I can suggest the following:Set up a team internally (possibly globally) that will take this forward as a project. One of the most important aspects of this teams work will be to consult with people in all departments – and don’t forget your learned society partners.Make sure that the team questions each and every process that goes into making a book to see what the impact of OA will be.Make sure someone is put in charge of internal corporate education, all staff need to understand why OA will impact on their job and why the company is bothering to do it and how it fits in with the company values. It may be wise to include your learned society staff in this process too.Start to engage in discussions about new standards to support OA monographs - the more you know the easier it will be to consider how it will impact on existing systems you have in house and purchased ones. Getting third parties to engage and adopt standards take time but can save time in the long run.Spend some time thinking about the current OA models being tested in the market and map out the timescales and how this will fit with current workflows.Think about what success would look like for your company and to your authors – is it the same? How can OA benefit this?Considering the time it takes to collect data, get involved now in as many experiments as you can manage so that you can make some informed decisions. Don’t assume it will end up like the journals market – it is likely to be much more mixed than that.