Publishing Innovations, Open Access Publishing and QScience.com

Pressure on library budgets; the globalisation of the research community through the social web; the fragmentation of digital reading to a multitude of mobile devices: the external pressures pushing publishers to innovate are many and varied. Publishers are responding with innovative new services that make the most of advances in technology.

The desire to disseminate ideas as widely as possible has always existed within the academic community. Digital publishing in the internet age has given research a wider reach and in the process has revealed some areas, such as the high cost of academic journals, where barriers to access now seem indefensible. At a fundamental level attitudes to research are changing and researchers are beginning to see the benefits of democratising the results and potential applications of their work.

Technology makes global communication faster and easier. As informal communication speeds up, scholarly publication must keep pace. Researchers need reliable access to the latest developments in their field while publishers need their processes to be streamlined, without sacrificing the commitment to producing quality peer reviewed publications.

Open access is not primarily a response to some of the new pressures on STM publishers but an innovative application of the business model can address some of these issues in a productive way. In addition it should be noted that institutions, researchers and other stakeholders are not passively waiting for developments from publishers, their new expectations will play a part in rewarding the most innovative companies that can fulfil the needs of research in the internet age.

To access the complete paper, please click here.

Maverick Publishing Specialists, the leading, specialist consultancy and outsource services company for the publishing industry, today announced sales representation agreements for its publisher clients. 

Following on from an agreement to represent NOW Publishers in Australia, Maverick is delighted to announce that this agreement has been extended to include the UK market. Building on an initial market research programme to identify content needs across the UK library market, Maverick will offer content packages of NOW’s Foundation and Trends™ journals at both consortia and institution level across the UK. The extension of this agreement further establishes Maverick’s sales representation team, who currently support a number of publishers (including Woodhead Publishing and The Charleston Advisor) in developing their market presence in the US and across Europe.

In related news, Maverick also welcomes on board two new team members to further grow its Publisher Relations and Technology & Content divisions. Aviva Weinstein joins as Senior Business Development Associate (Europe) and will support Maverick’s clients in promoting and distributing their content as well as provide business development support for Maverick. Aviva has over 18 years experience in marketing and business development, with in-depth expertise in all areas of digital publishing technology, product management and marketing.  Prior to joining Maverick, Aviva worked as International Sales Manager for Oxford University Press and as Senior Strategic Marketing Manager for Ingram Digital. 

Julie Gordon joins as a Senior Associate and brings over 15 years of digital product conceptualisation, development and transformation management experience to Maverick. A seasoned executive with solid strategic and commercial credentials, Julie has a proven track record in designing, developing and delivering profit-generating projects, both in terms of increasing revenue as well as achieving significant cost-savings through implementing efficiency measures. Her expertise includes end-to-end project delivery, strategic recommendations and definition of project plans, including requirement gathering, UI design, technical development and the coordination of the internal teams in preparation for product launch. Julie has held a variety of transformation roles including working at Elsevier in the Netherlands and the US to develop and commercialise a new product portfolio focused on the business intelligence healthcare community.

About NOW Publishers
NOW was started by two senior publishing executives to provide the research community with a partnership for publishing. International in structure, the company is ideally placed to bring a new era to academic publishing, which values editors and authors, deploys a liberal and fair copyright policy, and provides librarians with value for money. The primary mission of NOW is to improve scholarly communication, speed the flow of information, and reward the scientist. The company uses modern web-based marketing and manufacturing techniques to minimize costs. Using targeted marketing and print-on-demand publishing technologies now is able to significantly compensate authors and editors for their efforts, and pass on cost-savings to librarians. For further information, please visit www.nowpublishers.com.
 

Open access publishing has arrived.

There are now more than 7000 titles listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals and hundreds of thousands of open access articles deposited with institutions, subject specific repositories and published in journals. But these figures don’t represent a mature industry, the revolution is still underway and there’s much potential still to be realised.
In 2011 the overall picture of open access was not only one of growth, but also of diversification. Open access is beginning to spill out from the academic fields where it was enthusiastically pioneered, including medicine and earth sciences, into a range of other disciplines.

This is accelerating the take-up of open access and opening new possibilities for multi-disciplinary work.

To explore this new publishing model in more depth, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals commissioned a white paper that looked at the beginnings of open access and its impact and significance for the future of academic publishing. A synopsis of this paper appeared in UKSG eNews on 3rd February 2012.

To access the complete paper, please click here.

Our client was a new publishing company that began with a single idea – to provide textbooks, online, by the chapter. 

Our collaboration began in October 2009 when Maverick was approached to provide top-level strategic support that would take the embryonic idea into a full-blown product. 

In close discussion with the client, Maverick developed a 5-year business development plan that set out the areas that needed to be considered in order to allow the company to grow.  The plan explored a variety of factors including product proposition, market segmentation, competitor analysis, plus critical factors for success.  It also included a fully loaded sales and marketing plan, complete with customer segmentation and target customer profiling, brand promotion and positioning as well as a suggested tactical marketing roll out plan.

Pleased with the end result, the work lead to further consultation with three next stage engagements.

Maverick supported the client through the process of identifying and appointing a suitable technology partner that would create and build the platform that had been envisaged.  This work included assisting with the RFP generation in addition to the vendor selection and negotiation process.

At the same time, Maverick associates were also requested to provide initial and first phase Publisher Relations support – a role that subsequently continues on an ongoing basis to this day. Work here included reviewing and re-writing the original publisher contract; researching and establishing a priority list of relevant publisher partners (as the proposition was an aggregated platform service); and then approaching these potential publisher partners and executing the relevant contract negotiations and agreements – including royalty and payment structures, content delivery and ongoing legal advice and support.

Maverick also supplied the marketing support and resources that would launch the final service to the UK market.  The initial marketing strategy was reviewed and a final plan created that set out how the client could approach the UK market and its range of potential users, customers and institutional influencers.

It was supported by a complete marketing communications plan that included both online and offline tactics.  Maverick then proceeded to deliver the plan via a number of differing Marketing Communications initiatives. Support here included writing and designing a full suite of marketing materials and exhibition graphics; PR and PR outreach across all major student, trade and national press (including relevant listservs, LinkedIn, web and blog sites); PPC advertising campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation; plus developing a campaign to launch the platform at Fresher's Fairs across several key London-based institutions.

Also, as the primary customers were UK students, these campaigns required some innovative marketing tactics and stunts in order to effectively engage and hold their attention!  The final launch plan encompassed a range of activities from brand ambassadors employed at each institution to distribute leaflets and giveaways and encourage students to sign up, to targeted email campaigns to student union members and web advertising on student union websites. Other more creative approaches included “clean advertising” (where adverts are “cleaned” into pavements and walkways in and around campuses) to use of Bluetooth technology to distribute specially-created promotional codes to anyone with blue-tooth enabled devices.   

Since the launch, the client’s new platform has gone from strength to strength and currently provides content from 14 leading publishers in the sector to student customers across nearly all UK Universities. Requests were regularly received from students living outside the UK so now our client is also delivering content on a worldwide basis.  With every step of the way, Maverick has been pleased to provide support and assistance and we look forward to continuing this relationship and seeing what the future holds!

Dorset, UK, 6th October 2011  – Maverick Outsource Services, the specialist consultancy and outsource company for the publishing industry, today announced extended sales representation agreements for two publisher clients, as well as new service partnerships in recruitment and technical consultancy. 

Mariam Hasan has joined Maverick as Sales and Publishing Associate and will be responsible for a new sales representation agreement for Woodhead Publishing’s ebook platform, Woodhead Publishing Online (www.woodheadpublishingonline.com), in North America. This agreement includes representing Woodhead Publishing at both consortia and individual institution level and further extends the work of Maverick’s European sales team, who have been supporting Woodhead Publishing Online sales in the UK and Europe since June, 2011.

Mariam has over 12 years senior international publishing experience and brings valuable knowledge of the region to support Maverick’s expanding operations in the North America region. Her expertise includes past positions in global product development at ProQuest Information and Learning for the ABI/INFORM suite of databases as well as sales management and content development for 30 peer-reviewed journals at Palgrave Macmillan. Most recently, Mariam worked for Emerald as Vice President, Canada where she significantly increased Emerald's local market presence and built a strong market for their e-books. Mariam currently provides local market strategy formulation and sales management support for Maverick's clients and their e-book products and services.

At the same time, Maverick is also pleased to announce that Mark Furneaux, previously Managing Director, European Operations at CSA, has joined Maverick as a Senior Associate for Sales and Business Development in EMEA and International. Mark has a wealth of electronic publishing experience, from both a strategic and day to day, operational perspective and headed CSA’s European activities with responsibility for all regional sales, marketing, editorial and G&A operations. He later joined ProQuest as part of the CSA/ProQuest merger before leaving in 2007 to join Wize Nordic as Business Development Director. Mark will provide publisher sales and marketing support in European markets as well as assisting Maverick’s own business development initiatives in International regions.

In related news, Maverick are delighted to announce that they are now representing The Charleston Advisor on a global level, with responsibility for both national consortia as well as individual institution sales. The agreement covers all territories (excluding the US) and also includes supporting renewal acquisition and sales related marketing as well as generating new sales for this specialist and high profile industry publication.

And finally, in the UK, Maverick has established partnership affiliations with two publishing industry service providers, Morgan Healey Recruitment and i-Publishing Consultants, to further extend its range of solutions for publisher clients.

In the agreement with Morgan Healey, Maverick will provide recruitment support in two distinct areas.  In the first instance, Maverick will use it global network of contacts and associates to assist Morgan Healey in identifying suitable candidates for permanent positions they may be asked to fill. In the second instance, Maverick will also provide interim management and fixed term project based support for Morgan Healey clients whilst they are engaged in the permanent recruitment process.

Also, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Maverick and i-Publishing Consultants will embark on a new reciprocal arrangement whereby both parties will mutually support each other's technical consultancy capabilities. As well as Maverick personnel being in attendance on i-Publishing’s stand to join discussions concerning the content delivery and community based platforms i-Publishing represents, the two companies will also use the show as a starting point to explore how they can best use their combined expertise to help publishers in all aspects of technology and platform development, content production and conversion as well as designing, managing and implementing custom built eContent solutions.

About Woodhead Publishing Limited
Woodhead Publishing Limited is an independent international publishing company publishing in the areas of Food Science, Technology and Nutrition, Materials and Engineering, Welding and Metallurgy, Textile Technology, Energy & Environmental Technology and Finance, Commodities and Business Studies and Mathematics. For further information, please visit www.woodheadpublishing.com or www.woodheadpublishingonline.com.

About The Charleston Advisor
The Charleston Advisor publishes critical reviews of online resources for libraries. To maintain a high level of accuracy and integrity, all reviews are peer-reviewed by experienced librarians. Reviewers come from all areas of librarianship and from all types of libraries, ensuring that products are reviewed by people who actually use them. For further information, please visit http://www.charlestonco.com.

About i-Publishing Consultants Ltd
i-Publishing Consultants helps organisations create new value by enabling them to take control of their content and engage more effectively with their customers and other ‘communities of interest’. To achieve this we provide strategic and project based digital marketing and technology consultancy and also design and deliver interactive solutions that meet next generation needs. For further information, please visit www.i-publishingconsultants.com.

About Morgan Healey
Morgan Healey is a leading international executive search & recruitment business that operates within STM publishing (Science, Technology, Medical) academic & digital information. With over 25 years industry experience, we work with the most prestigious publishing companies across the world. For further information, please visit http://www.morganhealey.com.

We were approached by the CEO of our client, a large market sector leading specialist publisher, to assist the board with the initial discussion, research and development phases of a long term company initiative to review and create a more robust digital strategy.

Despite their internal developments and activity in the digital arena to bring both technology and content up to speed with market demand, the client wished to understand what else they should do to maintain and increase their position as market leader in the subject areas and market sectors in which they operated – and ensure they caught up and/or overtook their immediate competitors in the digital space.

Maverick’s engagement began with a review of the current state of the digital market within the clients chosen sectors – and the clients' current positioning and perception within them. This helped the client understand – from an independent perspective – where they really stood with their customers and also identified particular areas for closer consideration and focus if they were to be a leading content and service provider in the digital arena.

Maverick support included:

• Assistance with understanding and analysing the industry with regards to threats, opportunities and developing trends
• Helping to understand the competitive landscape in more detail – including in-depth analytical reports on 5 of their key competitors.
• Reviewing and identifying partners and outsource companies that could provide assistance and support with regard to digital platform development and enhancements, website upgrades and content development and production.
• Advice on marketing, branding and positioning strategy.
• Advice on areas for immediate sales attention or opportunities not currently addressed.  

Maverick were then asked to create and conduct a board level workshop and initial business review to help further identify the core areas that needed to be addressed. The aim of the workshop was to uncover any areas of mis-alignment in thinking or strategy; ensure there was a common understanding of "digital" across the senior management team and what it meant for the client both strategically and operationally; as well as discuss and resolve some more specific and practical issues regarding the clients digital growth and prioritise the various plans and activities already underway or in development.

Following the workshop, Maverick created a top-level strategy paper that outlined the areas discussed, including findings, recommendations and agreed actions and priorities. This strategy is now being implemented by the client concerned.

Our client, a specialist publisher in the scholarly sector based in the US, approached us in December 2010 with a specific requirement. Whilst their current content delivery platform was working well for them, they wanted to be sure that they were aware of all new developments or initiatives that could enhance the way their customers accessed their content.  Maverick was requested to undertake an initial "potential vendor (current) capability review" and then undertake a resultant, narrowly focused RFI / RFP program.

Working with the client, Maverick developed an RFP which set out all the requirements for a potential new platform and invited selected technology companies to respond accordingly.  Subsequent responses were then reviewed, scored and reported against to provide a basis for comparison as to which offered the best potential solution.  The result? The client actually remained with their original provider (one of the respondents) as they were able to adapt the platform sufficiently to meet their changing needs, at a reasonable cost and with minimal impact on service delivery.

The process did, however, uncover a number of other issues with which the client required support.

These included:

• Further strategic and tactical discussions about how to maximize the commercial benefits of the platform via online advertising and sponsorship.Improving access to – and delivery of – usage statistics from the current platform provider.
• Improving pricing structures and models
• Maximizing content exposure and sales opportunities (SEO and discoverability).
• Improving the content conversion and upload / acceptance processes with their typesetters as well as the platform vendor itself.

Maverick provided consultancy as to how these areas could be addressed, culminating in a number of new promotional and revenue generating initiatives being rolled out and subsequently increasing sales. We also provided outsourced content and production management resources and continue to manage the delivery of their publication to the web, liaising with the platform provider and ensuring the whole process runs smoothly and on time.     

As well as continuing the strategic and operational support as outlined above, Maverick's sales associates have also been retained to represent the publication on a worldwide basis, generating new sales and securing renewals from both consortia as well as individual institutions.

Our client, a leading scholarly publisher in the social sciences, wished to conduct a market assessment to determine the perceived value and positioning of their product offering amongst their client base.  The client wished to gain a much deeper understanding of their customer loyalty to both the corporate and product brands, as well as explore current levels of customer satisfaction. Amongst other goals they wished to determine the extent to which a potential pricing increase and content structure review could be undertaken without negatively impacting on their brand or revenues.

Working with the client, Maverick developed a research programme that would encourage the greatest possible number of responses at the same time as delivering the results the client required.  The solution was to adopt a two phase approach, comprising an online survey supported by targeted, in-depth telephone interviews that would explore particular areas of concern.

These included:

• Customer perceptions of the client’s corporate and product brands
• Which were the immediate competing resources that the clients' customers (also) subscribed to and how were these compared to the client product proposition with regards to content coverage and value for money.
• Gain a better understanding of available (resource) budgets at the customer institutions and what proportion of which was allocated to electronic resources
• What were the levels of satisfaction with the client’s current business and access models, and
• How could products be developed to continue to meet the needs of the academic community – and what were the pricing sensitivities surrounding how these developments might be funded via a potential pricing review.

To ensure that responses received were as representative of the customer base as possible, quotas were set that represented each region’s percentage contribution to the client’s overall revenue.

Following the online survey, in-depth telephone interviews were conducted to provide deeper understanding of particular key issues that were highlighted during Phase I of the research. The subsequent findings were then analysed and presented in a full report which also included a strategy paper with recommendations on how the client could move forward in all these areas.

Since the research was conducted, the client has been working hard to develop their content offering in line with the research findings.  As a result, Maverick has subsequently been requested to provide top-level strategic assistance with this product and content development until the end of 2012.

We have worked with our client, a major STM publisher, on a number of significant projects over the last two years. Engaging with all areas of the marketing organization (both library side and author side) in Europe, US and Asia Pacific, we have supplied both strategic and marketing communications support, delivering effective marketing messages to all their various customer groups.

Our initial engagement began with a request to provide strategic marketing support regarding their market positioning. Despite a strong and growing customer base, our client wished to re-develop and re-position the branding of one of their major product offerings – as well as ensure that this re-positioning remained closely applied to their overall corporate brand. Further, they also wanted to understand how their products and services could be positioned to encourage further sales, whilst extending their "leading edge status" in the market.

Maverick was approached to undertake a strategic review of their current market messaging, positioning, brand values and materials and generate proposals that would outline how these could be re-positioned, enhanced and expanded in line with more recent (digital) market developments.

We created a top-level market positioning strategy that identified how messaging could be improved and updated to enable the client to extend its leading position into the future as well as stay ahead of competitive response.

This strategy included:

• Revising the existing market messaging
• Developing a new market positioning and subsequent top-level messaging and delivery tactics.
• Adapting this messaging according to customer type, user type and geography to promote both publisher and product benefits in a manner tailored to their specific and differing needs. Customer types included academic and corporate libraries as well as end users.
• Reviewing and suggesting alternative solutions for graphics and graphical representation to bring the visual elements up to date and in line with the new market positioning and messages.

The project proved to be a success and was rolled out (with Maverick assistance) on a global level. Maverick was further engaged to copy write and create the subsequent marketing materials for each of the identified stakeholders and take the messaging the market.

Today we continue to provide ongoing support across a number of areas, including:

• Creating and generating eNewsletters distributed to all their customer and author groups
• Copywriting brochures, data sheets, presentations and web copy for a number of products and services – tailored (as appropriate) for authors, societies, libraries, faculty and end users (researchers and students).
• Generating whitepapers, articles, outreach PR and further market messaging strategy plans to assist the further development and "thought leadership" positioning of their product and content brands.
• Conducting a wide range of market research projects, questionnaires and perception surveys to scope potential new market sectors and regions (and identify additional opportunities in existing markets)
• Providing additional strategic support, plans and materials for establishing a market presence and sales growth within these new sectors and regions

We have been privileged to be able to act as part of the marketing team for this client and we look forward to continuing our relationship.

“Maverick understands our business and have listened very well to our needs. We have done a wide range of projects with them, from small copy writing projects to large strategic projects, and they have proven to be effective for us. They are happy to adapt to the scale required and always work within our capabilities and budget.”

Our client, a new publishing company, approached Maverick to develop a suitable RFP which outlined the business and technology requirements they had for a new, yet to be developed eJournal and eContent delivery platform. At the same time, being totally new and therefore having no support systems in place for their emerging journals, they also required a similar RFP to be researched and written for the acquisition of a Peer Review System to be integrated (as much as possible) with the new platform.

Maverick initially undertook a discovery and scoping phase to determine the requirements of the business including reviewing content needs (format, availability and production/editorial processes); identifying the features and functionality the new platform would require for the immediate and longer term and identifying the future content strategies, including production and dissemination of content as well as the optimum peer review requirements.

Following the completion of this phase, a full RFP was written and reviewed with the client to ensure it not only met their immediate and longer term service requirements, but also laid out the strategic imperatives and type of collaborative and far sighted platform partner profile they wanted to engage.

Once complete, work then began on the second part of the project – the vendor selection process itself.

This work included:

• Identifying and drawing up a list of proposed vendors with the right levels of experience, track record and vision.
• Managing the distribution of the RFP.
• Managing the resultant Q+A process with vendors through their “response generation” period via telephone and bespoke response email address.
• Collection and analysis of tender responses, scored according to previously agreed and structured “key criteria” matrices.
• Identifying and communicating with successful final candidates and providing feedback to unsuccessful respondents.
• Organizing and overseeing the final presentations of shortlisted candidates.
• Working with the client to assess the presentations and final proposals (both from a technology and business standpoint), providing recommendations as to “best fit” partners for their needs; and
• Notifying the successful vendor.

Two successful candidates were chosen (one platform provider and one Peer Review system) and contract negotiations started. Maverick were asked to stay on board and assist in the negotiation process itself, right through to completed contracts.

Here our support for the client included;

• Initial internal discussions and decision points regarding commercial terms and contractual arrangements with the successful partner; negotiation strategies and "check lists" to gain the "best deal / best fit".
• Initial vendor contract review, discussion and response positioning.
• Ongoing contract review and analysis during negotiation – recommendations and support on "deal breakers"; negotiation points; contract structures and conditions; and final iterations, clause edits and revisions.
• Final contract and commercial term negotiation and closure.

Although the end of the selection process itself, and given Maverick’s additional technical experience in online system development and content production management, whilst full time IT and content teams were being put in place, we were then asked to stay on board and oversee the actual site and system build itself. We were very happy to do this, not least as we had been involved in some of the initial design and build conversations as part of the RFP scoping.

Over the course of the next year Maverick associates effectively became the outsourced IT and content production departments for the client and joined the management structure.

Our work included:

• Developing the necessary site designs, site maps and wireframes.
• Developing and finalising all necessary project and production plans.
• Assuming the role(s) of IT Director and technical project managers to oversee and drive the platform and functionality development schedules.
• Running the project review meetings, milestone planning and partner communications, as well as monitoring service levels and site / feature delivery.
• Working with the vendor project managers, technicians and management until the final site and peer review system was developed and delivered. Ensuring adherence to agreed budgets.
• Assuming similar project management roles and responsibilities in content production management and site design and administration.
  • Managing and coordinating the content and production editorial workflows and vendors.
  • Managing, coordinating and producing the overall design, "look and feel" and usability of the site – including production of all necessary graphics and HTML templates and artwork.
• Advising on the overall technology strategy and future technology roadmap.
• Ensuring full training and transition processes were established with the incoming in-house resources before we disengaged with the project.

The platform was successfully launched over the Summer of 2011.

Today, Maverick continues to provide marketing and technical support on an ongoing basis to ensure the client’s continued success.