Effective Author-Centric Open Access Marketing in Scholarly Publishing

In 2023, TBI were pleased to take part in several insightful discussions about the changing environment for marketers in scholarly publishing, with a specific emphasis on the transition to open access. Mithu Lucraft chaired discussions at the SSP and ALPSP conferences and took place in a fireside chat for Society Street.[3] Our takeaway from each of these conversations is that marketing needs to work strategically in collaboration with several other parts of the organisation to deliver highly relevant, increasingly personalised communication to its communities. Many teams are managing a shift in approach and resources to manage the need for direct communication to researchers, or a B2C approach that is author-centric, in an open access world.

It’s definitely an exciting time to be a marketer, but it can also be daunting, with many more channels available to choose from (see our recent review on social media and Gin Li’s guest blog on the China market for some examples of this). There is a lot more competition for brands, so cutting through the noise requires both a data-focused strategy, as well as one that maintains creativity and relevance.

Taking a strategic approach requires marketers to build a deep understanding of the research community they serve. This includes leveraging market research, market insights, and building a centralised data strategy. It also requires optimising campaign performance, monitoring results, and ensuring that both budget and resources are well-spent. To achieve so much, teams need to adjust both their skills and ways of working. Here, we have brought together feedback from speakers representing Wiley, AIP Publishing, AGU, ResearchGate, the IET, and IOP Publishing, along with insights from the TBI team based on work we’ve done for our clients. We’ll cover the skills and priorities identified, and what this means for marketers in scholarly publishing making the transition to open access.

Strategic Drivers

1.Competition

The competition for authors has increased significantly over the years. For instance, in 2014, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed about 10,000 journals, and this number had nearly doubled to 20,000 in 2023. Coupled with an increasing awareness of the cost of open access, and funder requirements for open research, researchers now make their decisions based on more than just community fit and reach.

2. Publishing motivations

In recent client research, we have consistently found that journal reputation remains one of the most important factors driving where to publish, alongside reach of the journal to the right audience, high-quality peer review, and journal impact metrics. In addition, previous positive experiences with a journal now also feature high on the list of influences mentioned by researchers in surveys we have delivered for clients.

With a surge in available publication venues, there is often little to differentiate between journals by the known ‘hygiene factors’ of publication, such as speed of publication or quality of peer review. Standing out therefore requires more than simply presenting these factors: journals need to understand what their specific communities are motivated by and tailor communication that is attuned to this. Brand research and community surveys can assist in understanding what these motivations are.

Understanding the barriers and challenges your communities face will enable your marketing to address these in your communication, strengthening your proposition. As IOP Publishing’s Rachael Harper commented to the ALPSP audience: “By segmenting these insights geographically, we gain a clearer picture of the specific challenges faced by individuals in different regions. While market research might be perceived as a somewhat traditional tool, its reliability in data collection and ability to provide a comprehensive view makes it a vital instrument in our toolkit.”

3. Who is an author?

It’s also increasingly important to understand the role a researcher has with your journals and (where relevant) your society. They may be a reader, an author, reviewer, editorial board member, or any combination of these. They may for societies also be a member, or engage with other society initiatives, such as events or grant programmes. Connecting your submissions, researcher, and member data with your marketing helps build a holistic understanding of how and when a researcher is interacting with you, enabling you to present highly personalised communication to them at different points in their author journey.

Case study: At ALPSP, Sara Killingworth described the evolution the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has undergone in their approach to author marketing as they navigated the shift towards an Open Access and open science world. They broadened their focus from just marketing their journals to include all the research solutions they offer, such as books, databases, and scholarships. To effectively implement this new approach, a deep understanding of their authors, workflows, and the challenges they faced became paramount. The IET conducted research to understand the entire ecosystem in which researchers operate. They then used these insights to identify opportunities for engaging with authors at different stages of their research journey, from the identification of research topics and conducting literature reviews, to finding collaborators, securing funding, through to publication. This led to a change in their marketing function, which was traditionally product-focused. They shifted towards a more holistic solutions approach, integrating new skillsets such as data analysis and digital marketing. The IET also embarked on a co-marketing partnership with their publisher, Wiley, working together on initiatives like campaigns and surveys to leverage each other’s channels and maximise their reach for mutual benefits.

In the majority of strategic marketing reviews we are delivering for clients, we are also using market publication data to determine the potential reach of journals beyond their current author base. Often, journals will find that their marketing targeting can be refined, looking at the growth of specific disciplines, or where there is funding for open access.

It’s important to assess who your potential authors are, based on publication data from the wider market. Researching where to segment author marketing geographically and across disciplines will help to prioritise marketing spend and optimise channel performance.

4. Confusion and miscommunication:

In his presentation to SSP delegates, AGU’s Matthew Giampoala emphasised the challenges AGU has faced in engaging researchers when it comes to open access. Often, researchers will not be aware of their funder requirements. Where an open access agreement is presented to them, they may not understand whether they are covered by this for their APC costs. They might not understand waiver policies or their eligibility for this. They may also not understand what different types of open access or traditional licenses allow them to do. Again, spending time to understand community perceptions of open access can be powerful, as AIP Publishing’s Sara Girard also showcased at SSP. Working with other physics societies, TBI conducted a market study to understand how researchers felt about open access in the physical sciences, which has been used to strengthen communications to specific communities, particularly early career researchers.

The critical role of data and technologies

According to a recent Future of Marketing report from Econsultancy, only 5% of marketers believe their current tech stack is fully equipped to leverage new digital marketing opportunities.[1]

In her insightful presentation at SSP, Wiley’s Natasha White summarised the importance of good data to power personalised marketing. As she explained in a blog post, there is a growing expectation from authors to receive personalised communication, based on their experiences as consumers.[2] Understanding the author journey and optimising marketing strategies to engage authors at different touch points allows this highly personalised approach, reflecting the stage a researcher might be at, their key publication motivators, and their relationships to a journal. To achieve this, a single customer profile view which captures all known data about an author and identifies gaps to plug is crucial.

1.Customer data platforms: There are a variety of customer data platforms available, and working with your technology teams will be critical to successfully implementing this. To harness these data platforms effectively, a deep understanding of the customer, their behaviours, needs, and wants is necessary. You’ll likely have a lot of information on your authors across multiple systems, and the goal is to bring all this data together into a single place with a single customer profile view. Once you have the data clean and centralised, ensuring that these systems are interoperable with your various marketing tools is key.

2. The value of zero-party data: Also significant in eConsultancy’s Future of Marketing report is the change in data analytics and measurement. With Google phasing out third-party cookies in 2024, marketers are exploring viable alternatives like first-party and zero-party data. However, collecting high-quality data is a challenge. Therefore, it’s crucial to ensure that what you offer to the customer is valuable and useful. Content marketing – blogs, newsletters, or reports – can be especially helpful here.

3. Creating a lifecycle: Adopting a fully researcher-centric approach, and understanding their varied interactions with your journal means you can provide them with targeted messaging and communications that keeps your journal at the forefront of their minds. Two of the biggest challenges and biggest priorities facing marketers are maintaining customer loyalty, and retaining existing customers. As ResearchGate’s Mathias Astell explained to the audience at ALPSP: a good starting point is to focus on previous authors who are already familiar with your journal. They form a solid, reliable group for initiating an understanding of how authors interact with your content. As these previous authors become returning authors, they often bring new authors with them, allowing you to extend your understanding and engagement models to these new authors. Author personalisation using the researcher lifecycle can therefore lead to improved author experience, increased author engagement, and enhanced author loyalty and advocacy. Importantly, the more personalisation is implemented through marketing automation, the less channel fatigue and overwhelm there will be for researchers, and for their marketing teams!

With tools enabling interactions through publishers’ platforms and outbound channels such as email and social media, it’s necessary to find more ways to continuously interact with researchers throughout their research cycle. Understanding how they interact with your journal not just on your platform but across the research ecosystem can help keep them continuously engaged with your journal.

Navigating a proliferation of tools and channels

Navigating the research ecosystem presents opportunities and challenges, particularly for smaller publisher marketing teams. As AIP Publishing’s Sara Girard explained at SSP, Marketing channels work in concert – it’s important to reinforce your messages across the spectrum of channels, then measure and adjust.

Yet, it can feel overwhelming to identify the most effective channel strategy and to keep up with the new channels on offer. Here, again spending time researching where your communities are can help to provide some strategic focus. Look at priority markets, geographic segments, and career stages from your earlier market data analysis. This can help to determine if third party services can unlock access to specific communities, whether a specific China strategy is appropriate (almost certainly, yes!), or whether there are subject-specific channels that could help to reach the right researchers.

TBI has worked with a number of clients through 2023 to undertake marketing channel performance audits, particularly in conjunction with undertaking market data analysis and community surveys. Together, this can help to show whether channels are reaching the specific priority targets for a journal, and whether they perform against industry benchmarks. Using these insights can help to determine whether there are ways to optimise the time and budget spent across the marketing channel mix.

The evolving Marketing team: skills for the future

Today, marketing goes beyond campaigns. It brings together a deep understanding of our authors, coupled with a grasp of the available technology and how to apply it effectively to achieve our objectives. This requires the need for a mindset change across organisations about the role of marketing, making it clear that marketing cannot operate in isolation, but instead must work strategically in collaboration with publishing and technology teams.

It also requires a significant shift in the skills required in the team, with a focus on continuous learning and adaptation. Teams need to be comfortable using analytics tools and dashboards to understand their performance and optimise their activities.

Conclusion

Despite what feels like a significant period of change for marketing, there is a constant for marketers in scholarly publishing, which is the need to place the researcher at the heart of what we do. Key to this is having the right data to understand who you are communicating with and the right communication – both what to say and where/when to deliver it. Data and technology, including insights, market data and audience data are all needed alongside an ongoing focus on delivering high quality, creative marketing, to ensure our brands stay top of mind with our researchers.

If you’d like to talk to TBI about supporting your strategic marketing planning for 2024, get in touch.