BLOG
We’re really pleased to be hosting a session at SSP this year to explore how publishers are adapting their marketing to meet author needs, and where priorities should lie for future investments in Marketing. Although the title of our session is ‘where’ are my authors, perhaps a more important question is why does that matter? TBI works with publishers, associations, and partners from across the scholarly communications sector. On the surface, many of the challenges clients come to us with look different, but are in fact related. It might be that their journals are transitioning to open access, they might be noticing a decline in submissions, they are finding their existing marketing channel mix isn’t delivering what it used to, or they want to understand the possibilities that digital marketing has opened up to them.
A common problem behind many of these examples is the relationship between authors and publishers is shifting. Although this is not exclusively connected with the transition to open access, a shift to an author centric publishing system will be essential to OA. For publishers to thrive, researchers will need to be engaged not only as readers of content but as authors submitting their content to a publishers’ journals, and as reviewers to keep content moving quickly through peer review. There needs to be a holistic journey for researchers and all their interactions with publishers.
For many publishers this shift to B2C marketing is new. Marketing to authors requires thinking through a different strategy, one that takes into account where authors are: geographically, often beyond traditional discipline boundaries, thinking about the stage of research they are at, whether they have access to funding for OA, and what might convince them to publish in one title over another. Reaching authors with the right message requires good author data, sophisticated technologies, and the right mix of channels to get to authors with the right message at the right stage of their authoring journey.
If you’re heading to SSP this year, join us to hear about the strategy needed in the transition to OA; what are the skills needed in marketing to thrive; how to identify authors based on their interactions, throughout their research journey; what is the messaging that authors will respond to, and how to implement this; and much more.
If you’re not able to make it but would like to understand more about the changing landscape for marketing, get in touch.
Catch Mithu hosting Session 1D: ’Where are my authors? Marketing, analytics and data for an open research future’ on Thursday 1st June at #SSP2023
FOLLOW US
