Association Insight International & European Association Insights Spring 2015 | Page 22

Association Insights | Article

Publishing trends:

4 recommendations for scholarly
and professional societies
BY Chris Graf, Wiley
Members continue to place high value on their society’s publishing
program, but the economics of society publishing are shifting
and publishing technology trends repeatedly add complexity and
demand investment. In this short article, based on a presentation at
the International & European Associations Congress in 2015, I share
thoughts for the leaders of scholarly and professional societies who
are interested in, and invested in, publishing.
Economic trends
In 2014, Outsell interviewed 20 scholarly and professional
societies1. They found that income from meetings was 14%
and membership was 10%, while 61% of revenue at the
societies they talked with was derived from publishing. But
the economics of publishing are shifting, impacting the
sources of that income.
The foremost shift in scholarly publishing economics
comes from open access. Publishers are seeing modest
2.5% growth in scholarly and research publishing revenues,
largely institutional subscriptions2. But the trend to watch
from within those figures is the 34% growth in open
access revenues. These take the form of article publication
charges, paid by founders or institutions that mandate their
research must be published “gold” open access3. Absent
from these open access revenue growth figures, but an
equally important driver of change and no less worthy
of attention from society leaders, is “green” open access,
again mandated by research funders.

22 | © Associations Network 2015

In society publishing, we’re seeing reasonable growth
in advertising revenues at Wiley. PwC puts magazine
advertising globally as scraping a return to growth in 2015,
at less than 1%4. Our growth beats that comfortably. But the
driving change, the trend to watch for advertising income,
is in digital: PwC chalks-up growth in digital magazine
advertising revenues at 17.6%.
Leaders of scholarly and professional societies with a stake
in research publishing need a way to handle open access,
gold and green. And if their society banks advertising
income from their magazine, then they need a way to
handle digital adverts, too.

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