This year, the judges have selected a shortlist of seven for the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing.  Each finalist will be invited to showcase their innovation to industry peers on 14 September on the opening day of the ALPSP 2022 Conference in Manchester. The winners will be announced at the Awards Dinner on Thursday 15 September.

In this series, we learn more about each of the finalists. 

Tell us about your organisation

The Charlesworth Group is a publishing services partner to

the STM publishing industry. We support publishers with services that increase

the dissemination of scientific research and support ESL authors with services that

enable them to publish in international journals. We do this through two areas

of our business: China marketing consultancy and representation services; and

our Charlesworth Author Services language editing business.

 

In China, Charlesworth represents publishers for library and

pharmaceutical market sales and provides marketing agency and strategic

consulting services. The unique combination of our business offerings gives us

insights into the evolving needs of authors and librarians in China. Our

closeness to authors allows our marketing team to support the goals of our

publishers with targeted impactful services. These services connect our clients

to potential authors through Chinese language campaigns utilising Chinese

social platforms.

What is the project/product that you submitted for the Awards?

 

The Charlesworth Gateway and WeChat mini-program aims to

improve the communication and publishing experience for authors in China.

 

WeChat has over 1.25 billion monthly active users, who spend

on average over 82 minutes per day on the platform. WeChat is a super-app which

extends beyond social and communication use, it also allows users to buy and

pay for goods and services. It is used extensively in business and academia.

 

Authors from China accounted for 17% of the global article

output in 2021 (Scimago 2021), but as an industry, our systems and processes

are built around the English language and western technology experience. As an

agency and author services provider we aim to create user journeys that

replicate the same experience that authors in China are used to when purchasing

other goods and services. The dominance of smart phone apps and WeChat has

reduced the importance of email as a major communication channel; the reliance

on email communication within in the scholarly publishing journey can create

frustrations for authors and publishers alike.

 

The Gateway and mini-program are currently live with Taylor

& Francis and Gateway notifications are live with Dove Medical Press, IOP

and Researcher. Gateway notification services are available for any journal

that uses Aries Editorial Manager; as well as through custom API integrations

with bespoke publisher systems.

Tell us a little about how it works and the team behind it

Gateway is a ‘Software

as a Service’ tool which allows a publisher to integrate their services, such

as submission systems and content platforms, and send short notifications in

Chinese to authors via WeChat. The mini-program is a fully publisher-branded front-end

app within a publisher’s WeChat account. It allows authors to authenticate the

service and self-check the status of a manuscript. The mini-program can be an

author hub for information and the notifications can link to content within the

mini-program.

Mini-program home screen

This can be configured for each publisher and can serve as a hub for key content for authors in China. From this screen the author can quickly set-up notifications or check the status of their article.

Notifications are sent through as template messages in Chinese.

Messages appear in the WeChat template message area. 

The product was built by Charlesworth’s global teams in

Beijing, UK and Ukraine. The mini-program design and user testing is managed by

our China teams, while the Gateway platform and integration with STM publishing

services is managed by our Ukraine team.

 

In what ways do you think it demonstrates innovation?

We believe the Gateway is innovative as it is the first

product in our industry that aims to create a digital bridge between STM

publishing and authors in China. Our vision for the product is to build

end-to-end notifications for the entire publishing journey from submission,

publication and tracking of an article’s impact.

What are your plans for the future?

 

We want to create journeys which support authors further,

including support resources in the mini-program, journal selection tools,

manuscript editing tools and options for cascade journals. We are currently

working with existing users and new clients to improve the richness of the

experience through using different notifications in the publishing journey to

link to specifically created content within the mini-program.

About the Author

Andrew Smith is the Product & Marketing Director at

Charlesworth. He leads Charlesworth’s global author services marketing teams

and helps STM publishers thrive in China through great marketing, technology

and strategy consulting.

For more information, please visit https://www.cwrepresentation.com/WeChat or contact us info@cwrepresentation.com

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Visit the ALPSP Annual Conference 2022 Website for more details and to book your place.