From now until May 29, 2020, Scholastica is conducting a survey on “The State of Journal Production and Access” among scholarly societies, university presses, and university libraries that publish one or more journals independently (i.e., not outsourced to a separate publisher). We invite you to take the survey here.

In the world of academic journal publishing, change has traditionally occurred gradually. However, as new digital publishing standards and expectations have become more prevalent in recent years, the pace has started to pick up. Two areas of publishing that are undergoing significant evolution are production and access.

From expanding article formatting and metadata needs to open access mandates — there are many production and access factors publishers are considering that impact overall publishing processes and models. For scholarly societies, university presses, and university libraries independently publishing one or more journals, the changing landscape presents many opportunities as well as challenges. Knowing where journals stand in relation to other publishing organizations and deciding what to prioritize with limited resources is no easy feat.

How are scholarly society and university publishers approaching production and access now? And what are their future priorities? To help gather collective insights in these areas, Scholastica is conducting a survey on “The State of Journal Production and Access.” We will use the results of this survey to generate an openly available report (no email required for download) on the state of production and access among societies and university publishers.

If you work with a scholarly society, university press, or university library that publishes one or more journals independently, we invite you to take the survey to share your experience. The information you submit for this survey will be published in an aggregated and anonymized form.

Survey details
We’ve launched this survey because, as noted, production and access are two areas of journal publishing that are undergoing some of the most significant changes, and where we believe collective insights will be useful for journal programs and stakeholders in the publishing community. Production and access are also converging more in recent initiatives like Plan S, which not only calls for open access to research but also digital production standardization and best practices for expanded article usage and indexing potential.

“The State of Journal Production and Access Survey” questions span core production and access areas, including:

• Article typesetting/layout processes and priorities
• Metadata tagging processes and priorities
• OA journal development approaches and funding models

We’ve kept all questions on the topics of production and access separate to avoid conflating questions/responses within the different topic areas. The final survey report will also have separate sections for the topics of production and access. We believe looking at production and access as separate but related aspects of publishing will provide publishers with generative insights that they can use to determine how their journal program compares to peer organizations and where the publishing landscape is moving.

Take the survey
“The State of Journal Production and Access Survey“ will be open now through May 29, 2020. The survey takes around 5-10 minutes to complete. At the end of the survey, you will have the option to include an email address to have the final report sent directly to you when it’s available. That contact information is not required to complete the survey and will not be included in the published results. Any email address that you provide will not be shared with outside parties or used for any purpose other than sending you a copy of the survey report. We invite you to take the survey here.