In response to changing market dynamics, scholarly publishers are experimenting with diversifying their revenue streams. They’re seeking creative, scalable, and cost-effective ways to expand their range of services and deliver new offerings to their authors to build loyalty and ensure a continuous stream of quality submissions.
In fact, according to a recent white paper by Research Consulting, society publishers ranked enhanced author services among their top five opportunities.
While scholarly publishers look to diversify, they also have an imperative to protect and strengthen relationships with both influential and emerging authors.
Through RightsLink for Scientific Communications, the leading OA workflow solution trusted by dozens of independent publishers and societies, facilitating publisher agreements with more than 2,000 institutions and funders in nearly 70 countries, we leverage our first-hand experience collecting, managing, and reporting on a variety of publication charges to give publishers new opportunities to offer additional services to their authors while growing or diversifying revenue.
Since 2014, CCC has been offering author services that enable publishers to improve operational efficiencies by incorporating author services into a single, integrated workflow.
Our collaboration with the publishing community recently led us to expand RightsLink Author Services, which provides scholarly publishers with a streamlined way to automate targeted promotional offers and publication charges for authors at key points across the publication lifecycle.
RightsLink’s new flexible module takes it a step further. The expanded capabilities enable publishers to easily use their existing manuscript metadata integration to offer any set of up to four services to one or more authors, at various stages of the publication lifecycle. Publishers can experiment, measure, and report on the offers to make data-driven business decisions.
Example author services include membership fees, figure charges, submission fees, research promotion such as infographics, and more.
ASM Journals expands their offerings and revenue streams with RightsLink Author Services
ASM Journals, the publishing division of the American Society for Microbiology, is one publisher partnering with CCC to manage new business models.
In addition to adopting RightsLink for Scientific Communications to simplify the collection of OA payments, ASM Journals chose to leverage RightsLink Author Services to offer and collect related fees for article reprints and ePrints.“RightsLink Author Services (Reprints) will provide authors with a better author experience by streamlining the publication process and will also allow them to increase the visibility of their research,” said David Haber, Director, Journal Publishing Operations at ASM Journals.
Unlike unscalable, manual processes, RightsLink Author Services improved ASM Journals’ operational efficiencies through a single, integrated workflow.
“RightsLink and the other CCC solutions allow us to think creatively about new products—such as translation services,” Haber said. “We couldn’t do this before because we couldn’t conceive of a fair and efficient way to collect fees on the new service. It was always an onerous process. But because RightsLink integrates with our workflows, we can think about the best time to offer new author services, and that will help us expand our revenue streams.”
RightsLink Author Services helps publishers automate a variety of promotional offers and publication charges in a scalable, flexible way to diversify their revenue streams, enhance the author experience, and adjust to the financial impact of shifting market forces.
To see what RightsLink Author Services can do for you, please contact us.