Slumbering giant stirs

Social sciences and humanities publishing has seen many changes in recent months, not least of which is the impact of open access

Traditionally viewed as the quieter cousin of STM (science, technology and medicine), social sciences and humanities publishing has seen many changes in recent months. Journal publishers have had to face concerns about the impact of open access, and balance funding against the escalating cost of electronic and print journals in the STM sector. Meanwhile book publishers have been wrestling with the idea of books as content and coming up with new delivery models for e-books.

The rewards have been seen in the growth of the market and a huge increase in online access to social science and humanities publications, partly as a result of the heavy use of papers in teaching and learning, which some publishers are gearing up to address with content linked to VLEs (virtual learning environments).

The sector has adjusted to the changing landscape through mergers and acquisitions. Emerald Group snapped up parts of Elsevier’s social sciences series and books programme, adding 200 book series and 300 books to the 200-strong Emerald journal portfolio. Chief executive John Peters described the acquisition as “strategic positioning” to consolidate its position in management research.

Elsevier is equally pleased with the deal. Jim Donohue, managing director of science and technology books at Elsevier, says it divested some of its social sciences books as its list was “a mile wide and an inch deep; we had 27 different topic areas”.

Investment message
He adds: “Our research found that 80% of physical science and engineering librarians wanted resources online but only 20% of social sciences did, which sent us a message about where to invest with books.”

Elsevier continues to develop its 275-strong journal list in the sector. According to Diane Colgan, Elsevier’s SSH journals director, ISI figures show the sector as a whole is growing by 4.8%, with geography, economics, business, management and psychology journals doing particularly well, and an accompanying increase in interdisciplinary titles.

Emerald has also been active in digitisation, releasing the digitised archive of its journal titles in business, management, library and information services, materials science, and engineering in partnership with the British Library.

Proquest too has been involved in some major digitisation activity: the archive of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers and House of Commons parliamentary papers.

Wiley-Blackwell was perhaps the new name to reckon with last year after the mega-merger between Wiley and Blackwell in February. In the past year it has signed up 28 new society partners, adding 50 journals.

It has also been focusing on electronic delivery, updating the Blackwell Reference Online database of academic reference material and making 750 social science and humanities books available online on Wiley InterScience.

Philip Carpenter, managing director for social sciences and humanities at Wiley-Blackwell, says: “The job is less about publishing books and journals than encapsulating knowledge at different levels in different formats, with all or almost all of it available online.”

Routledge, too, is focusing on e-book delivery this year. Taylor & Francis has a large portfolio of social science and humanities journals while its books in the sector are published by Routledge. Taylor & Francis has brought out 350 new journals in the past 18 months, mostly by acquisition; it launches about 25 new journals each year.

David Green, the company’s global journals publishing director, has his eyes on the international prize but believes the softly softly approach is best. “In a decade we expect 10% of what we are publishing to be sourced from developing markets such as China, India and South Africa, but we are not prepared to do the deals the likes of Elsevier and Springer have done in STM publishing. We are incrementalists. There was a gold rush on the STM side and we are not in that game.”

Delivery models are very much under development in the social science and humanities sector. Palgrave Macmillan will now sell its information to organisations on a site licence basis through sister company Nature Publishing Group and will no longer offer combined print and online subscription packages.

Decoupled
David Bull, journals director at Palgrave Macmillan, says: “We have changed our business model and decoupled print and online.”

Bull believes the major challenge for publishers in the sector is to be agile: “We have to be quick to market and in finding opportunities in terms of building the content base. Being fleet of foot and staying ahead of the curve is vital.”

Sage has also gone down the electronic route; its biggest development has been the introduction of Sage eReference. An agreement between JISC Collections and Sage in February made the collection available to all universities and colleges in the UK.

Rolf Janke, Sage vice president and publisher, says the company is focusing on titles with global appeal.

“We are also developing a small number of encyclopaedias that will be e-only, and will be reviewing feedback and uptake over the next year.

“Pricing models for e-collections – especially at the consortia level – can no longer be a one-size-fits-all approach but must be tailored to individual markets.”

Janke identified platform standardisation as another key issue for reference publishers. Sage is working with Google Booksearch and Microsoft’s Live Search to improve discoverability and browsing.

Open access is a major concern for some publishers in this sector. Jayne Marks, Sage vice president of global business development, says: “The significant difference between our STM and social sciences and humanities publishing is the response to opening up back archives: where the half-life for STM content is short, for social sciences and humanities the value of archive content is much higher, and there is therefore a concern for publishers of how best to approach this model.”