February 21, 2024

5 tips for Growing Journal Revenue in a Changing Business Environment

February 21, 2024/ Mike Groth

Remaining competitive in today’s complicated scholarly journal landscape has never been more challenging for publishers. Confronted with rapidly evolving business models, funding constraints, growing competition and stretched resources, sustaining and growing revenue can seem like a daunting task and uphill struggle at times.

During our most recent edition of the KGL PubFactory Virtual Series, Kevin Lomangino, Director of KGL Consulting, presented an insightful and panoramic talk on the current state of the journal market, looking at how evolving trends are impacting publishers, while also providing some useful tips on how journals can navigate this new reality to stay competitive and boost revenue. Read some of his key takeaways.

December 07, 2023

How to Use Data-Driven Strategies to Increase High-Quality Submissions

December 07, 2023/ Mike Groth

Last month, customers, friends, and guest speakers from across the globe convened once again for our annual KGL PubFactory Virtual Series. During the course of the three-day event, a packed and topical agenda enabled the scholarly publishing community to share valuable insights, learnings, developments, advice and trends with their peers.

One of the highlights of the Industry Day (day two) program was a fascinating discussion chaired by KGL Senior Consultant, Annette Hager, entitled, Data-Driven Strategies for Increasing High Quality Submissions. This session explored practical ways in which publishers can integrate bibliometric and citation data into their editorial strategies in order to attract both larger volumes of submissions and, perhaps more importantly, higher quality content submissions.

October 16, 2023

OSTP and Public Access: One Year Later

October 16, 2023/ Mike Groth

As part of the 2023 KGL PubFactory Virtual Series, on October 11 we hosted Industry Day, a half-day online seminar of insights, discussion, and practical takeaways for the scholarly publishing community. Headlining the event was an informative discussion with KGL’s Cara Rivera and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library and Chef at The Scholarly Kitchen on the evolving implications of last year’s US policy memo recommending free and immediate access to all federally funded research.

Cara asked Lisa about implications on APCs, data sharing, sustainability of journal business models, and long-term consequences of OA mandates. The recording of the 30-minute interview can be viewed below.

June 22, 2023

Recruiting and Onboarding an Editor-in-Chief: 5 Tips from the Experts

June 22, 2023/ Mike Groth

Hiring, transitioning and onboarding an Editor-in-Chief is one of the most important yet complex and lengthy processes scholarly journals must undertake. From assembling a recruiting committee and creating checklists to compiling shortlists and evaluation matrixes, the groundwork required alone can take months. But all the hard work is worth it if you want to secure the best possible candidate who meets the criteria of your journal and is aligned with its core values and goals.

In our recent Successful Recruiting and Onboarding of Your Editor-in-chief webinar, hosted by KGL Consulting and our very own Lisa Marshall, four experts from across the scholarly journal community gathered to offer their unique perspectives on the topic.

January 20, 2023

Publishing Predictions for 2023: CDEI, China, Chatbots, and More

January 20, 2023/ Mike Groth

Looking to the year ahead once again, the KGL experts across book and journal publishing, scholarly and education markets, technology and business development, weigh in to highlight some of the industry trends we expect will be prominent in 2023.

December 02, 2022

The World is Yours: Globalization Trends in Scholarly Publishing

December 02, 2022/ Mike Groth

Globalization is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a new trend. For decades, our world has steadily become more interconnected and, without doubt, this is a pattern that is set to continue long into the future. In scholarly publishing, this pattern is no different. But journal publishers are increasingly noting that globalization is progressively affecting every facet of the business—from editorial and production right through to financial and sales and marketing.

This is why at this year’s KGL PubFactory Virtual Series we dedicated a special session to the topic. Hosted by Kevin Lomangino, KGL’s Director of Consulting, platform customers were led through a fascinating presentation on how globalization is currently impacting scholarly publishing and how journal publishers can best position themselves to capitalize on this trend. The following highlights some of the most striking takeaways from the session.

October 19, 2022

(Smoothly) Transitioning to New Publishing Business Models

October 19, 2022/ Mike Groth

With all the recent discussion around the US OSTP memo recommending free and immediate access to all federally funded research, we think it’s worthwhile to take a step back to assess the current state of subscription and Open Access business models and review how we got here, before considering how to best navigate this changing landscape. The following article details the history of business model innovation in scholarly journal publishing, from a Trends Talk by KGL Consulting.

For over a hundred years, the business of publishing academic journals has been sustained by the subscription model. It was always an impeccably simple premise: institutions paid, authors authored, publishers published, readers read, institutions renewed, and repeat. The 1970s marked something of a heyday for this model - an era that is often viewed by the industry as some kind of utopia—when the scholarly publishing ecosystem seemed to thrive, with an abundance of journals entering the market, bursting library shelves, institutional agreements aplenty and high renewal rates.

October 17, 2022

Publishing Trends: OSTP and Public Access

October 17, 2022/ Mike Groth

As part of the KGL PubFactory Virtual Series, on October 6 we hosted Industry Day, a half-day online seminar of insights, discussion, and practical takeaways for the scholarly publishing community. Headlining the event was an informative discussion with KGL’s Cara Rivera and Howard Ratner of CHORUS on the implications of the recent US OSTP memo recommending free and immediate access to all federally funded research.

Cara starts the session by reviewing what the memo says and doesn’t say, and presents excerpts from key industry stakeholders. Howard then masterfully explains potential impacts and important nuances. The recording of the 30-minute interview can be viewed here.

September 19, 2022

Publishing Tips from KGL Consulting: Hiring an Editor-in-Chief Set to Succeed

September 19, 2022/ Mike Groth

An Editor-in-Chief search is demanding, and recruiting the right candidate is vital to upholding a society’s reputation and increasing journal impact. KGL Consulting manages the recruitment process on behalf of many societies each year, helping to set journal programs on a path to even greater success. Here are a few crucial questions of an Editor-in-Chief search to consider.

August 30, 2022

Publishing Tips from KGL Consulting: Keep Your Authors Happy

August 30, 2022/ Mike Groth

Greater competition to attract high quality authors and new business models to increase published articles have led to a renewed focus on author satisfaction. What are journals doing to address this? KGL Consulting has identified dozens of ways to help organizations succeed. Here are a few simple ideas to get started.

May 11, 2022

How Are Scholarly Publishers Adapting To Open Access?

May 11, 2022/ Mike Groth

Throughout the twentieth century, academic institutions had a mandate to provide full access to the peer-reviewed scholarly literature and budgets that were more or less up to the task. Scholarly societies could count on journal subscription revenues to help fund programs and activities that benefitted their organizations, members, and fields.

Now open access models are gaining attention and growing in popularity, sometimes adding to and other times threatening the steady revenues that journal publishers have counted on for years. How will this and other seismic shifts affect the journal publishing industry moving forward?

December 06, 2021

Knowledge Sharing: 5 Minutes with Cara Rivera, Co-founder of Kaufman Wills Fusting & Company

December 06, 2021/ Mike Groth

Recently, KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. (KGL) was very excited to announce the acquisition of Kaufman Wills Fusting & Company (KWF). The addition of sister companies, KWF Consulting and KWF Editorial adds new and expanded capabilities to the KGL portfolio and nearly 100 editorial and publishing business experts to our staff of industry professionals—not the least of whom, of course, is KWF co-founder, Cara (Kaufman) Rivera.

Assuming the new role of Vice President, Consulting and Analysis, Cara joined the KGL leadership team immediately following the November 2021 acquisition where she will continue to manage the business that is known for (among many other things), publishing the annual Journal Editorial Compensation Benchmark Study. With her decades of experience running KWF and working for commercial and society publishers, I wanted to learn more about what competencies she and her team bring to KGL, exactly how they serve journal publishers, and what she sees on the horizon for our industry.

February 15, 2020

How to Develop Mission-Based Membership Benefits for Your Association

February 15, 2020/ Mike Groth

This blog dives deep into how associations and societies can use membership benefits to grow memberships. We’ll look at membership as it relates to your mission statement, and membership benefits (communications, career advancement, educational opportunities, and service programs).

Blog