Knowledge Sharing: KGL’s José Fossi Looks Back Over a Milestone Year for the PubFactory Community

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL’s José Fossi Looks Back Over a Milestone Year for the PubFactory Community

For many of our publishing partners and customers, 2021 was a transient year. As the industry dusted itself off from the grueling onslaught of 2020, publishers emerged with renewed optimism and a will to experiment with new technologies, models, ideas, and ways of working.

For the team at KGL PubFactory, 2021 was also a time for optimism—a year in which exciting new partnerships were forged and important developments were made, as we watched the community continue to grow and flourish. We took some time to talk to José Fossi, PubFactory co-founder and VP of Client Services, to reflect on the last year in scholarly publishing and his own professional highlights.

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Publishing Predictions for 2022

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Publishing Predictions for 2022

Global Accessibility, Advanced Analytics, New Content Types, and More

In what has become an annual tradition here at KGL, we take stock at the start of the year, consult our publishing experts, and go out on a limb to try and foretell what the future holds for our industry. After two years of uncertainty in life as we know it, here are nevertheless some of the top predictions for ongoing and emerging trends that we think publishers should bear in mind as we all make our way carefully into 2022.

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL's Kelly Lake Offers Learning Insights for Scholarly Publishers

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL's Kelly Lake Offers Learning Insights for Scholarly Publishers

As the research community evolves beyond mere PDFs of journal articles and book chapters, and publishers increasingly use their digital platforms to meet the demand for new, more engaging types of content, one area that shows strong potential is delivery of learning services. Whether it’s professional development courses for practitioners, continuing education credits, or Learning Management System (LMS) integration, publishers can now offer this content in interactive formats to their users. And publishers themselves may want to up their game when it comes to training their own workforce on issues of compliance, technology, and performance. To better help our industry understand the current landscape for eLearning strategy and solutions, I asked the head of KnowledgeWorks Global Learning, Kelly Lake, to explain the methodology, technology applications, and benefits of the L&D solutions her group provides to organizations of all types.

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

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

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.

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Lessons Learned and Challenges Ahead for Scholarly Publishers

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Lessons Learned and Challenges Ahead for Scholarly Publishers

Highlights and Reflections from the 2021 KGL PubFactory Virtual Series

Autumn is a busy time for KGL PubFactory. Each year, as industry events start to fill the calendar, our community of customers, partners and staff gather for our user group meeting—held the past two years as the PubFactory Virtual Series. This is a rare and refreshing opportunity to bring together all the inspiring professionals we work with on both sides of the Atlantic, encouraging them to share knowledge, insights and experiences, and to explore how publishers are adopting technology to support their current needs and future goals.

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5 Wins for Science in a Chaotic Year

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5 Wins for Science in a Chaotic Year

The past year has been eventful—to say the least—in the world of scientific research and academic publishing. Near constant crises, from the global pandemic to revelations about climate change to a turbulent presidential election all touched our daily lives and became the subjects of influential, fast-tracked journal articles. While much attention has been paid to an unfortunate proliferation of fake science due to current events, including our own previous blog post; peer-reviewed journals have persisted to make a positive and measurable impact, informing critical decisions about government, education, healthcare, and more. As a key partner in the scholarly information chain, we at KGL want to take a moment to spotlight some of the top (real) science stories since 2020 and how they have made an actual difference in our lives.

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Accessibility Fast Becoming an Essential Pillar of Scholarly Publishing

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Accessibility Fast Becoming an Essential Pillar of Scholarly Publishing

Two years ago, we (as Cenveo at the time) hosted a panel discussion at the SSP Annual Meeting, which brought the subject of accessibility to the center stage and helped shine a spotlight on the importance of making content accessible to readers with disabilities, such as learning difficulties and visual impairments. To mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD), we take a look at how this landscape is evolving and how scholarly publishers are now actively improving access to academic research.

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Knowledge Sharing: Five Minutes with Marion Morrow, KGL Director of Sales, UK and Europe

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Knowledge Sharing: Five Minutes with Marion Morrow, KGL Director of Sales, UK and Europe

Normally at this time of year, we would be meeting and greeting our customers and friends at the London Book Fair. I think it’s fair to say that no one at KGL misses that more than the head of our Sutton, UK office, Marion Morrow. I caught up with Marion virtually in lieu of the pub about being a people-person during the pandemic, her deep experience on both the publisher and provider sides of the business, and how technology-based solutions can help publishers, especially during this time.

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Innovations in Content Hosting

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Innovations in Content Hosting

A year of advances for the KGL PubFactory platform and the scholarly community

Since the beginning of a very disruptive 2020, scholarly publishers have had to contend with uncertainty in institutional markets, sudden demands for rapid dissemination of critical research, and an ongoing existential crisis due to Open Access (OA) mandates. Fortunately, industry partners have been there to support content providers of all sizes and types with enhanced workflows, integrated services, and advanced solutions that met the moment.

A review of the last year of exciting developments here at KGL PubFactory demonstrates how publishers of academic books and journals can evolve and even thrive with the right technology support—better serving their authors, users, and society at large even during challenging times.

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Open Access Voices and Variations: 4 Innovations from the PubFactory Community

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Open Access Voices and Variations: 4 Innovations from the PubFactory Community

Earlier this month at the KGL PubFactory Virtual Series 2020, we hosted Open Access Voices and Variations, a lively session with a diverse group of book and journal publishers. The panel was made up of traditional academic publishers, a university press, and a society publisher from across the PubFactory community—several notably in the humanities and social sciences (HSS).

We explored their unique perspectives and approaches to Open Access, looking in detail at how they are each responding to challenges, adjusting business models, flipping journal programs, and coping with institutional mandates.

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SSP OnDemand: AI Goes From Disruptive to Imperative

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SSP OnDemand: AI Goes From Disruptive to Imperative

For the Society of Scholarly Publishers OnDemand Video Content Library, KGL participated in a panel discussion entitled, AI Goes From Disruptive to Imperative: Publishers overcoming hang-ups and getting real with intelligent automation, where we invited movers and shakers in AI to highlight why researchers and publishers must embrace the technology now in order to remain competitive.

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Confessions of an Accidental Editor

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Confessions of an Accidental Editor

KGL’s Peter Olson blogs how an English major wound up copyediting science journals, what he has learned over his long career, and where to start to become an STEM journal copyeditor.

Copyediting is referred to by some as “the accidental profession,” and this pretty much sums up my own odyssey—and I’m not alone. If you were to survey the legion of copyeditors working today, many of them would reveal their secret identities as English Literature majors who, in sidestepping a career in academia, fell backwards into the vortex of copyediting—only to find that it was their true calling all along.

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy, Part 3 (The Creative Process)

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy, Part 3 (The Creative Process)

When designing your publishing platform, there are many factors to consider to deliver an optimal user experience. It’s critical to establish a user-first driven process.

As discussed in parts 1 and 2, it is imperative that your web publishing platform be designed with accessibility, responsiveness, and consistency for all users and devices. Publisher websites are often built using templates and components to help present content in a familiar pattern that users recognize and can easily access. But when designing the “skin” for these experiences, maintain your stylistic uniqueness to strengthen your brand presence. Your brand’s attributes and voice must be visually communicated.

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy, Part 2 (Accessibility Improves Experience)

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy, Part 2 (Accessibility Improves Experience)

Website accessibility is not a new topic. In fact, it’s been a factor since 2010 when the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) published standards that digital technology and information must be accessible to all people. At that point, most companies did not think that responsibility for website accessibility applied to them, or that they were required to address it unless they were receiving federal funds/grants. Additionally, the general perception was that creating accessible websites was more costly and entailed a lengthier process to implement. Not surprisingly, the ROI to include accessibility as part of the web design process was not considered valuable enough to be a default priority.

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KGL and the Scientific Publishing Community

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KGL and the Scientific Publishing Community

It’s no secret that Sheridan Journal Services (now part of KGL) is dedicated to the scientific publishing community. This commitment is most strongly evidenced through Sheridan’s long-term and significant involvement with the Council of Science Editors (CSE). Through the years, Sheridan folks have held board and leadership positions, served on committees, and presented many courses to the CSE body.

We’d like to highlight two members of the SJS Publishing Services team who currently have active roles with CSE. Both Nancy Devaux, Process Improvement Manager, and Peter Olson, Senior Copyediting Coordinator, have participated in a variety of ways over the past decade to share their professional insights and expertise.

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Fast-Tracking COVID-19 Research

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Fast-Tracking COVID-19 Research

Five Questions for Debbie McClanahan, KGL’s VP of Journal Publishing Services

I wanted to look deeper into other areas of the research workflow that can be expedited in the cause of helping authors and publishers vet and distribute important discoveries. So I consulted one of our internal experts, KGL’s Debbie McClanahan, VP of Journal Publishing Services, to draw on her decades of experience helping academic publishers take their content from accepted manuscript to copyedited, typeset and verified articles available for download.

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How Publishers Can Put AI to Use in the Pandemic

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How Publishers Can Put AI to Use in the Pandemic

Earlier in the year we predicted how artificial intelligence could impact the industry in 2020—with AI applications being created and perfected to increase discoverability, improve user experience, automate tedious clerical work, analyze trends, and expand the peer review pool. We also noted that publishers were beginning to feel less tentative about adopting these solutions into their workflows. At the time, we could not have imagined that a global pandemic would disrupt the industry and society in the way that it has. So in light of recent events, we wanted to revisit a few ways this technology can immediately be used to assist researchers, publishers, and the wider world.

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Publishing as an Essential Business

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Publishing as an Essential Business

A round-up of how the industry is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic

In these challenging times, there has been much discussion of what qualifies as an “essential business.” There is the debate around which establishments should be allowed to continue physical operations during a social distancing shutdown (are liquor stores, bike shops and video games as essential as grocery stores and the healthcare supply chain?). Some organizational habits like meeting culture, long commutes and digital red tape have already been exposed as decidedly nonessential for a post-crisis world. But while the majority of us adjust to working from home (a luxury obviously not afforded to many frontline professions), the coronavirus pandemic is unfolding as an occasion for the industry to prove its worth.

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COVID-19 and rapid publication: the new normal for scholarly communications?

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COVID-19 and rapid publication: the new normal for scholarly communications?

Last week, a group of 30 epidemic modeling specialists going by the name of ‘the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team’ released a 20-page document highlighting several stark truths about the strategies being deployed by the US and UK governments as they confronted the unprecedented challenges of the rampant global COVID-19 pandemic.

The scientists warned of the potentially devastating consequences of the ‘mitigation’ approaches being adopted, projecting 250,000 deaths in the UK and as many as 1.2m in the US should we continue along the same paths, while suggesting that a ‘suppression’ strategy would be far more effective at limiting the human cost and impact on healthcare systems.

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A Look Ahead at Publishing in 2020: AI, AR, Plan S and More

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A Look Ahead at Publishing in 2020: AI, AR, Plan S and More

As 2020 begins, we look at what the year holds for publishers of all kinds, and how technology can help them improve their systems, increase revenue, reach new readers, and more.

#AI #technology #innovation #automation #workflow #AR #PlanS

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