The rise of Journal Development

The development of a researcher-focused structure

The brainchild for Journal Development (JDev) came from years of experience working within traditional publishing houses and identifying bottlenecks that affect and restrict the publishing life cycle and the value being created for researchers.

Typically, publishing departments have been structured in silos (marketing, editorial, sales, operations, and data) that work independently of each other towards similar but unshared goals.

When the primary customer was the librarian, the separation between these teams was more understandable: editorial teams worked with researcher groups to develop the journal’s content; the operations teams ensured the content was published correctly; the marketing teams promoted published content; and the sales teams sold subscriptions to librarians.

This approach led teams to focus on their own value stream at the expense of researcher (customer) needs, often causing breakdowns in communications between departments, delays in output, and the overall goal being lost in translation.

However, over time, the requirements of a publishing department have shifted for many reasons, including the move to digital with much less reliance on print; the rise in additional publishing models including open access; and the growth and size of the market.

JDev has therefore developed in response to market forces and a need to create a multifunctional department that comprises expertise across the scope of researcher needs. Our team draws together skills in marketing, editorial, customer knowledge, data, operations, and analytics — with the ultimate goal to grow and develop our journals.

To achieve this, JDev uses a blended team-of-teams structure that empowers team members to drive development with company-wide impact and encourages a high-performing and inclusive culture where everyone gets involved.

Each team is dedicated to a specific customer group (author, editor, reviewer, or reader) or a specific aim (content development, regional development, open science) — all supported by the same data and infrastructure. By blending people of different backgrounds and aligning objectives within a team with a singular focus, we enhance our capability and productivity, reduce the risk of misaligned objectives, and increase value for all.

What are the benefits of this style of working?

A faster, more effective way of working, with greater scalability, seamless collaboration, clarity of purpose, improved morale, and a greater level of understanding across the board — all of which results in a better service being provided to our researcher customers. 

This streamlined, highly collaborative, customer-focused way of working reflects our overall mission:

“...to advance scientific research by reducing friction between researchers, research outputs, platforms, services, and organizations. To succeed in this mission, we must work with other like-minded individuals and organizations to overcome the legal, technical, and cultural barriers that limit the dissemination and reuse of scholarly research.”

How did we get where we are today?

We have a long and rich history, all of which has contributed to our journey towards the JDev structure we have today. Our agility as a business has enabled us to be responsive to the market and evolve to provide innovative approaches to serving our research communities.

How does JDev build strategy?

We have a straightforward approach to achieving our overall mission: we have six strategic pillars that do not change. Everything we do aims to achieve at least one of these pillars, and each of these pillars drives our overall mission.

Within each pillar we have identified key aims that will help us to ensure success; these are subject to review every three years but will continue until they are achieved.

How does JDev fit within the teams that manage publishing?

Multiple teams support the publishing process of our journals. JDev oversees everything at the journal level — researcher engagement (editor recruitment and training, reviewer reward, author attainment, reader engagement), submission driving, journal websites, indexing, and dissemination. The other teams each support different functions of the publishing process. Teams are spread through different departments of Wiley but work together as a whole to support the publication, management, and development of our journal portfolio.

JDev organization chart, demonstrating our team-of-teams structure.

What are our main challenges and how do we overcome them?

A potential risk of our blended structure is the blurring of boundaries between roles. To ensure this does not create issues within the team, we have developed a culture of getting involved and hiring teammates who are open to being transparent and sharing tasks. We ensure that colleagues have specific areas of responsibility and know who to contact or loop in when interacting in a particular area of the business. This focus on openness, curiosity, and collaboration leads to greater levels of personal development and varied work for everyone involved in JDev.

Another challenge is the absence of an internal editorial team to provide topic-specific support. We have adapted and implemented processes that bypass reliance on an internal publishing team. For instance, Marketing Managers have guidelines on checking content to promote in campaigns. At the same time, our Data & Operations team uses their technical expertise to create programs that guarantee a high level of accuracy when selecting articles for promotion.

Our automated and at-scale approach to researcher communications and engagement enables us to rely on external editors for full editorial support without the need for an internal editor role. Our data provides a full picture of researcher performance and behavior, which we can report on and use to inform editor and reviewer training and development.

We need to make sure we continue to evolve in the ever-changing world of scholarly communication and use our data-, infrastructure- and teams-focused approach to best serve the research community

What is the future of JDev?

Our innovative approach to breaking down the barriers between the teams involved in the development of journals, as well as continuing to enhance our understanding of researchers, provides us with many opportunities to grow.

Key ways in which can continue to evolve and lead the publishing industry include:

• developing a wider-ranging ability to understand our different researcher customers and personalize engagement with them at scale
• continually find new ways to leverage the understanding we have about our researchers and the publishing process
• defining the ways Open Science can be developed to serve the global researcher community effectively and efficiently
• leveraging our understanding of researchers and our leading infrastructure to provide the best value for all