le titre du livre 5. Researcher Engagement team

5

Researcher Engagement team

Why does researcher engagement matter?

Put simply, researchers are at the heart of everything we do. Without their support and contributions, our journals would neither exist nor flourish. In Journal Development (JDev) we see the researcher as our core stakeholder and customer.

Who are our researchers?

We group researchers based on the four core roles they play in the publishing process: author, editor, reviewer, and reader. While it is unlikely that a researcher would fall into only one of these groups, ultimately, each has its own unique, individual needs and experience when interacting with us as a publisher.

All of these researchers exist in mutually reinforcing, cyclical relationships. An extremely engaged editor is more likely to decide to handle a manuscript for a journal and select quality reviewers in an efficient manner. Equally, we expect engaged reviewers to work carefully, but quickly, to provide a high-quality report. This, in turn, helps satisfy the author’s expectations of receiving a rigorous, robust, and timely submission, peer review, and publication experience. In short, each researcher’s activity can improve — or, conversely, detract from — the experience of another. All of these roles also reinforce each other — for example, a researcher that has a good experience as a reviewer is more likely to value becoming an author (and vice versa).

It is, therefore, the Researcher Engagement team’s responsibility to identify each researcher group’s wants and needs, maximize the efficiency of our current researcher engagement strategies, and devise new initiatives to drive engagement and improve the researcher experience at every touchpoint in the publishing process.

The relationship and interaction between researcher groups.

What is the Researcher Engagement team’s mission?

Our mission is to ensure that editors, reviewers, authors, and readers have the best experience possible when working or interacting with our journals.

For more information about our stakeholders, please refer to Ch.10.

How does the Researcher Engagement team support our strategic pillars?

Dedicated to driving new and repeat submissions from all key researcher groups, the Researcher Engagement team plays a huge role in supporting our growth in content. In addition to the retention and expansion of our author base, the team’s activities also revolve around the conversion of editors and reviewers to submitting and, ideally, published authors. We also encourage editors to commission high-quality submissions from their peers and advocate the journal’s content within their communities.

Our team-of-teams approach complements our company-wide commitment to being a publisher of publishers. The team’s unique structure demands collaboration both within and between different Researcher Engagement teams, enabling new initiatives to be implemented with greater speed, efficiency, and consideration.

The Researcher Engagement team is the main point of contact for the Editorial and Publishing Operations teams and the Product teams, regarding insight into what constitutes operational excellence for each individual researcher group. The team contributes to the development of new internal features and processes that are designed to not only improve the overarching user experience on Phenom but speak to the specific requirements of each customer persona. Furthermore, our editorial and marketing activities strengthen the engagement of editors and reviewers to ensure that turnaround times remain competitive, and researchers commend us for our industry-leading peer review platform and user experience.

The Researcher Engagement team’s commitment to enhancing the customer experience instills trust in the company’s ethos, practices, and services. We want researchers to have the best possible sentiment towards our journals, and one way we achieve this is through understanding, then resolving, our researchers’ pain points and tailoring the publication process to their needs in collaboration with other internal teams.

We work closely with the Regional Development team to ensure our journals grow in strategic markets, and globally represent our research communities. We facilitate diversity in the geographical composition of our editorial boards, reviewer pool(s), and author base at both an individual journal and discipline level.

The Researcher Engagement team seeks to ensure the widest distribution possible for all our content. We continuously select our high-quality research to showcase through different channels — driving usage and citations which, in turn, helps our journals reach indexing status in leading databases. The increased visibility and discoverability that indexing bestows upon a journal is critical in growing brand awareness, increasing submissions, and driving revenue.

How does the Researcher Engagement team work?

Who is involved?

The Researcher Engagement team is a combination of Researcher Engagement Managers (REMs) and Marketing Managers (MMs), managed by Senior REMs and Senior MMs. The team is overseen by the Director of Journal Management and Director of Researcher Development. For each researcher group, there is at least one REM and one MM dedicated to investigating new methods — and optimizing existing methods — of editorial and marketing activity to ensure the group’s continued and increased engagement.

Researcher Engagement team structure

What do Researcher Engagement Managers (REMs) do?

The REM role is twofold, covering:

  1. managing the editorial engagement for a portfolio (of around 20-40 journals)
  2. monitoring and improving the engagement of a select researcher group

Management of editorial engagement covers a range of tasks, including journal-level communications and policy development and relies heavily upon the REM’s skills in managing editor relationships. In conjunction with the MMs, REMs also handle editor recruitment, as well as the onboarding, training, and rotation of underperforming editors.

More importantly, they act as the main point of contact for Senior Editors - nurturing and developing relationships with them to ensure they support the journal. Owing to this, within JDev, REMs can be considered the main point of contact for information on editorial matters, including Phenom processes and workflows.

What do Marketing Managers (MMs) do?

MMs own the development and deployment of all marketing activity related to their target audience or researcher group. They work with a variety of internal stakeholders to understand the full journey each customer goes through when interacting with the publisher, and endeavor to engage with them at all touchpoints.

The MM is responsible for creating the strategic vision for our customer segments, as well as achieving annual marketing objectives and KPIs through the implementation of integrated, multi-channel marketing campaigns across email, search, social, recommendation engines, and print. Each customer base can overlap, however, there is a tailored approach to each engagement strategy, depending on the researcher.

The various MMs work closely in collaboration with one another. In the same way that editors, reviewers, authors, and readers are part of the same ecosystem, the Editor, Reviewer, Author, and Reader MMs all work within segments of the same customer environment and work towards common goals. These roles also have regional counterparts, who focus on engagement priorities across all researcher groups within strategic regions.

Does the perfect union exist? The relationship between REMs and MMs

Elsewhere in scholarly publishing, it is rare to find marketing experts and journal managers working in the same teams to serve researchers.

The Researcher Engagement team structure provides a way in which a publisher can connect with, and ensure the engagement of, their different researcher groups. Through the relationship between REMs and MMs (and the close connection to the wider JDev ecosystem) both groups are given greater scope to make sure their work has a significant impact.

REMs benefit from enhanced insight and control over communications with researchers and the presentation of the journals, while MMs are given better access to and understanding of the customers they connect with. A project plan must have input from both groups.

The magic of the Researcher Engagement team is a refusal to draw lines regarding ‘who does what.’ Instead, we maintain flexibility, which fosters creative and alternative ideas for improving the researcher experience.

Our relationships outside of the Researcher Engagement team

We look to maximize all resources, from internal and external data to internal and external expertise. This is evident from our close working relationship with Publishing Insights, Data & Operations, Marketing Insights, Editorial & Publishing Operations, and our external Editorial Boards.

These relationships provide insight into our authors, editors, reviewers, and readers through the analysis and understanding of market trends, audience data, and user behaviors. We monitor reports on the current manuscript handling stages and the capacity of our editors, the expected number of submissions from regions based on marketing activity and analyze the impact of regional trends on our projected growth.

The teams within Researcher Engagement

The Editor Engagement team

Why is editor engagement important?

We are proud to work with international teams of editors that are experts in their respective fields of research. These leading academics steer the development of our journals and oversee the peer review process to ensure we publish useful research as efficiently as possible.

Our editors are the ultimate arbiters of quality control in our journals and are accountable for the research they publish. Our editorial models are reliant upon trusting them and their expertise, and without their active participation in the publishing process, our output halts.

Therefore, our editors must understand the requirements of their role — actively engaging with their responsibilities and championing their journals. On the other hand, it is equally important that we, as the publisher, recognize the contribution of our editors and make their roles as easy, enjoyable, and rewarding as possible.

What are the Editor Engagement team’s objectives?

What are the Editor Engagement team’s key responsibilities?

How is engagement measured in the Editor Engagement team?

The Editor Engagement team defines an engaged editor as one that:

The Reviewer Engagement Team

Why is reviewer engagement important?

In traditional publishing spheres, the role of the reviewer has often been overlooked. However, we believe that a reviewer’s journey with a publisher must be valued, and made exceptional, at all stages. This not only leads to the publisher’s success but is also an important way to show appreciation for reviewers’ invaluable hard work.

Reviewers’ experiences decide whether they review for a journal again, or even whether they consider submitting their own research. A well-conducted invitation process and encouragement to submit their report in a timely manner will assure reviewers that should they submit a manuscript to the journal, it will also progress efficiently throughout the peer review process.

Equally, the knowledge that a high-quality report is expected of a reviewer tells them that we strive for all manuscripts to be of the highest standard. Better reviews lead to better research.

What are the Reviewer Engagement team’s objectives?

What are the Reviewer Engagement team’s key responsibilities?

How is engagement measured in the Reviewer Engagement team?

Our reviewers are considered to be engaged if they:

The Author Engagement team

Why is author engagement important?

The core objective of the author engagement team is to go beyond driving submissions.

We realize the importance of engaging with authors throughout the publishing experience and beyond — the publication of a paper is only one important milestone in the research journey, but it is not the last step. We support authors in promoting and communicating their work to maximize its impact not only within the research community but also within wider society.

Authors are at the center of our business model, as our revenue is driven by the collection of article processing charges (APCs) from accepted articles. Therefore, our journals must continue to appeal to authors as reputable venues for their all-important research.

What are the Author Engagement team’s objectives?

What are the Author Engagement team’s key responsibilities?

How do the Author Engagement team measure engagement?

The Author Engagement team considers an engaged author to:

The Reader Engagement Team

Why is reader engagement important?

Reader engagement is pivotal to the scientific publishing ecosystem. An author will publish their article with the aim of their research being read, shared, and cited. The reader of their article will be looking for research to support their own studies and interests, as well as looking for potential collaborations with others in their field.

Often the first time a researcher engages with a journal is when they read an article from it. They may not even know which journal they are reading at the time (due to the disaggregated way researchers now find articles). Often though, readers will remember a relevant article they read when looking to cite research in their own work — this is the point at which a read evolves into a citation and a researcher actively becomes aware of a journal.

Reading is still the basis of our industry — we help research to be published so it can be read and used. Most publishers do not consider or acknowledge readers in the way we do in JDev, but to us, they are a core researcher group in our drive to provide value to all of the roles researchers play in the publishing process.

What are the Reader Engagement team’s objectives?

What are the Reader Engagement team's key responsibilities?

How is engagement measured in the Reader Engagement team?

The Reader Engagement team considers an engaged reader as someone who: