by Julie Arendt

Four physics and mathematics publishers provided their perspectives at the PAM Vendor update this year. The speakers were asked to present on the theme of “Practicing Agility in an Open World Economy” as well as report on any recent changes at their company. Although they did not coordinate their presentations, some common elements came up in all of the presentations. One common topic among the four publishers was a movement beyond simply providing pdfs of articles to including mobile access, additional content, and semantic enhancement. Other common topics were pressure to find the right pricing model and partnerships with other organizations. Below are a brief summary of the individual presentations:

David Marshall from SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) announced a supplementary materials policy. Articles may include electronic appendices, such as extra proofs or equations, which will be refereed. Electronic articles may also include supplementary materials, such as data sets or computer code, which will not be refereed. SIAM also plans to establish mobile pairing, so users will be able to more easily access SIAM journals from their mobile devices. In the area of pricing, SIAM is exploring DeepDyve and token systems for non-subscribers to access SIAM journals and expects changes in the next year or two. Among the partnerships that Marshall highlighted was a new journal, SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification (JUQ), published jointly with the American Statistical Association.

Eric Pepper from SPIE emphasized changes in their publications. In conjunction with a move to the SC6M platform from Silverchair, SPIE has created a taxonomy and is adding tags to articles in order to take advantage of the platform’s semantic capabilities. With this semantic enhancement, SPIE will be able to provide topical collections of articles associated with multiple conferences, to suggest related content based on the taxonomic tags, and to allow readers to apply facets and filters to their searches. For some conference presentations, multimedia will be associated with the papers. SPIE will also provide linking for mobile devices. In the area of open access, SPIE has a hybrid model, in which authors can pay $100 per page to make their papers open access within subscription journals. Subscription prices will be reduced based on uptake, and if a journal reaches about 80% or 90% open access uptake, the entire journal will go open access.

John Haynes from AIP (American Institute of Physics) described some of the semantic enhancement that AIP is adding to publications in the next generation of Scitation, so that their publications can include suggestions of similar articles based on semantic similarity. The enhancements will also aid in providing profiles to disambiguate authors. In the area of pricing and open access models, Haynes emphasized that the use of arXiv varies widely among subdisciplines within physics, with especially low use in applied physics. Haynes announced that AIP will launch two open access journals in the next year: JAP Materials and APL Materials. Haynes also reported that uptake for hybrid open access in AIP’s subscription journals is less than 1%. AIP’s change in strategic focus in the past year has resulted in greater partnering with other organizations for technology and other non-core services, so that AIP can focus on publishing.

Olaf Ernst from IOP (Institute of Physics) highlighted the trend in publishing from print to electronic to mobile delivery. Ernst discussed the move to the “article of the future” that is flexible for the different devices that readers use and that includes other enhancements such as the ability for readers to download figures separate from articles and for video to be imbedded in articles. In the area of pricing, IOP is examining whether continuing with an underlying business models based on historically print-based collections is an appropriate way to price current journals. IOP is also looking to emerging markets, such as China for new business. Like AIP, uptake for hybrid open access has been low in IOP journals, with just four articles published this way in IOP journals in the last year.

To see the full slide presentations from the session, visit: http://pam.sla.org/conferences/sla2012/