A recurring theme in our research in the Communities Team has been the future of scholarly societies. Whether it’s authors choosing to publish with us to meet OA requirements their society cannot fulfill; concerns from society board members about slowly but steadily falling membership and financial reserves (exacerbated by conferences cancelled this year and next due to COVID-19); or societies wanting to launch and manage an OA journal, but put off by the complexity, cost and ongoing investment to maintain and sustain a fledgling title: the current dynamics in STM publishing can make life difficult for societies, especially smaller membership organizations. Meanwhile, the focus of many publishers has been on alternative business models and transformative deals at the institutional/funder level.
Here at PeerJ we believe that scholarly societies and the communities they support and develop are vital to a thriving academic and research ecosystem, so we are hoping to offer an opportunity to societies and a solution to many of their concerns.
Society Publishing with PeerJ Hubs
We are currently seeking partners to co-develop a new ecosystem for societies that we believe can answer many of the concerns we have heard. Our first step towards this new ecosystem is to develop PeerJ Hubs
PeerJ Hubs are built on PeerJ’s journal portfolio, platform and infrastructure, but partners have their own editorial responsibilities and community development opportunities. Partners and their members benefit from the platform, service and reputation of PeerJ – and our highly-regarded portfolio of indexed, peer-reviewed journals – with the opportunity to build their own publication pathway, increase their member numbers, and develop their community and opportunities for them to interact.
PeerJ Hubs are designed around choice and flexibility for our partners. We know one size won’t fit everyone, so partners can integrate their own branding, and choose the editorial model, community tools, website configuration and even business model to create a bespoke publishing outlet best suited to their organization and members.
Choose your journals
Choose to partner with PeerJ and you can choose which PeerJ journals to build into your PeerJ Hub.
PeerJ Hubs remove the administrative effort and cost of launching a new journal, and allow your members to submit to the highly regarded and indexed journals in PeerJ’s portfolio. Our journals’ excellent reputation, broad audience and high-quality peer review standards means your members can submit to your PeerJ Hub knowing their research will be highly visible, widely disseminated, indexed in all the important databases and responsibly archived. Your members can choose to submit to any of our seven journals.
Choose your editorial model
Choose to take control of your publishing pathway. Partners can choose to form their own Senior Editorial Team and Editorial Board, and choose whether they want to curate content including blogs, news and announcements into their PeerJ Hub alongside their community’s research articles. There are three initial editorial models:
The Hubs Assessment model allows societies to integrate or build their own Editorial Board to manage the peer review of submissions to the Hub. This model is suited to large societies with greater editorial capacity.
In the Curation model, an initial assessment of submissions to the Hub is made by a partner Editorial Team to assess whether they fall in scope for the Hub. Peer review is handled by our wider Editorial Boards, which partner members are invited to join.
The Hubs Collation model is more light touch, collating content submitted by partner members which has passed the standard PeerJ peer review process.
Regardless of the model chosen, support and oversight is provided by PeerJ staff and partners have the option to include content – such as news, blogs and member updates – from other sources.
Choose to reduce publishing costs for your members
Hub partners can choose from a range of benefit models, including a revenue share, discounted APCs for their members, or a unique cooperative model based on PeerJ’s new Tokens program. The integration of PeerJ Tokens and PeerJ Hubs provides societies and associations with a unique opportunity. Contributions to peer review from a partner’s members – as an editor, reviewer or author – generate Tokens which can be pooled and used by members to drive down their publishing costs, meaning the cooperative efforts of the society can support those members who most need it.
Choose to partner with PeerJ
We want to build an accessible, equitable solution for societies and members organizations seeking their own publishing outlet – or an Open Access option to complement their current publications – without the cost and administrative burden of launching and maintaining a new journal. We welcome discussions with scholarly societies and associations who are interested in launching their own Hub and want to the program and its core concepts to ensure they meet your requirements.
Want to find out more?
If you’d like to find out more, you can download the PeerJ Hubs Partner prospectus here. We’d love to have the opportunity to talk through your options in more detail so please get in touch: nathaniel.gore@peerj.com