RSS feedsCambridge University Press (CUP) is in the process of change. The world-famous publisher is in the middle of a major recovery programme that will see it expanding its role in journals publishing.
This year, CUP expects to be back in the black after four years of losses, including a loss of £5.8m in 2001. Its recovery programme has included the appointment of a new chief executive, Stephen Bourne, in 2002.
“In 2001, CUP was in difficulties,” comments Ian Banbery (pictured on the left), marketing director of the Cambridge University Press journals division. “The loss was a big shock.”
Banbery believes part of the problem for the journals arm of CUP was that it was not seen as core to the business. “Cambridge University Press saw itself as a humanities book publisher and a very good one,” he says. “Historically, journals were more connected with the printing and typesetting functions of the Press. There was perhaps a lack of understanding of how rapidly the journals market was changing.”
The problems faced by the journals division was highlighted when CUP lost one of its biggest journals contracts, worth 15% of its turnover for the journals business. The loss of the contract actually brought about an improvement in the bottom line of the journals business, clearly indicating a problem in terms of pricing.
This, along with other aspects of the journals business, has now been addressed, says Banbery, himself one of the new managers brought in as part of CUP’s recovery plan. Another senior newcomer into the journals business is former managing director of Greenwich Medical Media, Geoff Nuttall. He joined CUP when it took over GMM in 2003 and is now, with Ian Banbery and production director Mark Talbot, one of the three managers running the journals division.
“We had a good year last year, but we have got a bit longer to go in terms of the recovery plan,” says Banbery. “The task has been to identify the problems and get the right strategy in place. We have been given a very free hand.”
CUP now plans major advances in the journal publishing market over the next year, following its £1m investment in back-end systems . In November 2005, CUP relaunched its online journals platform, adopting Atom and RSS technology in order to become a content pusher, rather than simply a source for content searching. The aim is to provide a personal touch for users and CUP has developed a range of personalisation tools, allowing users to save searches, favourite journals and subjects.
Structural Operations
“The challenges have really been to do with investing in systems and also about how the journals division relates to the rest of the business,” explains Banbery. CUP operates worldwide via a branch structure, with branches having a great deal of autonomy, but the strategy for the journals business rests on it running as a centralised, global business. So there has been a lot of work to do in terms of organising the way CUP’s devolved business can interoperate with a more centralised journals business.
“The problem with a devolved structure is that it meant that sometimes decisions might be made about our journals marketing in the US, for instance, but those decisions would not always have been carried out, because the New York branch wasn’t getting the right resources,” explains Banbery. “So now, wherever the journal is published, that is where we do all the marketing for that journal. Our 45 journals published in New York will be marketed globally, from New York. The 160 journals we publish here in Cambridge will be marketed globally, from here. This way, we know where the responsibility lies and the process is transparent.”
Banbery’s background is in commercial journals publishing. He was formerly at Academic Press and joined CUP in February 2005. “This is fundamentally a place where I can make a difference,” he says.
Like Oxford University Press, CUP which is overseen by a board of senior
university academics known as the Syndics has charitable status. But it has to
run as a commercial business, says Banbery. “We don’t have shareholders,” he
points out. “The profit we generate funds all that we do. We need to be run as
much as possible along commercial lines. If you are in the journals business,
you have to do it properly and professionally. No-one will survive if they are
tweedy and stuffy.”
The new approach to business is exemplified in the relaunch of the CUP website and its online journals platform. “In the past, Cambridge University Press tended to do a project like this and then think that would do for years,” says Banbery. “We are now looking at this and saying that we need to continue to focus on what works for our customers. That’s often something quite simple. But it is about a whole process.”
CUP, as a whole, has just changed its financial year-end to bring it in line with the university, so it has not published results for its year to 31 December 2005, but will instead produce results for a 15-month period up to 31 March 2005.
The financial targets for the journals division are described by Banbery as “relatively modest”. He believes the STM market is where CUP stands to make the largest gains. To support this, a major modernisation programme is under way. In particular, the division is replacing its 20-year-old Vista subscription system and is also consolidating its sales information systems.
This all costs money. “We have made quite a large investment in the systems and that is absolutely necessary, because so much of today’s business is driven by technology,” comments Banbery. “However, it also means that until we get rid of paper, we have to carry two lots of costs, because we have both print and online costs to support.”
Banbery believes it is inevitable that print will eventually disappear, particularly in STM publishing, but the picture has been muddied by the issue of VAT in Europe. “In the US, there is a much larger move to the online world,” says Banbery. It’s a move he sees as inexorable, particularly given the pressure on most university libraries over the amount of physical storage space they have available, but he does acknowledge that there is still some hesitation about getting rid of paper completely.
Competition in the STM market is stiff, but CUP is confident it has the ability to make significant inroads into this market, where the contracts tend to be larger than in humanities. The strategy is to play to the organisation’s existing strengths. “We believe we can give societies the benefits of a smaller, not-for-profit organisation,” says Banbery. But the aim will be to combine that with a smarter commercial sensibility, backed up by new systems.
“It means, for instance, not forcing people into big price rises,” says Banbery. “We will get the highest price the market can provide, but we are not driven by having to make specific percentage returns and we also think we provide a more intimate, collegiate environment."
As CUP continues its drive to expand its journals business, it faces a number of challenges. Like all STM publishers, the CUP faces a degree of uncertainty over the issues of open access and repositories. But it is already responding to these issues and plans to launch 10 journals in the next year on the hybrid publishing model, as well as looking to find more backing for open access along the lines of its existing free Breast Cancer Online journal, funded by AstraZeneca.
The Main Challenge
“It takes time and internal energy to work out the appropriate response for the
business to issues like this,” acknowledges Banbery. “Today’s business is more
complex and fragmented. The main challenge, however, with something like open
access is not the concept itself, but how to deal with some of the practical
difficulties in terms of the systems that are already set up. The devil is in
the detail.
“We are trying to make sure we can properly exploit the full potential of our list and each development presents its own logistics and infrastructure questions to deal with. We don’t think the effect of these new elements will be hugely significant, but they are distracting.”
Although CUP is small, it has one major advantage: it is a well-known brand. “Everyone knows us. We have a very high market profile and that gives us quite a bit of goodwill,” says Tristan Collier, business development executive for CUP (above right). “We are probably one of only two academic publishers that people in the rest of the world have heard of. That gives us a huge advantage. We also feel the relaunch of our website is important. It’s an ambassador for us as a business and we have got it right as a platform.”
Keeping track of the speed of development within the STM journals market is key, agrees Banbery. “There’s a litany of acronyms,” he points out. “One of the challenges is trying to hold all this stuff in our heads. People are expected to know so much more and the demands are much greater.”
This, too, is a sign that university presses like CUP have had to move on from the gentler days in which business with learned societies was conducted by letter, or over the telephone. Email has increased the pace at which demands come in. All this has increased the pressure on smaller publishers, although there is no doubt of the many advantages of technology. Like other houses, CUP is digitising its back files and making journals available online. Technology is also making it possible to move towards a more economic way of producing information. “In the end, we will probably see journals move towards print-on-demand,” points out Banbery.
There is clearly pressure on the present set of managers at CUP to produce a good set of commercial results. But that economic pressure does not, according to Banbery, translate into managers’ hands being tied. “Yes, we are under pressure, but we have a greater freedom, as a university press, to publish things that do not necessarily have wide market appeal,” he comments. “Ultimately, everything is sanctioned by the Syndics, but of all the journals projects put to them in the past 12 months, none have been turned down.”
On the other hand, Banbery says being free from shareholder pressure is not necessarily always a good thing. Sometimes, he says, that level of shareholder pressure means decisions are looked at more carefully and certainly market changes are noted. On the other hand, he says, he has seen plenty of misguided investment decisions within commercial publishing. So all modes appear to have their ups and downs.
“We are much sharper now,” says Collier. “There is much more commercial awareness.”
Banbery agrees, but adds that it is important for an organisation like CUP not to lose what he calls “elements of sensitivity” to the academic community. It’s a balancing act; it remains to be seen whether CUP has got it right.
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