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Communicating with Authors: How do societies stay connected with their authors?
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Communicating with Authors: How do societies stay connected with their authors?
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Segment:0 .
SPEAKER: OK, so welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us today, and a particular welcome and thank you to our speakers today who I'm going to ask to jump straight in with a quick introduction of who they are and where they're working and how they're involved with author communications and societies and kind of a brief summary to ground us in who we've got involved in this conversation. I'm going to pick on someone to start with.
SPEAKER: Jennifer, can I pick on you, please?
JENNIFER REGALA: Excellent. Hi. Thanks, Sam. I'm so glad to be here with you all. This is really exciting. I love conversations like this. I'm Jennifer Regala. I'm the director of publications and executive editor at the American Neurological Association. We have three peer reviewed journals-- the Journal of Urology, Urology Practice, and JU Open Plus.
JENNIFER REGALA: And then we also have a very robust digital ecosystem I'll talk about in a little bit called AUA news. What do I have to do with authors? Everything. I feel like it's an AX world-- an Author Experience world-- and we're all just living in it. And I'm here for that. I think that's who we should be serving. I'm really glad to see this paradigm shift.
JENNIFER REGALA: I'm an old person at this point. And having seen that evolution to focusing on the people who are putting their life, blood, sweat, and tears into this research and trying to get it published, I think that we should be focusing on those individuals. So I will start my piece off by saying that. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER: Oh, really pleased to have you here. Mithu, can we have you next telling us who you are? What do you have to do with author communications?
MITHU LUCRAFT: Sure. Thanks, Sam. So hi, I'm Mithu Lucraft. I'm a senior consultant at TBI Communications. TBI work with publishers, societies, technology platform providers across the board, so anyone involved in scholarly communications. And the thing that's connecting everybody right now is that transition to really focusing in on the author, whether they were to start with or whether they weren't.
MITHU LUCRAFT: So I went to the ALPSP Conference last year, in 2022. And I was so frustrated that people kept talking about this transition without really talking about what marketers were doing or what they needed to do. So part of the reason why I'm here is, I've been conversing with lots of our partners, and held a couple of sessions, one at ALPSP this year and one at SSP this year, to really drill into what does that transition look like.
SPEAKER: I think. And Sara, last but not least.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: Hi, everyone. Hi. Thank you for inviting me to join. Really, really happy to be here today. My name is Sara Killingworth. I'm the head of marketing at the Institution of Engineering and Technology. I've worked in academic publishing for many, many years now. And in terms of author involvement at the IET as we are known, we recognized a few years back that the way research was changing was an absolute shift in the paradigm.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: So we transferred all of our journals over to open access and started to look at that in terms of what the author really needed from us and what we could do to support them through workflow solutions right the way through to publishing options as well. So really excited to be part of this conversation and to share some of the things that we've been doing as well.
SPEAKER: Cool. Thank you. So The bit that I've been thinking about and that we talked about before setting up this conversation is the similarities and differences and overlap between the communication that a society needs to do with its authors and the communication that it does with its wider community and where that kind of difference is.
SPEAKER: So to start us off, why does a society that has a journal-- clearly a society with no journal this doesn't necessarily apply to-- but a society with a journal, why do they need to be thinking about communicating with authors as its own thing, as separate from other types of communication? Go, Jennifer. Go on. Just jump in.
SPEAKER 2: OK, you know I just want to dive in. I think it's super important. That should be one of-- if a society is investing in having peer reviewed journal or journals, I think it's super important to focus in on that author communication. Again, I think that's one of the most important things that a society does. And to focus on the author, there's so much competition these days.
SPEAKER 2: You hear a new journal being launched every single day. But to have a place where a journal-- where an author feels like the impact of their work is being acknowledged-- and I'm not just talking about the, what we call here at the AUA, uppercase impact-- the impact factor-- but also the lowercase impact is being addressed as well. So that feeling of engagement and community with the journal.
SPEAKER 2: I will tell you that we work really hard at the AUA to have a community vibe, to make people feel included and part of our Journal of Urology community and our larger publication community. We call it the Voice of Urology, and we want people to feel like they're really connected. And why is that important? I want them to be thinking of our editorial board members and my face floating in front of them if they're hitting submit to another journal.
SPEAKER 2: And it's funny because we've been working on this in my time here at the AUA. I started in June of 2020. And in about 3 and 1/2 years, we are seeing that type of engagement to the point where if someone submits something else to another publication, they are reaching out and saying, hey, I'll submit to you guys next time. I mean, they're actually-- they're thinking about us as a community, which I think is really interesting.
SPEAKER 2: And I'll tell you another thing that we do too is, I'm watching-- I love our authors. And I'm watching all of them. I'm watching on social media. I get all of the TOC alerts that are out in the world, et cetera. And if I see someone, for instance, publish in the New England Journal of Medicine, how cool is that?
SPEAKER 2: I reach out, and I'm like, that is awesome. Can you maybe write up a summary of the importance of that work then for our AUA news platform? So then they get more impact. They remember that we amplified their work, even if it was a different publication. And we've made that connection and set up that vibe. Those are some of the things that we're doing. I think it's important to have a very scheduled regimen of marketing, but then also to be paying really close attention to those organic opportunities to engage and connect.
SPEAKER 2: And it's kind of hard to explain how to do that. You just have to be looking for them and ready and jump on them.
SPEAKER: Do you know, it's really interesting, and this is something we didn't talk about before in our precall. I think, Mithu, picking up on some of the things that you were talking about about what you saw in conferences. I think there's been a shift because of the increase of open access. That's kind of put the business emphasis on the authors. What's really interesting about what you just said, Jennifer, is there was nothing in there about open access or-- I mean, there was but what you've just described is about stickiness and relationship and community and is less to do with the business aspect, business model side of that.
SPEAKER: Can I just ask you to touch on that briefly? And then I want to go to Sara. And then Mithu, I'll get to you after that.
JENNIFER REGALA: I do think that whole business piece is super important. And again, so I mentioned our AUA News Digital Ecosystem. And so two of our journals-- Journal of Urology, our flagship journal, and then we have a practice journal called Urology Practice. We do have an open access journal called JU Open Plus. The author situations across those publications are different from one another, which is interesting to watch and pay attention to.
JENNIFER REGALA: But then what we use the AUA news platform for is to amplify the impact of all of those other publications. So we are pulling it all together on our AUA News and curating collections, for instance, that makes sense across our publications. We're having, now, webinar events that are freely accessible to anybody and everybody. We use, actually, the same technology that we use here for Society Street to do those.
JENNIFER REGALA: And it's just a lovely experience. And then we offer those recordings for free. We bundle content around there. In January, we'll be launching patient summaries and read aloud by AI-- Journal Insights. We're using AI for both of those. Don't do it at home though. It's not just Jennifer Regala sticking it in ChatGPT.
JENNIFER REGALA: We actually do work with a great company to put those together, and authors approve them. So what I'm saying is, we are working to make the content more accessible for our authors and then also drive more people to read the actual article itself. So it's a unique opportunity. But we are thinking about the business of it. But again, more from the sense of not about how the AUA can just get more money, but how can we make the experience more useful to our authors and more useful to our readers?
JENNIFER REGALA: And you know, it's the right thing to do to make that content accessible in different formats and different ways.
SPEAKER: Sara, there was a whole bunch of stuff there. Is there anything there you want to pick up and run with?
SARA KILLINGWORTH: Yeah, I think that whole piece around making it accessible, not only to your authors, but to the wider community. as I say, about two years ago, the IET decided to flip its entire journals program to open access. And getting back to the top of the conversation, we talked about the communication piece and the importance for the society to communicate with its authors.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: We're a large membership body where our members are not necessarily our authors. So part and parcel of that communication piece is making sure that our membership base understand exactly what we're doing to disseminate knowledge for the wider good of society, which is really what the ethos of the organization is all about. So alongside market trends to move to open access anyway, as you know, 20 years ago or more, we've been talking about the transition-- is a pain to access research the thing that's going to be a trend of the future, or is it open access-- and agree to that decision to flip completely because it is in perfect alignment with our mission and our vision of our organization.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: So not only are we communicating with our authors and making sure that we are top of mind so when they want to publish, they remember the IET journals of all the things that we can do for them. But at the same time, by making it freely accessible at the point of consumption effectively, anybody who wants to read that research can do. And that's driving that engagement.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: The downloads that we get through our research hub are off the charts in terms of the millions that we get now versus what we used to get when it was behind a paywall. So really disseminating that knowledge and really helping to get that research out into the wider world is actually at the core of what the authors want as well. They want their reach.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: They want that impact. And you talk about the upper impact about impact factor, that's key. But equally, it's that whole piece of, how can I tell people what I'm doing, and how can I be sure that the research that I have published continues to be built upon and continues to grow and evolve so that we can develop better solutions for society going forward?
SARA KILLINGWORTH: So that's really where we are absolutely behind the support for that in terms of the community.
SPEAKER: Have you got evidence, and are you communicating it around the-- I mean, something you said there was that disseminating the work. And now that it's open access, it's getting, I think you said it's getting more attention. Is that what you said?
SARA KILLINGWORTH: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER: So that in turn becomes some of the things that you communicating out is that actually we can reach more people.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: Oh, exactly. I mean, previously, it used to be your distribution channel there where you were able to get onto the relevant platforms so that you were in as many universities as possible so researchers could view within their institution. Now, of course, you can be anywhere in the world. It's open access. You can just access that, so. And we rely on really brilliant technologies around SEO and all of those kinds of digital solutions that support that reach and make sure that you're top of mind in the search parameters as much as you are in terms of the author's mind.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: But that really is having a significant, significant impact. And because of that, we can see what's going on out there, and we can really start to help showcase some of the work that's being published and make sure that they can see that it's not only a good service they get from us in terms of the publication piece, but it's actually that reach and supporting that. And alongside the marketing activities that we might want to do, which Jennifer talked about as well.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: It's around how we can help drive that engagement and that readership as well. So even though open access is by its nature allows it to be easily discoverable, what we're doing is actually really pushing and helping to drive the awareness of what has been published, and really to help push that engagement as well. So it's having a double impact effectively.
SPEAKER: Yeah, just because it's one of the kind of things that I think about quite a lot is the difference between wider society comms and publication-specific comms. When you switch to fully open access, previously, had subscription to the journals being a member benefit?
SARA KILLINGWORTH: It was a member benefit insofar as they had access to our digital library. So that was where our publications were stored. And equally, we would offer things like knowledge packs, where they would download particular articles. So there was a member benefit there. So yeah. So our members were always able to access our content if they wanted to, yes.
SPEAKER: I mean, do you think that's changed? Has the change going to open access changed the members' perception of the value of the corpus do you think?
SARA KILLINGWORTH: I think that's an interesting one. I think absolutely yes. I think it has done. An equally, one of the benefits that we offer here, we have a library in our head office in St Alban's place. And we have access to online solutions as well, which our members can access as part of their membership anyway. So that was always the case. But I think by-- as I say, by in standing behind what we want to be as an organization, which is that dissemination of knowledge and supporting the development of science for the good of society, by going open access, we're really living and breathing that ethos.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: And I think that's something that they really value because they're there at the cutting edge of the latest solutions that are going to help solve the next problem that society faces. So they can see that behind the research piece is also easily accessible as well. So I think from that point of view, it just shows how we live and breathe what we believe in as an organization as a society.
SPEAKER: It does sort of come back to how helpful it is to be very clear about what and why you're doing things in terms of either communicating out to your membership or to communicating to your authors about what you're doing and why you're doing it. Mithu, do you want to pick up on any-- I mean, there's loads there to pick up on. Is there anything there that you're sitting there going, ugh.
MITHU LUCRAFT: There's so much. But just to pick up on that last point, I think-- you asked, Sam, about how much of this is to do with open access and the fact Jennifer hadn't mentioned it in that community need. I think the two things are so tightly intertwined. I remember Danny Kingsley taking me aside once and saying, open access isn't just about making things open. Open for what? And that's exactly what you were just saying, Sara.
MITHU LUCRAFT: It's about increasing that accessibility and engagement with the research content. So explaining that to authors is 100% key. Part of what the communication also becomes-- and this is what one of my speakers at SSP-- Matt Giampoala from AGU was describing is, authors don't always understand what that transition to open access might mean. So those misconceptions about, do they have access to funding?
MITHU LUCRAFT: Do they understand the benefits of having published openly? All of those nuts and bolts of the business model are one aspect of the communication. But then actually just helping to understand what the potential benefits from publishing openly are, are driving that change. And I think there's something in the points that have been made about brand, particularly. So yes, there is a lot more competition because of that transition to open access.
MITHU LUCRAFT: The number of open access journals has doubled in the past 10 years. There's over 20,000 open access journals, so competition and making sure that the society brand is visible and evident is so much more important than it was before. So looking at how you're communicating to your author base, looking at where that sits alongside your membership communication becomes much more important than it might have been before.
MITHU LUCRAFT: And I think part of the challenge that societies have had is that the communication teams or those marketing teams existed in silos. So there wasn't conversations happening between the membership team, between the publishing team, between the congress, the conference teams. And all of that now needs to be holistically viewed to be able to have conversations with your authors and know who your authors are.
SPEAKER: So that's a really nice segue into where want to go next, which is, many of the societies that I know that we have worked with collectively outsource their publishing. And traditionally, publishing marketing has been done as part of that outsourced publishing by the publisher. And I wonder, I want to pick up on that idea there of brands, Mithu, and the importance of actually the society.
SPEAKER: And so I know Sara and Jennifer have got lots to say about this. And Mithu, I'm sure you've got some client work that you've done that you can reference if perhaps not name. How does that sit? What are your thoughts on what the responsibility of the publisher is, what the society should be doing anyway? And again, it's that siloing of the marketing team and the comms team.
SPEAKER: And there's loads there. I'm going to stop talking. Sorry. You're nodding, so jump in.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: Yeah I mean it's interesting because a few years ago at the IET, we actually combined all of our marketing departments anyway. We had two, and then we kind of restructured and brought everybody together. So now, I kind of look after both the membership communications, and equally the communications to authors. So it's great being able to pick one thing up on another in terms of how we can get that message out.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: So it's not operating in silos. And it's really kind of disseminating out things. Sorry, I'm going to jump all over again. No, you talked about outsourcing publications. And the open access piece, we've been a publisher for many, many years. In fact, we started publishing back in 1971 when the society started as a society of telegraph engineers back in the day.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: But going to open access, we decided to choose a partner to help us with that. So our partner is Wiley. But we have to work incredibly closely with that marketing team as well. It's not something that we've just gone, OK, you can take that on. They do the bulk of the day to day in terms of submissions marketing, absolutely.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: But what we found that it was far, far more important to work together and then actually look across that whole research workflow. Everything that you're doing from end to end, what is it you can offer your authors and your members, and what can you work with your partner to pull on the different strengths of the different teams? So that's really been beneficial.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: And then what we can do is leverage each other's communication channels to make sure that we get that message out. But it's been a fascinating insight because taking away the submissions piece which is intensive in terms of what you have to do to-- especially when you're pubishing many journals. But actually now starting to say, OK, well, we can help you out the way through your research cycle.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: It's not just about the publication piece. It's everything from discovery through to ideation through to helping with funding and that kind of thing in terms of collaborations and that sort of thing. So we can really focus on that and then work with our external partner. And pulling the teams together means we can leverage on all those things that we have in-house, which has been just amazing.
SPEAKER: Yeah, that sounds really good. Mithu, do you want to pick up on any of that?
MITHU LUCRAFT: Yeah, and I think Sara's described it beautifully. I think part of that benefit in terms of some of that partnership and collaboration is you can do more. So it's some of the scale. It's some of the access to the technology and some of those rich insights that you get from being part of something bigger than just the society on its own.
MITHU LUCRAFT: And if you think, again, about our own experience in our day-to-day lives, we're all consumers. We all have expectations about personalization. We all see those emails coming in, the adverts that will follow us around on the internet. And all of that is highly personalized, highly targeted, and that is extremely difficult for a society or small publisher to do without some of the backbones of those larger technology providers, that put the support that's in place at some of those larger commercial publishers.
MITHU LUCRAFT: And that's where you can leverage some of that in terms of some of that personalization that help in terms of understanding more about your user base. And I think that's a really powerful tool to leverage alongside the channels that you then have at your disposal as a society.
SPEAKER: Go, Jennifer.
JENNIFER REGALA: Yes, OK, so this is all connected to open access in my mind, right? So many society publishers went to commercial partners-- and I emphasize the word "partners--" looking for an escape, looking for that commercial publisher to save them without focusing on that word "partner." And to me, we are partnered with Wolters Kluwer. They are a tremendously valuable partner.
JENNIFER REGALA: But I approach that relationship as we are married. I'm doing the dishes, dropping the kids off at school, making the beds. But they better be doing the lawn work, going grocery shopping, doing the cooking at night. And then maybe one night it makes more sense for me to do the cooking, and then they pick up the kids from school. But the point is that we're constantly-- you can tell I have four kids.
JENNIFER REGALA: That's why I always compare everything to being a mom. But what you're doing is, you are identifying what needs to be done, and you're working on it together. And you're working on it carefully. And you're talking all of the time. You're communicating. You do not partner up with a commercial partner to have them solve your marketing problems.
JENNIFER REGALA: You partner up with them to have them enhance your marketing solutions. So I'll give you a couple examples at the AUA. They can't possibly know our authors like we do. I don't expect them to know that. That is not in their purview. So that is up to me. That is up to my team to really know our authors, our editors, our reviewers.
JENNIFER REGALA: Like, what are they talking about? What are they doing? And to really stay intricately and intimately involved in what they're publishing, what they're saying on social media, what they are telling us, and really also making ourselves accessible to hear from them. Now, I cannot afford all the tools that Wolters Kluwer has, so I really expect them to help us in that regard. One thing that they've done that's been really tremendous for us is, I went to them and said, we really need a presence in China.
JENNIFER REGALA: We need a presence with WeChat. We do not have an office in China to do that. They said, say less. Say less. We've got you. And they do. So what they've done is, they've started translating some of our content. We identify what we want translated.
JENNIFER REGALA: We change it up based on the interaction that we're getting, and they handle a WeChat presence for us. Another thing is the reporting that they can do. I just cannot do the level of Clarivate reporting and all of that stuff. I cannot do these, what MeToo is talking about with these targeted, global campaigns. I just can't do that. That's outside of the capability that I have.
JENNIFER REGALA: And that's been extremely effective. But in all of that, we are talking all of the time. I am really tightly connected with our marketing representative at Wolters Kluwer. Michelle Rothenberg if you're watching, you're awesome. We are talking all the time. And she'll reach out to me and say, did you see this one tweet? This is kind of weird and oogly.
JENNIFER REGALA: Like, do you want to handle that? Or I'll reach out to her and say, look at this really viral tweet that we have about Journal of Urology content. Will you promote from your channels over there at Wolters Kluwer? And it just works because we're paying attention, and we're paying attention to our marriage. And I am not expecting them to do all of our hard work for us.
JENNIFER REGALA: But at the same time, I am expecting them to use the tools that they have and the reason that we got married in the first place. So those are my thoughts.
SPEAKER: Sara, you're nodding along there. Would you like to jump in with some of that?
SARA KILLINGWORTH: I just loved the analogy actually because it is exactly that, isn't it? It's very much that partnership piece. And like you say, Jennifer, there's certain things that we just couldn't do that the Wiley machine can really, really support. But actually, trying to make sure that we understand what each other is doing and how we work best together is the thing that we're finding is working the best and how we can really have a-- we've got the common aim.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: We've all got the same values in terms of making sure that the research that is published is as widely accessible as possible because that's only going to be to the better of everything that we're trying to do. So it is doing that. So they take on the kind of heavy lifting piece if you like. They can do all the metrics.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: They can do all the tracking. They can tell us what can work and what's not working. And then what we can do is really concentrate on our wider research solutions piece and that kind of brand positioning and say, look, this is what we want to be known for out in the market. And this is how we can help you across all of those problems that you might face in terms of research process. And that's how we're kind of attacking it.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: So that's, yeah, it's very great analogy. I love like that. Marriage, partnership.
JENNIFER REGALA: And also--
SPEAKER: Go, Jennifer.
JENNIFER REGALA: I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. But I just want to say one thing. Don't be afraid to also ask your publisher for things that seem kind of crazy but then make sense. Like, this year, we're going to make our entire January issue freely accessible from when it releases on December 9-- or actually, it's December 8, but OK. December 8, and then keep that open until February.
JENNIFER REGALA: There's a couple of reasons there. Of course, the January issue, that's the first one of the year. It is a member benefit of the AUA. We want to get people looking at that content in the new year. I thought Wolters Kluwer would balk at that or be like, mm. And they're like, that is a great idea, and let's market that together. So bring your ideas forward.
JENNIFER REGALA: And also, the other question that you should be asking too in these partnerships is, what are your other partners doing? I'm trying to pay attention to the other Wolters Kluwer partners in our case. That would be the American Heart Association, American Society of nephrology, ASCO-- big medical publishers like us. And I'm like, I've seen ASCO do this. Is that easy, or is that hard?
JENNIFER REGALA: And why reinvent the wheel? Work on doing things that you've seen others within your family of the commercial publisher do.
SPEAKER: Yeah, I mean, I think from my point of view, I've seen there's something about-- again, to pick up on your marriage imagery there, Jennifer-- there's also something about my experience of society and commercial publisher relationships is that when a society is engaged quite deeply with how they want their brand communicated and what their concerns and priorities are about their journals and are able to articulate that and work actively with the publisher, I've never seen a publisher not respond positively to that in the sense that I think sometimes-- without meaning to cast aspersion-- sometimes, some societies can be neglected by their commercial partners.
SPEAKER: But that's a two-way street. And if you are the society-- if you're somebody sitting in a society saying to those responsible for marketing within the publisher, hey, we'd love to be in China, what can we do? What can you do? It's that communication piece at the end. Mithu, jump in. You've got something to say.
SPEAKER: I can see.
MITHU LUCRAFT: I think the publisher should absolutely be on board with that because we've done so many community surveys for societies this year. And what you can really see is that brand is really growing in importance in terms of publication decisions. So if a society is on board with helping to build their brand visibility with the author community, it's win-win. And it might not be in that top set of motivating factors for why you would choose a journal.
MITHU LUCRAFT: Those hygiene factors of publication are always going to matter more than the society. But think about, again, what we're doing as consumers is increasingly paying attention to the values, the mission behind the companies that we choose to work with. And authors are paying attention to that as well. So considering what the society offers the publisher, that's huge value.
MITHU LUCRAFT: And think, as Jennifer said, you know your community better than the publisher does. Thinking about how you leverage that in terms of the types of marketing that you as the society can do versus what your publisher can do, it's win on both sides when you collaborate actively.
SPEAKER: Which kind of leads me to the other thing that I've kind of been itching to get stuck into, which is around how this piece sits with the larger communications job of the society. So we've talked a bit about how important it is to have authors, and we've talked about how the brand is really important and working with the publishers. So there's another piece there as well, which is, how does this all sit with what's going on with the society more broadly?
SPEAKER: Is there a conflict? Does it work hand in hand? What have you seen work well? How do they support each other or, perhaps, not as well as they should?
JENNIFER REGALA: So when I started at the AUA in 2020, my team was completely siloed from the rest of the organization. We didn't work with any other business unit within this building. But fast forward now to December, 2023, and we are fully integrated within the AUA. And that sounds silly, but it's super important. And part of that is that we work really closely with our marketing and communications team.
JENNIFER REGALA: So they help us to handle all of our marketing of our publications, but also to see the vision of how to integrate what we are doing in with other aspects of the organization. Our communications team works with us to handle our social media. And then what we have found that has been really great, again, is that whole organic thing that je ne sais quoi, you know, that's-- it's a little nebulous.
JENNIFER REGALA: It's hard to write SOPs around it, right? But we are figuring out every day where the connections are with other parts of the organization. And when we find those, we team up with that team and then use our marketing and communications professionals to help us amplify that message. So I'll give you one example. Advocacy-- the AUA has a great advocacy team here.
JENNIFER REGALA: We do an advocacy summit every year. We publish advocacy content or content about what we are advocating for in our flagship journal and in our practice journal. So then we are connecting the dots there on our AUA news platform, like what I'm talking about. We have an AUA summit every year. So now, last year for the first time, we did a focus issue connecting all of these pieces together-- our publications, the advocacy work getting done on Capitol Hill, that event.
JENNIFER REGALA: And then we'll blow that out even bigger this year when it happens in February. And we're going to have video coverage, a news desk, the whole 9 yards to really amplify that message even further. That's just one example. But also, we work with membership. We'll take this freely-accessible content for the JU issue from December through February.
JENNIFER REGALA: And we will really use that to suck people back in. Here's what you're going to miss if you're not an author. Speaking to open access, we offer an open access discount so deep that it covers your membership if you're a member-- if the corresponding author is a member. So we're always thinking about ways that we can bring the content or the people or whatever and connect them to the other arms of the AUA-- guidelines, office of education, office of research, all of it.
JENNIFER REGALA: So it's interesting. It's also fun. I mean, I definitely, definitely look beyond your little deadline-central publications, editorial office to what could be done with the entire organization. And it's much like the partnership. Like, who's going to say-- like, within the AUA, who's really going to say no to us saying, we want to blow your event out of the water with coverage?
JENNIFER REGALA: Everyone's like, yes, please. Say less.
SPEAKER: Sara, how does that fit within the IET. I mean, given you started off by saying that your membership and your authorship were diverse, two diverse groups. How does this question around author communications sit within wider society communications?
SARA KILLINGWORTH: It's like Jen was saying. In terms of the-- across the organization, we've always worked very collaboratively across the organization anyway. So marketing product sales are kind of like that. So they're always working together-- the customer and the author is at the heart of what we're doing. So we've always done that and sharing that knowledge. And centralizing the marketing function a few years ago actually really started to open that out.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: So we always worked closely together, but it might have been slightly around if you're a membership or if you're in a knowledge solution space. Now, by centralizing that, marketing has that view across our whole organization. We see everything going on. And because we know that, we can pick up the threads about what's going on in terms of the organization.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: And because of that, we can say, right, OK, over here, this is happening. There's a really great message here that we can connect to. And getting back to that piece around connecting the different sort of areas. So we have a significant events business as well as a publishing business as well as a ownership base as well as a governance and strategic engagement area. So we've got some really great activities happening.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: And then through our events, we do call for paper events as well, so we're kind of connecting that as much as we are in terms of bringing that sort of theory into practice piece. So you sort of-- you know, engineers that will go to those events equally, but the authors that are publishing at those events. And then we'll produce the conference proceedings afterwards for example.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: So there's lots of that happening there. But I sort of think-- when we were talking about this previously, I sort of noted a few things down. And I was just looking back as to where we started from and what our earliest statement was as a society. And as I say, we were initially of-- started out as a society for telegraph engineers back in about 1871.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: And I was looking at what our qualifications for admission was. And it said, qualifications for admission to the society as a professional association and a learned society. And I thought, well, that's exactly where we stand true today. All these years later, we're very much about that professional piece and the learning society, so connecting across the organization and utilizing everything that we have, which makes sure that it taps back to what our real mission is as an organization anyway is still today as it was back in 1871.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: So it is that kind of understanding I think-- what's going on across the organization, and then bringing that out. And then you can communicate that out to your members as much as you can to your other audience groups. So yeah, interesting piece of it.
SPEAKER: So I'm aware that I want to give you all a chance to impart some advice to our community and that we're possibly edging towards the end of our time together. Mithu, I want to start with you because as a consultant, you work with lots of different societies and publishers I guess, not just societies. So what are your guiding themes of advice and direction that you think are most important in this topic to share with our community?
MITHU LUCRAFT: I think probably the biggest one is, do you understand your communities? And the starting point for that is looking at your data holistically so you can see, is there an overlap between your members and your authors and how you're communicating with those different groups? Are you able to communicate with them in different ways? And then to look at the level of what's working for you in terms of-- and what we hear so often is just there's not enough resource to communicate proactively to authors.
MITHU LUCRAFT: So whether you work with a partner publisher or whether you work independently, starting by looking at what's working effectively is probably the best use of your time that you could make. And that's getting even more important because there's such a proliferation of new channels. Social is exploding. Where is your community operating? Where can you get the best return for the time that you're spending?
MITHU LUCRAFT: So I would say my top takeaway, is, A, look at the data. But B, start to think about what's working. Look at the performance of the communication that you're sending so you can make some strategic decisions about where you invest that time.
SPEAKER: And can you give us some sneak previews of what you've seen working well? As in, where would you suggest people look to go, ooh? What's your take?
MITHU LUCRAFT: I don't think anybody should forget about email. I think there's a lot of nervousness about sending too many emails. And that comes down to, again, understanding your data and starting to look at how do you put funnels of marketing in place to reach authors with a message that's helping them rather than being an annoyance. So don't forget email is a top takeaway. And then the second is, social is changing as we look at it.
MITHU LUCRAFT: Who knows what the next few years will hold. So I think being willing to experiment with the new channels that are coming online, but also continuing to look at what's performing on X as it is now, looking at is your community still there, or are they moving somewhere else? There's decisions to be made, and that will be an ongoing conversation as we go into next year.
SPEAKER: Yeah, social is like a whole topic that we could spend about six of these sessions on. And Jennifer Regala would be on all of them because you're very, very knowledgeable in this area. So Jennifer, what would you advise a colleague in a different society to be thinking about in terms of their author comms? What's your kind of top tips?
JENNIFER REGALA: Nobody is going to know your author community better than you. And if you don't know your author community super well, figure out how to. And everyone's different. I mean, my approach to that is to really just get down there in the weeds and connect on social media and connect in the other spots where I see my urologists hanging out if you will. And really understand what is going on in the community-- where people are publishing, why they're publishing it, what the hot topics are, all of that good stuff.
JENNIFER REGALA: And really make a human connection where people feel valued and that they can be accessible to you. And then, also, then find professionals such as Mithu, such as your commercial publishing partner if you have one. I am not a data gal. I have no idea what I'm doing there. But I-- don't be afraid to say what you're not good at, and then find resources to help you with those things because those things do matter.
JENNIFER REGALA: So I do have a great comms team who's telling me who's looking at our Instagram posts and which parts of the world I should say. So make sure that you're using expertise that's around you and outside of your wheelhouse. And when you get to be old like me, you can be like, look, I'm just not good at that. I really just am not data analytics. I'm never going to be good at it.
JENNIFER REGALA: And I say it loud and proud, but I find the people-- I do know who is good at it. So find resources that are going to help you to accelerate your goals.
SPEAKER: Just to pick up on that for a moment, was there anything you found through that process that surprised you, that challenged an assumption that you had? Sorry, I didn't prepare you for this question either. But in kind of asking getting to know your audience and where they are and what's successful and looking at the data, in doing that with your team, was there anything that made you go, oh, I'm really glad I did that, because I found out?
JENNIFER REGALA: Yes, absolutely. Because I would have-- OK, here's-- I'll give you just one really easy example is LinkedIn for journal marketing. I was like, hmm. There's no-- but people are on LinkedIn. There's different parts of the world that love LinkedIn, and then there's also my practicing urologists that read my practice journal. So I was ready to sleep on that and not worry about it.
JENNIFER REGALA: And analytics showed me differently. Did I pull those analytics? Again, no. I had nothing to do with that. Cory and Travis up on the communications floor in our building did. Instagram-- wildly popular. We have so many urologists from Brazil, and they love Instagram.
JENNIFER REGALA: And they love the video.
SPEAKER: Was that in place before you?
JENNIFER REGALA: The Instagram?
SPEAKER: Yeah.
JENNIFER REGALA: It was in place, but it wasn't super popular. But now it really is. And people love it. And then we also have a bunch of Doc stars-- that's what we call them-- who are very prominent on Instagram. And they're constantly sharing stuff. So now, we found them, and then we're reamplifying their messages.
JENNIFER REGALA: So those are two things that I wouldn't have really expected. I didn't really think Instagram. I thought that was just a silly place for me and my personal account. But no, it's great. So be paying attention to those different places. And data do matter, as much as I hate to say it because I hate dealing with data. But it does matter.
SPEAKER: Sara, what would your advice be?
SARA KILLINGWORTH: I think all of all of the above to be honest. It's funny. As soon as you started speaking, Jennifer, is that was what popped into my head is that you as a society, you know your authors better than anybody else. You know exactly why they come to you. You know exactly why they should continue coming to you. And it's that. Don't underestimate the power of the knowledge you have.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: It doesn't matter if you're tiny society or a large society. That really is powerful. And even when you're working with a partner, they don't know you as well as you do. So they need to know what the USPs are. They need to understand why somebody should be coming to you. And the data piece, I mean, I love data, so that's a slightly different take there from Jennifer's view.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: But it's exactly that-- understanding who's publishing with you, what they're doing, where they're going, what they're looking for. And we regularly check in with our author base and try and find out other platforms that we're looking at but we're not utilizing for whatever reason. And just really trying to find them. And then having that kind of right message at the right time and being where the authors are.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: It's not about scattergun approach anymore like it might have been a few years back. It's really targeting and understanding, well, what channels are going to drive that engagement? So we spent a lot of time this year really looking at that across all of our audiences and really understanding which of those channels are gaining the most traction and therefore, are going to be the most successful for us to communicate our message.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: And as Mithu says, email, do not write that off. It's still the number one metric in terms of open rates and click through rates in terms of tracking success of campaigns. So that's one area. But also, looking at all those other channels. LinkedIn. We use Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it now is another one.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: And then just really starting to look at other sorts of channels that authors might be using-- research, all these kinds of things. There's lots of different tools out there that people are using which is where they are. So the conversations that they are having, they're having on those platforms. And you need to make sure that, somehow, you're in there with those conversations so that you come to mind and that kind of thing.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: So yeah, it's really interesting. To stay abreast of the landscape is tough and trying to keep on top of it. But then, also because we're fortunate to work with a large partner like Wiley that what we do there are very much a lot of comarketing opportunities. So how can you leverage some of those other channels and vice versa? And how can we make sure that we get the most out of both options?
SARA KILLINGWORTH: If you have that as an opportunity, then please do exploit it. So that would be our learnings
SPEAKER: I think that's quite a good kind of final message to pick out actually. Mithu, I'm going to steal you as a strapline, which is don't underestimate email. I mean, when you were all just talking-- I mean, I'm sitting here feeling very jaded because I'm used to be quite active on social media. And frankly, I'm not anymore because I just couldn't take the X stuff. But I do still read email.
SPEAKER: I still get emails coming into my inbox. And as a consumer, sure, most of them I delete. But there are some that I go, oh, that's relevant to me. I'll read that. I don't read it if it's too long. But if they don't get in touch with me too often and think it's relevant to me, then. And that's a great opportunity for-- that's within the grasp and the gift of most societies to be able to do that, right?
SPEAKER: Even really small ones should be able to do that. So I think that's a really, really good top tip. Thank you so much, all three of you, for coming along to chat with us. We're just about to open up the roundtable. There's going to be a link that pops up for those people who are listening. And they can follow that, and it'll take them to a Zoom room where we can chat about some or all of this as you see fit, anything you want to pick up and run with.
SPEAKER: But in the meantime, thank you so much for participating and sharing your views with us. Thanks, everybody.
MITHU LUCRAFT: Thank you.
SARA KILLINGWORTH: Thanks.