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Publications: How Are Societies Approaching Innovation and Revenue Diversification?
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Publications: How Are Societies Approaching Innovation and Revenue Diversification?
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Segment:0 .
SAM BURRELL: Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. Hello to those of you new to Society Street. And hello again to those of you who are joining us for a return visit and have spent some time with us before. 2021 Society Street has been all about income diversification, and revenue diversification, and innovation that needs to come along with both of those things. And specifically, some of the challenges that people have found trying to innovate within societies.
SAM BURRELL: So today, we're going to talk about those things, again, because it's a topic that's endlessly interesting to us. But today's focus is through the lens of publications, which we haven't really touched on that much so far this year. And for many societies, publications are one of the main engines for revenue generation, and publications departments are struggling with some challenges to that revenue in some cases, not least because of open access but actually also subscriptions revenues generally decreasing.
SAM BURRELL: And I think publications generally just being a trickier place to be. So there's some challenges there which many publications departments are battling with. But on top of that, societies are feeling the squeeze from other areas and are turning to their publications department, and going, what can you do? Can you help us innovate? Can you help us find some more revenue streams?
SAM BURRELL: So I'm delighted to say that I've managed to get a bunch of really smart people to come and talk to me today on this. So thank you the three of you for your time, willingness to come and chat to me about this. We are just going to have a conversation. So for those of you who are listening in, there's a chat function alongside. Please, chat in it.
SAM BURRELL: We will have a Zoom call after the fireside chat as well for you to come and ask your questions and talk about this some more. But we do encourage you to participate in the chat as well because it's about finding out what we're all thinking. And so yes, so thank you to my guests today. And I would like to ask each of you to introduce yourselves just in case there's anyone on here who doesn't really know who you guys are.
SAM BURRELL: So Jennifer, could I start with you, and tell us who you are, where you work, a little bit about, I don't know, anything you feel like telling us about.
JENNIFER REGALA: Sure thing. Thank you so much Sam. I really appreciate this invitation and the chance to talk with all of you. I love your enthusiasm and I love our chatter on Twitter. So it's really great to be here to talk with all of you in person. I'm Jennifer Regala. I am the Director of Publications and Executive Editor at the American Urological Association.
JENNIFER REGALA: So of course in that is included, the fun job, I just love publishing, of putting out our two monthly peer reviewed scholarly publications which are our flagship journal "The Journal of Urology." And our practice journal or practice-based journal called "Urology Practice." We also produce a continuing education product called Update Series. And then last but not least, and I'll talk about this piece a little bit more, I work on, and I'm going to put in an air quotes and we'll talk about that more later, our newsletter, which is called AUA News.
JENNIFER REGALA: So I have a great team. I'm really fortunate with that, and great leadership within the organization, and great colleagues across the organization that then allow me to have the privilege of working on some of these more innovative revenue-producing ideas, if you will. Some of them are, what I like to call spaceship ideas, and then some of them are a little bit more grounded in reality.
JENNIFER REGALA: And then, of course, there's some in-between. So--
SAM BURRELL: I think we'll get to that because I think there's something about innovate it, you can't expect necessarily to be generating revenue when you are innovating. And innovations need to happen anyway, but you can't actually expect them to deliver to the society straight away because there's an experimental. I need to stop talking. Erin, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself?
ERIN LANDIS: Sure. Thank you for inviting me to participate in this discussion and also it's good to see you Jennifer and Dana. So I am Erin Landis I am the Vice President of Publications at the American Gastroenterological Association, which is located right outside of DC in Bethesda. I'm also the current president of the International Society of Managing and Technical Editors, otherwise known as ISMTE.
ERIN LANDIS: And so at AGA, we have a portfolio of nine publications right now, which includes several peer reviewed journals. We have a newspaper, we have a blog, we have a fellows or early career magazine, and then more recently, we have a very experimental, and maybe it should go in quotations, product that we call the Clinician's Companion. And it's a quarterly digest that I can talk about a little bit more later.
ERIN LANDIS: But I'm also supported by an incredible team, publications team at AGA, as well as really wonderful editors who help us collaborate. And a fairly innovative culture, I'd say, at AGA.
SAM BURRELL: Oh, that's interesting that it's already going-- actually have the culture that you're in makes a big difference to what you're able to do. I'm interested that you've both got products in quotation marks. So we'll be coming back to both of those. Dana, introduce yourself and any products you've got in quotation marks, would be great.
DANA COMPTON: Let me think about that. So first of all, thank you too me for the invitation, really pleased to be able to be a part of Society Street. I think it's really important work that you're doing, and happy to be here with Jennifer and Erin. So I'm Dana Compton Managing Director and Publisher at the American Society of Civil Engineers. We have 35 peer reviewed research journal, and then we also have a fairly robust books publishing program.
DANA COMPTON: So we're about 50-ish front list titles a year. And our books program spans, what you'd expect in terms of technical reports and in engineering manuals of practice. We have a press and print. So traditional book formats, but then we also produce conference proceedings, as well as standards. We are a standards-developing organization as well.
DANA COMPTON: Air quotes, I don't think we currently have any products in air quotes, but that is an action item already from this talk. I think that's it for me actually.
JENNIFER REGALA: It's so funny that you said that, you're like an action item. I already was writing down to do things just from hearing you two talk. So you're off to a good start when you're taking notes on something you're supposed to be participating.
SAM BURRELL: But I love the idea that you put down things to do, come up with something that's in quotation marks. So Jennifer, you start this off with your newsletter that you very carefully-- tell us about that. What's that? How does that? Why did you put quotation marks around it?
JENNIFER REGALA: When I walked into-- it was a very functional newsletter just exactly what it sounds like, to inform our membership on news that was happening in the organization, and also to some degree to share some clinical content. It was about 20 to 20 print pages a month, and didn't quite get tons of love. Well, as it turns out, our editor-in-chief has a real taste, he's amazing, he's wonderful, and he started to hear some of my ideas and also my supervisor is our executive vice president, and she's hugely supportive, just in case she watches it, hi, Patricia Banks, you're awesome.
JENNIFER REGALA: She's a really great innovator too. I really learned a lot from her. So between the two, of them they had a real appetite for innovation and vision. And we've really been able to join up and link arms, and really extend what we're trying to do. So I started at the AUA in June of 2020 and between that time and now, our print newsletter is now up to 80 to 90 print pages. But then also we have created an entirely new digital platform that did not exist before.
JENNIFER REGALA: And we have plans to launch soon, we are going to double the number of issues and have an online only mid-month release as well. In all of that, though, we have plans to develop this into more of an ecosystem, a member benefit to where we will have webcasts, podcasts, video content. We plan to work to have annual meeting reporting on the floor and to make content a lot more current over time as well.
JENNIFER REGALA: And again, we just keep having more and more ideas. And we've been able to actually put pen to paper and plan this out. So we have it a lot more organized than it sounds like. But what our ultimate end goal is to basically make the AUA News, that's the name of our newsletter. Basically, the CNN of the AUA if you will, the major news source for the entire urological community internationally.
JENNIFER REGALA: And we just want a place that's interactive and meaningful. But in all of that, the one word I didn't mention starts with an R, revenue. So of course, revenue is wrapped into all of this obviously. But it's attractive to our advertisers, and we're really seeing the response. They love our media print publication. They love the fact that we're sending out alert emails. There's advertising opportunities their.
JENNIFER REGALA: There's sponsorship opportunities with the content that we're planning to put onto our platform, and so forth and so on. So again, though, what made this happen and what made it work, though, is that our volunteer leadership combined with the AUA leadership, that vision and allowing these spaceship-crazy ideas to evolve into something that is manageable and executable, have been really impactful.
JENNIFER REGALA: And again, I could go on and on, but there--
SAM BURRELL: I want to ask you-- I just want to ask you about the platform actually. So is the platform, is it just for the news and the blogs and podcasts and that softer information? Is it going to also include your journals? Or is it just for the news side of it at the moment?
JENNIFER REGALA: That's a great question. We'll not include our journals, but it will have many cross-pollination efforts, because that's another thing that we're trying to do. Yeah, in that ecosystem idea, that's a great question. And that's what we really want to do too. We want to send people, we want the AUA to be the answer to everything urology. So we want to send people to "Urology Practice Journal of Urology," but not just that.
JENNIFER REGALA: We want to send people to our meetings content, our Office of Education, our guidelines, all of the other work that the AUA is doing. And we want that to be the hub that's branching out to all of those different spots within AUA.
SAM BURRELL: And I guess there's something about not biting off more than you can chew as well, is that actually your best off starting?
JENNIFER REGALA: Yes.
SAM BURRELL: Doing something and getting going. And then go, and it's that success build success. And you go, look, we could do this and maybe we can do more. Erin, tell us about what you had to in quotation marks.
ERIN LANDIS: What I had in quotation marks is what we call the AGA Clinician's Companion, and just to back up a minute. So we like many organizations are under a lot of pressure in terms of revenue and making sure that we shore up the traditional sources of revenue that support the organization. So including publications, I think in our case, publications contributes about a third of the overall revenue to the AGA.
ERIN LANDIS: So we're critically important. And we've experienced a decline in commercial advertising over the last several years due to a number of reasons, partly due to the market itself but competition even within our own portfolio and then competition with other programs in the organization. So we've had to be really creative to think about how can we, not only maintain the revenue that we bring in for the journals but diversify it and increase it.
ERIN LANDIS: So one of the ways that we thought to do that was to develop this Clinician's Companion, which is a quarterly Digital Digest of the top clinical research that we publish in two of our journals. We take that research, we have the authors who published the research, write summaries for us, and then do clinical practice take home points. We take that content and we do some desktop publishing with it, and then we sell it as a subscription to our members and non-members; non-members pay a little bit more.
ERIN LANDIS: But the idea is that it's highly curated, clinically-oriented content. The editors-in-chief of the journals pick the content. So they try to pick content that they think would make a difference in the practice of gastroenterology. And to design this product, we went through the whole design thinking framework, which starts with a lot of research. So we did surveys, we did focus groups, we try to figure out what our members were looking for.
ERIN LANDIS: And what we heard over and over again was this, we love the journals, they're one of the most important benefits of the organization. But we don't have time as clinical practitioners to read them. So what can you do to help us understand what you're publishing and how it might affect how we care for our patients? So that was the genesis of this product.
ERIN LANDIS: So we're only still in, we've just completed one year of the product. Our goal now is to continue on with the design thinking framework, which is we piloted, we're testing it, we're going to evaluate how our readers have reacted to it, our subscribers have reacted to it. And then hopefully come out with our next version of it so that we can build upon the product.
SAM BURRELL: Did you guys build it yourselves? Is it something you've built in-house? Or is it you did your outsource that you did? OK, cool.
ERIN LANDIS: We did we build it in-house and we actually disseminate it through our learning management system, which is we call AGA University. It's where all of our educational content lives.
SAM BURRELL: Cool. And so is there an interface? Sorry, I'm asking really basic questions here. But I'm quite interested to understand how it works. So you've got presumably a search interface for members or non-members as you say and then you're just feeding it with content every quarter, right?
ERIN LANDIS: Every quarter, right. So we send them an alert that the new issue is available. They then go to AGA University where they log in and they access the latest content. It's in PDF form. And our idea here is that we're looking at moving, potentially, learning management systems, our ideas that we can make something a little more sophisticated and more interactive going forward. To your point earlier, we just needed to start something and get out of the gates with the idea and not overthink it, which is a tendency of ours in our organization.
ERIN LANDIS: And sometimes we end up doing nothing instead of just doing something.
SAM BURRELL: I don't think it's just your organization. I think it's actually the whole academic culture. That might be a bit wide to say a whole of academic culture. But I think there's something about having done it, it might not be the most perfect iteration of what you guys are trying to achieve. But there's something about doing something, and then going, and look, it works. And people like it. And so it's worth investing in it.
SAM BURRELL: And we can then monetize it and do something more with it. And now we've got a case that we can build and go, actually, it'd worth us investing this because, look, we have this feedback. I guess that's the next question is, have you had feedback from users about how it's been going for a year? What--
ERIN LANDIS: Well, we haven't received any feedback yet because we haven't done a survey yet. Although, we have the survey instrument ready and we intend to do it this fall. So we're looking to get that feedback. And also we're potentially going to do some small focus groups too. I was going to make a point about the beauty of the design thinking framework, is that it allows you to test out things and pilot things, and then build on those things, which has helped us get past that initial concern and fear of not having a perfect product right out of the gates.
SAM BURRELL: Dana do you want to pick up on any of that if you got-- was there anything that struck?
DANA COMPTON: Yeah, absolutely. I think we're at ASCE in much the same situation that Erin is in terms of this tendency to overthink and then stay in stasis. The whole goal of collecting and contextualizing content from our academic resources, for practitioners is very high priority for us, and we've made slow progress with it. And I think it's exactly for that reason.
DANA COMPTON: I think we tend to get bogged down in this. We have 35 journals across nine or 10 different topic areas. And where would we even begin and how do we sift through all that content? And a little bit of a, we need to take a step back and say, let's just start somewhere. Maybe in one subject area, we find a willing volunteer to help us, and we just get started. And I think you just really hit on it, Erin.
DANA COMPTON: I think we have a culture that expects perfection out of the gate. Also, is in, I think willing to wait, to your point Sam when we have to be better at communicating that we're going to try it and see if it's successful. Pilots are important. Maybe we don't hit on exactly the right product day 1, but we need to bring our volunteer leadership around to the idea that not everything might be profitable year 1.
DANA COMPTON: And I think that's a real challenge when we're talking about, not the staff leadership but the volunteer leadership that turns over year after year.
JENNIFER REGALA: Dana, that's a really good point. And I think what's interesting about that is thinking about, that's what I always try to explain to our volunteer leadership, is, OK, we might only be making $10,000 if even that or-- whatever the amount is. And it sounds like, oh, well. But think about what's at stake. That's the interesting piece to always be thinking about. But also how do you communicate that? What is at stake over time if you're not doing this right?
JENNIFER REGALA: Membership, meetings. Again, all of these different things where the lines are blurring, because COVID has accelerated that blurring in this more content management world rather than a publications, versus meetings, versus membership world. Those of us who choose to link up and accept that are the ones who are going to survive and hopefully thrive. And then also to Dana's point, there's something about what you and Erin both said, this the sheer volume of what you're doing on a day-to-day basis.
JENNIFER REGALA: It's hard to get outside of-- you have deadlines to meet. Our staffs, I have to imagine it's the same is true for the two of you, but staffs are leaner and meaner than ever. Whoever we're working with, whether self-publishing or a commercial partnership, staffs on that side are totally dwindling as well at our publishers, printers, et cetera.
JENNIFER REGALA: And so those are all real things that we have to be thinking about too. But at the same time, innovating and making things work. So it's the last thing--
SAM BURRELL: Yeah. I was talking to someone the other day about change. And she said something, she's a developer and she was talking about website stability. So you wouldn't think that would necessarily, but she said anytime you change something, you introduce the risk of something going wrong. That just how it is. But what are your choices? Because if you don't change anything, then you end up with something that's obsolete.
SAM BURRELL: So you have to go, we need to continue to change. And every time we make a change, there is a risk that it won't be perfect, but you still have to do it.
ERIN LANDIS: One of the things that we really had to accomplish was, not only persuading our staff that they have to be willing to take risks, and to be innovative, and to be strategic but to persuade our leadership as well. It's not uncommon for boards to be conservative in their willingness to take risks, especially when they're financial. So we did a lot of things with our leadership, in particular, to teach them about the design-thinking process and to encourage the allowance of staff to be innovative.
ERIN LANDIS: So we had to get their support before we can even start on anything because, ultimately, these ideas, a lot of them anyway, have to go before them for approval. So we spend a lot of time working with them on appreciating innovative thinking and appreciating the design-thinking process.
SAM BURRELL: This is very interesting. And Dana you're nodding enthusiastically.
DANA COMPTON: Because I feel like it's very much a chicken and the egg problem. I think the longer that you are not presenting those ideas to your board, you're getting stuck in your rut and maybe not innovating so much. The volunteer leadership, I think rightfully starts to think, well, we're going to have to come up with the ideas and tell them what to do. And they aren't the publishing professionals. They're not necessarily thinking about what the market will bear in terms of products, but we get in this cycle of doing what the board tells us to do, doing what the board tells us to do, which maybe holds us back from idea generation, because we don't want to go small.
DANA COMPTON: But I think if we presented something, got approval on a small low-risk pilot and got some success behind us, we could portray that. Next time maybe we go a little bigger and the board buys in a little faster, and you can accelerate that innovation cycle in that way.
JENNIFER REGALA: That's exactly right Dana. And they never write it in our job descriptions. I would be willing to bet for any of us. You have to be an educator too. So that's part of our job, the unspoken. Other duties as assigned is really being scanning the landscape, looking for these threats, and then packaging them up in a way that's understandable for leadership, that turns over fairly frequently, volunteer leadership.
JENNIFER REGALA: And also educating our in-house leadership who have the weight of the world on their shoulders. They're not just thinking about publications. So you know they have to manage these thoughts from us versus the others. So how do you package that up as well?
SAM BURRELL: Let's pick up on that, Jennifer, because when you were talking about all the different kinds of content, I'm going to get geeky, I did a little bit of publishing geeking out here; when we talk about all of the different kinds of content that you're envisioning for your new platform. I have seen, as we all have seen no doubt, organizations outside scholarly publishing that attempt to do a platform with different kinds of content on. And again, as a publishing profession, I was looking at one just the other day.
SAM BURRELL: And I just looked, oh, my God, it's car crash. You can't find anything. You can't work out how they've organized it. I'm coming to this and going, yes, I want to know about whatever it is. But help me find this information. And I think as societies, a lot of the assets that societies have are information assets, whether they sit within publishing or whether they sit outside publishing, particularly as meetings have gone online.
SAM BURRELL: And we're thinking about membership of community and online communities in some case, that then becomes kind of content management, information management. And we have some experience in this area. How does that play out in your society? Go.
ERIN LANDIS: Yeah, I was going to comment on real quickly the-- I'm not sure if Jennifer, Dana, mentioned this. I think this maybe Jennifer, the leaner staffs. And one issue that we run into or have run into a lot with our publication staff and in particular is the fear of innovation because if I bring an idea forward, am I going to have to carry it out and I don't have time? So one thing that we've implemented, we call it the program evaluation tool.
ERIN LANDIS: And it's this matrix where we align the new idea or an existing idea on axes of impact and effort. And whatever quadrant it falls in dictates if we're going to try to pursue it or not. But my point is that we've reassured them that, just because you bring an idea forward, we are going to consider it mindfully. And if it's so wonderful, we might then eliminate something else so that we can be innovative and strategic, because it's just not acceptable to not be strategic and innovative.
ERIN LANDIS: The point I was going to make about what you said, Sam, in terms of all that content that we sit on in societies and not necessarily knowing what the content is in different silos within the organization, that's something that we haven't at AGA been particularly successful at. Although, I think we're getting better at it. And one of the things that was an interesting byproduct of the pandemic was we started these virtual, what the CEO calls scrums, where everyone from the entire organization is welcome to attend.
ERIN LANDIS: It's a half an hour every Friday morning. And the responsibility is that you report out on major things that you're working on that may be of interest to the rest of the organization. And it's been through those meetings that we've understood the content that is available out there, and been able to make those connections for our members so that they have a better user experience to understand how all of these dots connect.
SAM BURRELL: That's really interesting. So as an organization, you weren't doing that level of communicating on a regular basis. It's the turning up on a Friday and going, this is what's going on.
ERIN LANDIS: We were to some extent. We had a written document that we sent out by email weekly. But I don't believe people were reading it too carefully. The scrum people do participate and join and listen. It seems to be a more successful format for sharing information.
SAM BURRELL: That's really interesting. Dana, you're nodding.
DANA COMPTON: Yeah, that to that, in particular, I think that's interesting. I'm just thinking that would be a really great addition to our communication channels.
SAM BURRELL: I think-- yeah, go on.
DANA COMPTON: No, I was going to comment on something Jennifer had said. But if there's more of it--
SAM BURRELL: No, go.
DANA COMPTON: OK, so just talking in terms of that siloed information assets. Jennifer, I love hearing about what you're doing with AUA News. But I think one of the challenges that we experience at ASCE is that our member communication channels are, we call ASCE source, the civil engineering source, which is really way AUA News. That doesn't sit within publications at ASCE. That fits within our communications department.
DANA COMPTON: And so I think there are tons of opportunities, and we try to do this through our marketing and leverage teams to highlight research content through our communications channels. And we're doing some of that, and doing some of that successfully. But what we see is that our member communications are going to largely practitioner markets and taking our academic content in the format in which it currently exists and just presenting it through that channel, doesn't work.
DANA COMPTON: It's not meaningful to that group of people. And so there's this whole added bit of work that speaks to the lean staff. It's what we want to do, but it takes some translation. It takes some putting into context. And I think our volunteer base is overextended, our staff is overextended. So it gets challenging. We know what to do, but how do we get the resources to do it?
SAM BURRELL: So I was I was writing something this morning for my own amusement and delectation-- and I think it specifically to all three of you, actually, who've got membership basis that are practitioners, the question I was asking myself is, is the journal article dead? Not from within the academy and the purpose that it serves, but within a real world environment where you're suddenly going, there's a piece of information that I need, and I need it right now.
SAM BURRELL: And I need to be able to go to a website and go, can you tell me what this thing means? And I don't want to read. I don't even want to know that the article-- I do want to know if the article exists probably, I want to know that it's backed up by evidence. But I want to be able to ask a question and get an answer just like that. And it needs to be an answer that I can trust.
SAM BURRELL: I want to know that it is backed up, particularly if it's a scientific question I want. So I was going, it's not that writing article serves no function, it's not that there isn't a purpose to it. But there's I think, and this kind of comes back to revenue, you go where is the money going to be in the future? Where can we as information-- I'm not quite sure what the word is, curators?
JENNIFER REGALA: Yes, that's the word I think. And I have a total passion for this. And I think our articles will all be dead if we're not paying attention, because I think the articles are here to stay as long as we're caring for them carefully. And I'll tell you what I mean, I'll give you AUA examples. So one thing that we've instituted in the past year for our flagship journal, "The Journal of Urology," we started to create, and these are self written by authors and it turns out, who knew?
JENNIFER REGALA: They delighted to do these. We have JU Insights, and they're just 250 words. And they provide extra insight into the article-- study limitations, things that they were thinking of during the study, just a little bit outside, just a little taste teaser of the article. So it's not like an extended abstract, which would be boring or whatever. And our plan is to take those and repurpose those over onto AUA News.
JENNIFER REGALA: So that's one of those cross-pollination efforts. But also we plan to start putting those into collections. So for instance, a bladder cancer collection of them. And then they're curated and then our bladder cancer experts can scan through those, and be like, oh, well, shoot. I totally missed this article. I'm going to go to the article now. Another example is visual abstracts.
JENNIFER REGALA: We're really trying to work hard. We started small, but we're really seeing huge interaction with visual abstracts. And again, repurposing those, using those in social media really aggressively. The interaction that we see with each tweet that we do is usually 50,000 impressions or more for anything with a visual abstract. So what we're hoping there is that article then gets attention from practitioners outside of urology, from patients, from scientists in other fields, and we're seeing that that's happening.
JENNIFER REGALA: So again, I have a real passion for this. Yes, we need those articles. However, we must care for them carefully and really brush them, and give them water and food. And do things to make them be these loving, interactive things rather than just slapping them up on add upon and saying, OK, peace out and we're done with this. We want to keep-- yeah.
DANA COMPTON: Sorry, not to cut you off but I think part of that really is relevant through different channels. So I think the article is going to be the cornerstone of all of that. But I think we also all need to recognize that market diversification and revenue diversification means we're not going to squeeze any more money out of the academic stone. That's going to come out of industry.
DANA COMPTON: And we need to figure out a way how to meet that academic content relevant in industry. We need resources to do that. I love the idea that you said that your summaries, Jennifer, are authored by the journal authors because we have stopped short of doing that. I think we need to just give it a shot and see what happens. But what we hear from our volunteer leadership, again, largely practitioner, is the journal authors shouldn't write these.
DANA COMPTON: They're academics, they don't understand what they need. They'll never be able to put it into context for us. I really feel what we need to do is say, we're going to start small, just give us a chance, see how it goes, and show some success, because that's really the way to do it. But I just think you need to be looking at industry and how to put research into context.
SAM BURRELL: I really want to pick up on that. And Erin-- go ahead. Go.
ERIN LANDIS: Also say, Dana, we also have those and we do have our authors write them as well. And we did have that problem a little bit where they weren't necessarily clear on how they should write those for clinicians. And so we had to give them really good guidance, but also we have been handling associate editors review them as well. So another layer of eyes. But to your point about commercial and industry support, that's the direction we've had to head because the things that we tried, like low-hanging fruit in terms of-- we did take content that we had.
ERIN LANDIS: Again, to Jennifer's point about the article being the cornerstone, we had these visual spotlights that we hope to have commercial support for us. Our medical illustrator designs those, we had digital collections too, we had a patient education. Those things all with the hope that the industry support would come, and it really didn't, so then we started to work more closely with our partner Elsevier on other ideas and we finally had our publications committee agree to allow us to do commercially-supported supplements, or video roundtables, outcerts, things that, for years, they were reluctant to allow us to do because of the perceived relationship.
ERIN LANDIS: And we just really reassured them that we would have editorial control over the supplements and the video roundtables, and we could basically nix it if we had to. But I had to show them where we stood financially to persuade them, OK, it's time to be more creative and think beyond the traditional sources of revenue. And I'll also say too that the industry spend in terms of display advertising is going down where their educational spend is going up.
ERIN LANDIS: So they really want those educational products that you were talking about earlier. So taking that content that we publish in the articles, but then making it relevant for the practitioner.
SAM BURRELL: So I was going to pick up on something that both of you have touched on, and I think it's really important. And I'm very also aware of the time. So I think this might be our final bit that we talk about, was given the sessions about revenue diversification and the challenges that are placed on, particularly publications, but I think if we look a bit wider and go actually all the content within the society, where do you guys think the money is next? Where is the opportunity for our sector, not necessarily your society but the sector more generally?
SAM BURRELL: Is there something we could be doing that would generate revenue that falls within way in what we do that you think might be worth exploring some more? And I know you guys have touched on it and some of you guys are beginning to do stuff. So Dana, I'm going to start with you, then I'm going to do Erin, and then Jennifer.
SAM BURRELL:
DANA COMPTON: [INAUDIBLE] oh, boy. That's a--
SAM BURRELL: Sorry, that was mean. And I didn't prep you. I'm really sorry.
DANA COMPTON: I think it's twofold. I think there is opportunity for publications to partner more on the membership side and come up with a more compelling value proposition for those of us at societies that are largely practitioner-focused to appeal in the academic market. I think membership in academia, if we can frame that properly as an opportunity for our societies, you are more practitioner-focused.
DANA COMPTON: On the other side of things, I think it's exactly what we're talking about. I think it's really not looking to create a whole lot of new content, but taking the excellent research content that we have and making it appropriate for multi-channels. I think that's exactly what we've been talking about. And whether that's the practitioner, or whether it's the student membership, or whatever, I think there are a number of ways.
DANA COMPTON: But I think we have to take academic research content and find out how to make it relevant to other audiences.
SAM BURRELL: Erin, do you want to add to that? Or riff on it? Or--
ERIN LANDIS: Yeah, I agree with what Dana said. I think for me what's really exciting. And I've been doing journal publishing now for 20 years, is this opportunity to think beyond the journal article, which is what we've been talking about. And we've, for so many years, just sat on our laurels and relied on that advertising coming in at least for our specific journals in biomedicine, and it just isn't working anymore.
ERIN LANDIS: So now we are faced with a problem, but it can be an incredible opportunity. And I know that, as a patient myself, I want to be reassured that the doctor who is seeing me or the practitioner who is seeing me is doing it based on the latest evidence. It's a matter of how do we get that evidence and that research into their hands and then translate it for them and make sense for them.
ERIN LANDIS: So that's a very exciting opportunity I think and prospect that we in publishing can harness the content that we have. There's so much of it. Don't try to create new content, just take the content we have and make better sense of it for our community.
SAM BURRELL: Jennifer.
JENNIFER REGALA: Yeah. In my opinion, I really think I've done this little equation here. I'm totally taking notes on this conversation. I feel like we could talk all day. So just loving it. I think it's curation plus cooperation equals revenue. And I think it comes down to personality and leadership at the top of both volunteer and organizational leadership. I'm really fortunate to work in a spot where both of those things line up.
JENNIFER REGALA: And personality is really encouraged as far as really cooperating with one another, and really working on things together. To Dana's point, repurposing, repackaging, and cross-pollinating what we already have. Don't reinvent the wheel. We have really good things, but it's not just the journal article either. There's things in our Office of Education here, for instance, that are not getting out or whatever.
JENNIFER REGALA: I'm just using that as just one example. And I'm just thinking, and again, I took notes during this call. But I'm just thinking that in the past year, I have been given the leeway and been met with really receptive colleagues on the other end in these departments. But membership, marketing, communications, meetings, guidelines, Office of Research, our Industry, Relations, and Development Office, and the Office of Education, and really sitting down with all of them, getting to know them, understanding their pain points, learning about things that we're doing that totally overlap.
JENNIFER REGALA: And it's actually really ridiculous. And we can cooperate and actually create efficiencies. And I'll give you one example there. We're thinking about getting some really excellent content for the "Journal of Urology," well, turns out our guidelines and our Office of Education departments have opportunities for us to invite some content, that those folks are already working on and is trimmed and falls by the wayside of what they're actually doing, but they would make excellent reviews in our journal.
JENNIFER REGALA: But it's having those conversations and never just saying, OK, I talked to Dana and now my box is checked. And that's what I keep thinking about now. I can't just check a box. And the same would be true for DEI, thinking about how we treat peer review, thinking about how we have a culture within our environment. All of that is true.
JENNIFER REGALA: We've got to stop thinking, oh, I've checked that box. We're done. Conversation must be daily and also going on in our heads all the time as well. I really feel passionate about that. And there's so many opportunities. And the other thing I would just say too is I know Erin, and Dana, and you Sam. Personally, I'm really lucky for that and also many others in the society world.
JENNIFER REGALA: And I think that's an important point too, connecting the dots too, because I'm hearing things from Erin and Dana that I am telling you right now I'm going to bug you about and follow up with you on. And that's also part of our responsibility, our unspoken responsibility as well.
SAM BURRELL: Yeah, it's about having a conversation. I think that's a really good point. And I think you've all touched on it, is about actually just straight communication between everyone in your organization but, Jennifer, to your point about more widely as well. And again, I think maybe COVID has made that more clear because we just relied on bumping into each other at conferences or whatever. And actually realizing the value in conversations where you can freewheel for a bit with the knowledge of people who bring different things for sure, but you have some crossover with, where you go, hey, is this possible?
SAM BURRELL: Could you do this? And I guess that's where innovation really comes from.
ERIN LANDIS: Sam, if I could just make one point really quickly to Jennifer. I really am grateful that she brought in the word cooperation and/or collaboration, either would work. I think that one of the challenges that we face a lot in organizations is a lack of collaboration. And sometimes in the worst cases, there's some territorialism that goes on, where you're going to protect your territory and you're not necessarily interested in collaborating and sharing.
ERIN LANDIS: And I think that to really move forward, we have to be willing to collaborate and to get them check our egos at the door.
JENNIFER REGALA: Yes, I totally. There's that fear. You know that folks are concerned that you're trying, oh, no, I don't want your job or your stuff, but I want us both to, not only have our jobs but to grow what we're doing. I want to grow our mission of our organization and the collaboration is so key. But it's also really comes back to that communication, really making that clear, hey, I'm not here to pick up your people or your work or anything like that.
JENNIFER REGALA: No, thank you. But I would love to pick your brains and help you and also have you help me too. That would be great as well.
SAM BURRELL: And what a perfect place to end this conversation. We could talk for another 3 and 1/2 hours, I think. And not get bored. However, I'm very aware that people have other things to do today. And so I am going to wrap this up. I'm going to say thank you, the three of you so much for this conversation. And I do hope that the three of you will be able to join us on the Zoom call afterwards.
SAM BURRELL: I'm sure there will be loads of questions. And if there aren't, we can just carry on the conversation just as well. But I do encourage those of you listening to come and join the Society Street chats after these sessions, are always really good. So please do come along. And, guys, thanks again so much for your time. We really, really appreciate it.
DANA COMPTON: Thank you.
ERIN LANDIS: Thank you so much.
JENNIFER REGALA: Thanks so much.
SAM BURRELL: Bye.
ERIN LANDIS: Bye-bye.
Segment:0 .
SAM BURRELL: Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. Hello to those of you new to Society Street. And hello again to those of you who are joining us for a return visit and have spent some time with us before. 2021 Society Street has been all about income diversification, and revenue diversification, and innovation that needs to come along with both of those things. And specifically, some of the challenges that people have found trying to innovate within societies.
SAM BURRELL: So today, we're going to talk about those things, again, because it's a topic that's endlessly interesting to us. But today's focus is through the lens of publications, which we haven't really touched on that much so far this year. And for many societies, publications are one of the main engines for revenue generation, and publications departments are struggling with some challenges to that revenue in some cases, not least because of open access but actually also subscriptions revenues generally decreasing.
SAM BURRELL: And I think publications generally just being a trickier place to be. So there's some challenges there which many publications departments are battling with. But on top of that, societies are feeling the squeeze from other areas and are turning to their publications department, and going, what can you do? Can you help us innovate? Can you help us find some more revenue streams?
SAM BURRELL: So I'm delighted to say that I've managed to get a bunch of really smart people to come and talk to me today on this. So thank you the three of you for your time, willingness to come and chat to me about this. We are just going to have a conversation. So for those of you who are listening in, there's a chat function alongside. Please, chat in it.
SAM BURRELL: We will have a Zoom call after the fireside chat as well for you to come and ask your questions and talk about this some more. But we do encourage you to participate in the chat as well because it's about finding out what we're all thinking. And so yes, so thank you to my guests today. And I would like to ask each of you to introduce yourselves just in case there's anyone on here who doesn't really know who you guys are.
SAM BURRELL: So Jennifer, could I start with you, and tell us who you are, where you work, a little bit about, I don't know, anything you feel like telling us about.
JENNIFER REGALA: Sure thing. Thank you so much Sam. I really appreciate this invitation and the chance to talk with all of you. I love your enthusiasm and I love our chatter on Twitter. So it's really great to be here to talk with all of you in person. I'm Jennifer Regala. I am the Director of Publications and Executive Editor at the American Urological Association.
JENNIFER REGALA: So of course in that is included, the fun job, I just love publishing, of putting out our two monthly peer reviewed scholarly publications which are our flagship journal "The Journal of Urology." And our practice journal or practice-based journal called "Urology Practice." We also produce a continuing education product called Update Series. And then last but not least, and I'll talk about this piece a little bit more, I work on, and I'm going to put in an air quotes and we'll talk about that more later, our newsletter, which is called AUA News.
JENNIFER REGALA: So I have a great team. I'm really fortunate with that, and great leadership within the organization, and great colleagues across the organization that then allow me to have the privilege of working on some of these more innovative revenue-producing ideas, if you will. Some of them are, what I like to call spaceship ideas, and then some of them are a little bit more grounded in reality.
JENNIFER REGALA: And then, of course, there's some in-between. So--
SAM BURRELL: I think we'll get to that because I think there's something about innovate it, you can't expect necessarily to be generating revenue when you are innovating. And innovations need to happen anyway, but you can't actually expect them to deliver to the society straight away because there's an experimental. I need to stop talking. Erin, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself?
ERIN LANDIS: Sure. Thank you for inviting me to participate in this discussion and also it's good to see you Jennifer and Dana. So I am Erin Landis I am the Vice President of Publications at the American Gastroenterological Association, which is located right outside of DC in Bethesda. I'm also the current president of the International Society of Managing and Technical Editors, otherwise known as ISMTE.
ERIN LANDIS: And so at AGA, we have a portfolio of nine publications right now, which includes several peer reviewed journals. We have a newspaper, we have a blog, we have a fellows or early career magazine, and then more recently, we have a very experimental, and maybe it should go in quotations, product that we call the Clinician's Companion. And it's a quarterly digest that I can talk about a little bit more later.
ERIN LANDIS: But I'm also supported by an incredible team, publications team at AGA, as well as really wonderful editors who help us collaborate. And a fairly innovative culture, I'd say, at AGA.
SAM BURRELL: Oh, that's interesting that it's already going-- actually have the culture that you're in makes a big difference to what you're able to do. I'm interested that you've both got products in quotation marks. So we'll be coming back to both of those. Dana, introduce yourself and any products you've got in quotation marks, would be great.
DANA COMPTON: Let me think about that. So first of all, thank you too me for the invitation, really pleased to be able to be a part of Society Street. I think it's really important work that you're doing, and happy to be here with Jennifer and Erin. So I'm Dana Compton Managing Director and Publisher at the American Society of Civil Engineers. We have 35 peer reviewed research journal, and then we also have a fairly robust books publishing program.
DANA COMPTON: So we're about 50-ish front list titles a year. And our books program spans, what you'd expect in terms of technical reports and in engineering manuals of practice. We have a press and print. So traditional book formats, but then we also produce conference proceedings, as well as standards. We are a standards-developing organization as well.
DANA COMPTON: Air quotes, I don't think we currently have any products in air quotes, but that is an action item already from this talk. I think that's it for me actually.
JENNIFER REGALA: It's so funny that you said that, you're like an action item. I already was writing down to do things just from hearing you two talk. So you're off to a good start when you're taking notes on something you're supposed to be participating.
SAM BURRELL: But I love the idea that you put down things to do, come up with something that's in quotation marks. So Jennifer, you start this off with your newsletter that you very carefully-- tell us about that. What's that? How does that? Why did you put quotation marks around it?
JENNIFER REGALA: When I walked into-- it was a very functional newsletter just exactly what it sounds like, to inform our membership on news that was happening in the organization, and also to some degree to share some clinical content. It was about 20 to 20 print pages a month, and didn't quite get tons of love. Well, as it turns out, our editor-in-chief has a real taste, he's amazing, he's wonderful, and he started to hear some of my ideas and also my supervisor is our executive vice president, and she's hugely supportive, just in case she watches it, hi, Patricia Banks, you're awesome.
JENNIFER REGALA: She's a really great innovator too. I really learned a lot from her. So between the two, of them they had a real appetite for innovation and vision. And we've really been able to join up and link arms, and really extend what we're trying to do. So I started at the AUA in June of 2020 and between that time and now, our print newsletter is now up to 80 to 90 print pages. But then also we have created an entirely new digital platform that did not exist before.
JENNIFER REGALA: And we have plans to launch soon, we are going to double the number of issues and have an online only mid-month release as well. In all of that, though, we have plans to develop this into more of an ecosystem, a member benefit to where we will have webcasts, podcasts, video content. We plan to work to have annual meeting reporting on the floor and to make content a lot more current over time as well.
JENNIFER REGALA: And again, we just keep having more and more ideas. And we've been able to actually put pen to paper and plan this out. So we have it a lot more organized than it sounds like. But what our ultimate end goal is to basically make the AUA News, that's the name of our newsletter. Basically, the CNN of the AUA if you will, the major news source for the entire urological community internationally.
JENNIFER REGALA: And we just want a place that's interactive and meaningful. But in all of that, the one word I didn't mention starts with an R, revenue. So of course, revenue is wrapped into all of this obviously. But it's attractive to our advertisers, and we're really seeing the response. They love our media print publication. They love the fact that we're sending out alert emails. There's advertising opportunities their.
JENNIFER REGALA: There's sponsorship opportunities with the content that we're planning to put onto our platform, and so forth and so on. So again, though, what made this happen and what made it work, though, is that our volunteer leadership combined with the AUA leadership, that vision and allowing these spaceship-crazy ideas to evolve into something that is manageable and executable, have been really impactful.
JENNIFER REGALA: And again, I could go on and on, but there--
SAM BURRELL: I want to ask you-- I just want to ask you about the platform actually. So is the platform, is it just for the news and the blogs and podcasts and that softer information? Is it going to also include your journals? Or is it just for the news side of it at the moment?
JENNIFER REGALA: That's a great question. We'll not include our journals, but it will have many cross-pollination efforts, because that's another thing that we're trying to do. Yeah, in that ecosystem idea, that's a great question. And that's what we really want to do too. We want to send people, we want the AUA to be the answer to everything urology. So we want to send people to "Urology Practice Journal of Urology," but not just that.
JENNIFER REGALA: We want to send people to our meetings content, our Office of Education, our guidelines, all of the other work that the AUA is doing. And we want that to be the hub that's branching out to all of those different spots within AUA.
SAM BURRELL: And I guess there's something about not biting off more than you can chew as well, is that actually your best off starting?
JENNIFER REGALA: Yes.
SAM BURRELL: Doing something and getting going. And then go, and it's that success build success. And you go, look, we could do this and maybe we can do more. Erin, tell us about what you had to in quotation marks.
ERIN LANDIS: What I had in quotation marks is what we call the AGA Clinician's Companion, and just to back up a minute. So we like many organizations are under a lot of pressure in terms of revenue and making sure that we shore up the traditional sources of revenue that support the organization. So including publications, I think in our case, publications contributes about a third of the overall revenue to the AGA.
ERIN LANDIS: So we're critically important. And we've experienced a decline in commercial advertising over the last several years due to a number of reasons, partly due to the market itself but competition even within our own portfolio and then competition with other programs in the organization. So we've had to be really creative to think about how can we, not only maintain the revenue that we bring in for the journals but diversify it and increase it.
ERIN LANDIS: So one of the ways that we thought to do that was to develop this Clinician's Companion, which is a quarterly Digital Digest of the top clinical research that we publish in two of our journals. We take that research, we have the authors who published the research, write summaries for us, and then do clinical practice take home points. We take that content and we do some desktop publishing with it, and then we sell it as a subscription to our members and non-members; non-members pay a little bit more.
ERIN LANDIS: But the idea is that it's highly curated, clinically-oriented content. The editors-in-chief of the journals pick the content. So they try to pick content that they think would make a difference in the practice of gastroenterology. And to design this product, we went through the whole design thinking framework, which starts with a lot of research. So we did surveys, we did focus groups, we try to figure out what our members were looking for.
ERIN LANDIS: And what we heard over and over again was this, we love the journals, they're one of the most important benefits of the organization. But we don't have time as clinical practitioners to read them. So what can you do to help us understand what you're publishing and how it might affect how we care for our patients? So that was the genesis of this product.
ERIN LANDIS: So we're only still in, we've just completed one year of the product. Our goal now is to continue on with the design thinking framework, which is we piloted, we're testing it, we're going to evaluate how our readers have reacted to it, our subscribers have reacted to it. And then hopefully come out with our next version of it so that we can build upon the product.
SAM BURRELL: Did you guys build it yourselves? Is it something you've built in-house? Or is it you did your outsource that you did? OK, cool.
ERIN LANDIS: We did we build it in-house and we actually disseminate it through our learning management system, which is we call AGA University. It's where all of our educational content lives.
SAM BURRELL: Cool. And so is there an interface? Sorry, I'm asking really basic questions here. But I'm quite interested to understand how it works. So you've got presumably a search interface for members or non-members as you say and then you're just feeding it with content every quarter, right?
ERIN LANDIS: Every quarter, right. So we send them an alert that the new issue is available. They then go to AGA University where they log in and they access the latest content. It's in PDF form. And our idea here is that we're looking at moving, potentially, learning management systems, our ideas that we can make something a little more sophisticated and more interactive going forward. To your point earlier, we just needed to start something and get out of the gates with the idea and not overthink it, which is a tendency of ours in our organization.
ERIN LANDIS: And sometimes we end up doing nothing instead of just doing something.
SAM BURRELL: I don't think it's just your organization. I think it's actually the whole academic culture. That might be a bit wide to say a whole of academic culture. But I think there's something about having done it, it might not be the most perfect iteration of what you guys are trying to achieve. But there's something about doing something, and then going, and look, it works. And people like it. And so it's worth investing in it.
SAM BURRELL: And we can then monetize it and do something more with it. And now we've got a case that we can build and go, actually, it'd worth us investing this because, look, we have this feedback. I guess that's the next question is, have you had feedback from users about how it's been going for a year? What--
ERIN LANDIS: Well, we haven't received any feedback yet because we haven't done a survey yet. Although, we have the survey instrument ready and we intend to do it this fall. So we're looking to get that feedback. And also we're potentially going to do some small focus groups too. I was going to make a point about the beauty of the design thinking framework, is that it allows you to test out things and pilot things, and then build on those things, which has helped us get past that initial concern and fear of not having a perfect product right out of the gates.
SAM BURRELL: Dana do you want to pick up on any of that if you got-- was there anything that struck?
DANA COMPTON: Yeah, absolutely. I think we're at ASCE in much the same situation that Erin is in terms of this tendency to overthink and then stay in stasis. The whole goal of collecting and contextualizing content from our academic resources, for practitioners is very high priority for us, and we've made slow progress with it. And I think it's exactly for that reason.
DANA COMPTON: I think we tend to get bogged down in this. We have 35 journals across nine or 10 different topic areas. And where would we even begin and how do we sift through all that content? And a little bit of a, we need to take a step back and say, let's just start somewhere. Maybe in one subject area, we find a willing volunteer to help us, and we just get started. And I think you just really hit on it, Erin.
DANA COMPTON: I think we have a culture that expects perfection out of the gate. Also, is in, I think willing to wait, to your point Sam when we have to be better at communicating that we're going to try it and see if it's successful. Pilots are important. Maybe we don't hit on exactly the right product day 1, but we need to bring our volunteer leadership around to the idea that not everything might be profitable year 1.
DANA COMPTON: And I think that's a real challenge when we're talking about, not the staff leadership but the volunteer leadership that turns over year after year.
JENNIFER REGALA: Dana, that's a really good point. And I think what's interesting about that is thinking about, that's what I always try to explain to our volunteer leadership, is, OK, we might only be making $10,000 if even that or-- whatever the amount is. And it sounds like, oh, well. But think about what's at stake. That's the interesting piece to always be thinking about. But also how do you communicate that? What is at stake over time if you're not doing this right?
JENNIFER REGALA: Membership, meetings. Again, all of these different things where the lines are blurring, because COVID has accelerated that blurring in this more content management world rather than a publications, versus meetings, versus membership world. Those of us who choose to link up and accept that are the ones who are going to survive and hopefully thrive. And then also to Dana's point, there's something about what you and Erin both said, this the sheer volume of what you're doing on a day-to-day basis.
JENNIFER REGALA: It's hard to get outside of-- you have deadlines to meet. Our staffs, I have to imagine it's the same is true for the two of you, but staffs are leaner and meaner than ever. Whoever we're working with, whether self-publishing or a commercial partnership, staffs on that side are totally dwindling as well at our publishers, printers, et cetera.
JENNIFER REGALA: And so those are all real things that we have to be thinking about too. But at the same time, innovating and making things work. So it's the last thing--
SAM BURRELL: Yeah. I was talking to someone the other day about change. And she said something, she's a developer and she was talking about website stability. So you wouldn't think that would necessarily, but she said anytime you change something, you introduce the risk of something going wrong. That just how it is. But what are your choices? Because if you don't change anything, then you end up with something that's obsolete.
SAM BURRELL: So you have to go, we need to continue to change. And every time we make a change, there is a risk that it won't be perfect, but you still have to do it.
ERIN LANDIS: One of the things that we really had to accomplish was, not only persuading our staff that they have to be willing to take risks, and to be innovative, and to be strategic but to persuade our leadership as well. It's not uncommon for boards to be conservative in their willingness to take risks, especially when they're financial. So we did a lot of things with our leadership, in particular, to teach them about the design-thinking process and to encourage the allowance of staff to be innovative.
ERIN LANDIS: So we had to get their support before we can even start on anything because, ultimately, these ideas, a lot of them anyway, have to go before them for approval. So we spend a lot of time working with them on appreciating innovative thinking and appreciating the design-thinking process.
SAM BURRELL: This is very interesting. And Dana you're nodding enthusiastically.
DANA COMPTON: Because I feel like it's very much a chicken and the egg problem. I think the longer that you are not presenting those ideas to your board, you're getting stuck in your rut and maybe not innovating so much. The volunteer leadership, I think rightfully starts to think, well, we're going to have to come up with the ideas and tell them what to do. And they aren't the publishing professionals. They're not necessarily thinking about what the market will bear in terms of products, but we get in this cycle of doing what the board tells us to do, doing what the board tells us to do, which maybe holds us back from idea generation, because we don't want to go small.
DANA COMPTON: But I think if we presented something, got approval on a small low-risk pilot and got some success behind us, we could portray that. Next time maybe we go a little bigger and the board buys in a little faster, and you can accelerate that innovation cycle in that way.
JENNIFER REGALA: That's exactly right Dana. And they never write it in our job descriptions. I would be willing to bet for any of us. You have to be an educator too. So that's part of our job, the unspoken. Other duties as assigned is really being scanning the landscape, looking for these threats, and then packaging them up in a way that's understandable for leadership, that turns over fairly frequently, volunteer leadership.
JENNIFER REGALA: And also educating our in-house leadership who have the weight of the world on their shoulders. They're not just thinking about publications. So you know they have to manage these thoughts from us versus the others. So how do you package that up as well?
SAM BURRELL: Let's pick up on that, Jennifer, because when you were talking about all the different kinds of content, I'm going to get geeky, I did a little bit of publishing geeking out here; when we talk about all of the different kinds of content that you're envisioning for your new platform. I have seen, as we all have seen no doubt, organizations outside scholarly publishing that attempt to do a platform with different kinds of content on. And again, as a publishing profession, I was looking at one just the other day.
SAM BURRELL: And I just looked, oh, my God, it's car crash. You can't find anything. You can't work out how they've organized it. I'm coming to this and going, yes, I want to know about whatever it is. But help me find this information. And I think as societies, a lot of the assets that societies have are information assets, whether they sit within publishing or whether they sit outside publishing, particularly as meetings have gone online.
SAM BURRELL: And we're thinking about membership of community and online communities in some case, that then becomes kind of content management, information management. And we have some experience in this area. How does that play out in your society? Go.
ERIN LANDIS: Yeah, I was going to comment on real quickly the-- I'm not sure if Jennifer, Dana, mentioned this. I think this maybe Jennifer, the leaner staffs. And one issue that we run into or have run into a lot with our publication staff and in particular is the fear of innovation because if I bring an idea forward, am I going to have to carry it out and I don't have time? So one thing that we've implemented, we call it the program evaluation tool.
ERIN LANDIS: And it's this matrix where we align the new idea or an existing idea on axes of impact and effort. And whatever quadrant it falls in dictates if we're going to try to pursue it or not. But my point is that we've reassured them that, just because you bring an idea forward, we are going to consider it mindfully. And if it's so wonderful, we might then eliminate something else so that we can be innovative and strategic, because it's just not acceptable to not be strategic and innovative.
ERIN LANDIS: The point I was going to make about what you said, Sam, in terms of all that content that we sit on in societies and not necessarily knowing what the content is in different silos within the organization, that's something that we haven't at AGA been particularly successful at. Although, I think we're getting better at it. And one of the things that was an interesting byproduct of the pandemic was we started these virtual, what the CEO calls scrums, where everyone from the entire organization is welcome to attend.
ERIN LANDIS: It's a half an hour every Friday morning. And the responsibility is that you report out on major things that you're working on that may be of interest to the rest of the organization. And it's been through those meetings that we've understood the content that is available out there, and been able to make those connections for our members so that they have a better user experience to understand how all of these dots connect.
SAM BURRELL: That's really interesting. So as an organization, you weren't doing that level of communicating on a regular basis. It's the turning up on a Friday and going, this is what's going on.
ERIN LANDIS: We were to some extent. We had a written document that we sent out by email weekly. But I don't believe people were reading it too carefully. The scrum people do participate and join and listen. It seems to be a more successful format for sharing information.
SAM BURRELL: That's really interesting. Dana, you're nodding.
DANA COMPTON: Yeah, that to that, in particular, I think that's interesting. I'm just thinking that would be a really great addition to our communication channels.
SAM BURRELL: I think-- yeah, go on.
DANA COMPTON: No, I was going to comment on something Jennifer had said. But if there's more of it--
SAM BURRELL: No, go.
DANA COMPTON: OK, so just talking in terms of that siloed information assets. Jennifer, I love hearing about what you're doing with AUA News. But I think one of the challenges that we experience at ASCE is that our member communication channels are, we call ASCE source, the civil engineering source, which is really way AUA News. That doesn't sit within publications at ASCE. That fits within our communications department.
DANA COMPTON: And so I think there are tons of opportunities, and we try to do this through our marketing and leverage teams to highlight research content through our communications channels. And we're doing some of that, and doing some of that successfully. But what we see is that our member communications are going to largely practitioner markets and taking our academic content in the format in which it currently exists and just presenting it through that channel, doesn't work.
DANA COMPTON: It's not meaningful to that group of people. And so there's this whole added bit of work that speaks to the lean staff. It's what we want to do, but it takes some translation. It takes some putting into context. And I think our volunteer base is overextended, our staff is overextended. So it gets challenging. We know what to do, but how do we get the resources to do it?
SAM BURRELL: So I was I was writing something this morning for my own amusement and delectation-- and I think it specifically to all three of you, actually, who've got membership basis that are practitioners, the question I was asking myself is, is the journal article dead? Not from within the academy and the purpose that it serves, but within a real world environment where you're suddenly going, there's a piece of information that I need, and I need it right now.
SAM BURRELL: And I need to be able to go to a website and go, can you tell me what this thing means? And I don't want to read. I don't even want to know that the article-- I do want to know if the article exists probably, I want to know that it's backed up by evidence. But I want to be able to ask a question and get an answer just like that. And it needs to be an answer that I can trust.
SAM BURRELL: I want to know that it is backed up, particularly if it's a scientific question I want. So I was going, it's not that writing article serves no function, it's not that there isn't a purpose to it. But there's I think, and this kind of comes back to revenue, you go where is the money going to be in the future? Where can we as information-- I'm not quite sure what the word is, curators?
JENNIFER REGALA: Yes, that's the word I think. And I have a total passion for this. And I think our articles will all be dead if we're not paying attention, because I think the articles are here to stay as long as we're caring for them carefully. And I'll tell you what I mean, I'll give you AUA examples. So one thing that we've instituted in the past year for our flagship journal, "The Journal of Urology," we started to create, and these are self written by authors and it turns out, who knew?
JENNIFER REGALA: They delighted to do these. We have JU Insights, and they're just 250 words. And they provide extra insight into the article-- study limitations, things that they were thinking of during the study, just a little bit outside, just a little taste teaser of the article. So it's not like an extended abstract, which would be boring or whatever. And our plan is to take those and repurpose those over onto AUA News.
JENNIFER REGALA: So that's one of those cross-pollination efforts. But also we plan to start putting those into collections. So for instance, a bladder cancer collection of them. And then they're curated and then our bladder cancer experts can scan through those, and be like, oh, well, shoot. I totally missed this article. I'm going to go to the article now. Another example is visual abstracts.
JENNIFER REGALA: We're really trying to work hard. We started small, but we're really seeing huge interaction with visual abstracts. And again, repurposing those, using those in social media really aggressively. The interaction that we see with each tweet that we do is usually 50,000 impressions or more for anything with a visual abstract. So what we're hoping there is that article then gets attention from practitioners outside of urology, from patients, from scientists in other fields, and we're seeing that that's happening.
JENNIFER REGALA: So again, I have a real passion for this. Yes, we need those articles. However, we must care for them carefully and really brush them, and give them water and food. And do things to make them be these loving, interactive things rather than just slapping them up on add upon and saying, OK, peace out and we're done with this. We want to keep-- yeah.
DANA COMPTON: Sorry, not to cut you off but I think part of that really is relevant through different channels. So I think the article is going to be the cornerstone of all of that. But I think we also all need to recognize that market diversification and revenue diversification means we're not going to squeeze any more money out of the academic stone. That's going to come out of industry.
DANA COMPTON: And we need to figure out a way how to meet that academic content relevant in industry. We need resources to do that. I love the idea that you said that your summaries, Jennifer, are authored by the journal authors because we have stopped short of doing that. I think we need to just give it a shot and see what happens. But what we hear from our volunteer leadership, again, largely practitioner, is the journal authors shouldn't write these.
DANA COMPTON: They're academics, they don't understand what they need. They'll never be able to put it into context for us. I really feel what we need to do is say, we're going to start small, just give us a chance, see how it goes, and show some success, because that's really the way to do it. But I just think you need to be looking at industry and how to put research into context.
SAM BURRELL: I really want to pick up on that. And Erin-- go ahead. Go.
ERIN LANDIS: Also say, Dana, we also have those and we do have our authors write them as well. And we did have that problem a little bit where they weren't necessarily clear on how they should write those for clinicians. And so we had to give them really good guidance, but also we have been handling associate editors review them as well. So another layer of eyes. But to your point about commercial and industry support, that's the direction we've had to head because the things that we tried, like low-hanging fruit in terms of-- we did take content that we had.
ERIN LANDIS: Again, to Jennifer's point about the article being the cornerstone, we had these visual spotlights that we hope to have commercial support for us. Our medical illustrator designs those, we had digital collections too, we had a patient education. Those things all with the hope that the industry support would come, and it really didn't, so then we started to work more closely with our partner Elsevier on other ideas and we finally had our publications committee agree to allow us to do commercially-supported supplements, or video roundtables, outcerts, things that, for years, they were reluctant to allow us to do because of the perceived relationship.
ERIN LANDIS: And we just really reassured them that we would have editorial control over the supplements and the video roundtables, and we could basically nix it if we had to. But I had to show them where we stood financially to persuade them, OK, it's time to be more creative and think beyond the traditional sources of revenue. And I'll also say too that the industry spend in terms of display advertising is going down where their educational spend is going up.
ERIN LANDIS: So they really want those educational products that you were talking about earlier. So taking that content that we publish in the articles, but then making it relevant for the practitioner.
SAM BURRELL: So I was going to pick up on something that both of you have touched on, and I think it's really important. And I'm very also aware of the time. So I think this might be our final bit that we talk about, was given the sessions about revenue diversification and the challenges that are placed on, particularly publications, but I think if we look a bit wider and go actually all the content within the society, where do you guys think the money is next? Where is the opportunity for our sector, not necessarily your society but the sector more generally?
SAM BURRELL: Is there something we could be doing that would generate revenue that falls within way in what we do that you think might be worth exploring some more? And I know you guys have touched on it and some of you guys are beginning to do stuff. So Dana, I'm going to start with you, then I'm going to do Erin, and then Jennifer.
SAM BURRELL:
DANA COMPTON: [INAUDIBLE] oh, boy. That's a--
SAM BURRELL: Sorry, that was mean. And I didn't prep you. I'm really sorry.
DANA COMPTON: I think it's twofold. I think there is opportunity for publications to partner more on the membership side and come up with a more compelling value proposition for those of us at societies that are largely practitioner-focused to appeal in the academic market. I think membership in academia, if we can frame that properly as an opportunity for our societies, you are more practitioner-focused.
DANA COMPTON: On the other side of things, I think it's exactly what we're talking about. I think it's really not looking to create a whole lot of new content, but taking the excellent research content that we have and making it appropriate for multi-channels. I think that's exactly what we've been talking about. And whether that's the practitioner, or whether it's the student membership, or whatever, I think there are a number of ways.
DANA COMPTON: But I think we have to take academic research content and find out how to make it relevant to other audiences.
SAM BURRELL: Erin, do you want to add to that? Or riff on it? Or--
ERIN LANDIS: Yeah, I agree with what Dana said. I think for me what's really exciting. And I've been doing journal publishing now for 20 years, is this opportunity to think beyond the journal article, which is what we've been talking about. And we've, for so many years, just sat on our laurels and relied on that advertising coming in at least for our specific journals in biomedicine, and it just isn't working anymore.
ERIN LANDIS: So now we are faced with a problem, but it can be an incredible opportunity. And I know that, as a patient myself, I want to be reassured that the doctor who is seeing me or the practitioner who is seeing me is doing it based on the latest evidence. It's a matter of how do we get that evidence and that research into their hands and then translate it for them and make sense for them.
ERIN LANDIS: So that's a very exciting opportunity I think and prospect that we in publishing can harness the content that we have. There's so much of it. Don't try to create new content, just take the content we have and make better sense of it for our community.
SAM BURRELL: Jennifer.
JENNIFER REGALA: Yeah. In my opinion, I really think I've done this little equation here. I'm totally taking notes on this conversation. I feel like we could talk all day. So just loving it. I think it's curation plus cooperation equals revenue. And I think it comes down to personality and leadership at the top of both volunteer and organizational leadership. I'm really fortunate to work in a spot where both of those things line up.
JENNIFER REGALA: And personality is really encouraged as far as really cooperating with one another, and really working on things together. To Dana's point, repurposing, repackaging, and cross-pollinating what we already have. Don't reinvent the wheel. We have really good things, but it's not just the journal article either. There's things in our Office of Education here, for instance, that are not getting out or whatever.
JENNIFER REGALA: I'm just using that as just one example. And I'm just thinking, and again, I took notes during this call. But I'm just thinking that in the past year, I have been given the leeway and been met with really receptive colleagues on the other end in these departments. But membership, marketing, communications, meetings, guidelines, Office of Research, our Industry, Relations, and Development Office, and the Office of Education, and really sitting down with all of them, getting to know them, understanding their pain points, learning about things that we're doing that totally overlap.
JENNIFER REGALA: And it's actually really ridiculous. And we can cooperate and actually create efficiencies. And I'll give you one example there. We're thinking about getting some really excellent content for the "Journal of Urology," well, turns out our guidelines and our Office of Education departments have opportunities for us to invite some content, that those folks are already working on and is trimmed and falls by the wayside of what they're actually doing, but they would make excellent reviews in our journal.
JENNIFER REGALA: But it's having those conversations and never just saying, OK, I talked to Dana and now my box is checked. And that's what I keep thinking about now. I can't just check a box. And the same would be true for DEI, thinking about how we treat peer review, thinking about how we have a culture within our environment. All of that is true.
JENNIFER REGALA: We've got to stop thinking, oh, I've checked that box. We're done. Conversation must be daily and also going on in our heads all the time as well. I really feel passionate about that. And there's so many opportunities. And the other thing I would just say too is I know Erin, and Dana, and you Sam. Personally, I'm really lucky for that and also many others in the society world.
JENNIFER REGALA: And I think that's an important point too, connecting the dots too, because I'm hearing things from Erin and Dana that I am telling you right now I'm going to bug you about and follow up with you on. And that's also part of our responsibility, our unspoken responsibility as well.
SAM BURRELL: Yeah, it's about having a conversation. I think that's a really good point. And I think you've all touched on it, is about actually just straight communication between everyone in your organization but, Jennifer, to your point about more widely as well. And again, I think maybe COVID has made that more clear because we just relied on bumping into each other at conferences or whatever. And actually realizing the value in conversations where you can freewheel for a bit with the knowledge of people who bring different things for sure, but you have some crossover with, where you go, hey, is this possible?
SAM BURRELL: Could you do this? And I guess that's where innovation really comes from.
ERIN LANDIS: Sam, if I could just make one point really quickly to Jennifer. I really am grateful that she brought in the word cooperation and/or collaboration, either would work. I think that one of the challenges that we face a lot in organizations is a lack of collaboration. And sometimes in the worst cases, there's some territorialism that goes on, where you're going to protect your territory and you're not necessarily interested in collaborating and sharing.
ERIN LANDIS: And I think that to really move forward, we have to be willing to collaborate and to get them check our egos at the door.
JENNIFER REGALA: Yes, I totally. There's that fear. You know that folks are concerned that you're trying, oh, no, I don't want your job or your stuff, but I want us both to, not only have our jobs but to grow what we're doing. I want to grow our mission of our organization and the collaboration is so key. But it's also really comes back to that communication, really making that clear, hey, I'm not here to pick up your people or your work or anything like that.
JENNIFER REGALA: No, thank you. But I would love to pick your brains and help you and also have you help me too. That would be great as well.
SAM BURRELL: And what a perfect place to end this conversation. We could talk for another 3 and 1/2 hours, I think. And not get bored. However, I'm very aware that people have other things to do today. And so I am going to wrap this up. I'm going to say thank you, the three of you so much for this conversation. And I do hope that the three of you will be able to join us on the Zoom call afterwards.
SAM BURRELL: I'm sure there will be loads of questions. And if there aren't, we can just carry on the conversation just as well. But I do encourage those of you listening to come and join the Society Street chats after these sessions, are always really good. So please do come along. And, guys, thanks again so much for your time. We really, really appreciate it.
DANA COMPTON: Thank you.
ERIN LANDIS: Thank you so much.
JENNIFER REGALA: Thanks so much.
SAM BURRELL: Bye.
ERIN LANDIS: Bye-bye.
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