Building Resilient Publishing Programs: a Conversation with Three Society Publishers

Society publishers today face an increasingly complex landscape—shaped by shifting business models, expanding OA mandates, funding uncertainty, and intensifying competition for authors and readers. Yet their smaller scale also confers advantages: agility, a willingness to experiment, and close ties to their research communities. As they look for ways to strengthen and grow their journal programs, many societies are rethinking long-standing assumptions about portfolio structure, community engagement, and new title development.

At this year’s ALPSP Conference, KGL’s Director of Consulting, Kevin Lomangino, chaired a candid discussion with three society publishing leaders, each of whom shared what they’ve tried, what they’ve learned, and how they are working to build more resilient and responsive journal programs for the future.  

Building a community

Publishing one of the world’s most respected urology journals, BJU International (BJUI) and its eponymous flagship journal have been market leaders since 1929.  

Unlike traditional scholarly societies, BJUI is not a membership-based organization, meaning it has had to work harder than most to find, engage, and retain a community.  With the landscape becoming increasingly competitive, audience engagement became a top priority at BJUI and the publisher took a highly innovative approach. 

“Essentially, we decided to piggy-back on international associations to reach their members with our journals,” said Sophia Anderton, CEO of BJUI. “We signed official, mutually beneficial agreements with around 35 urological associations all over the world, giving us direct contact with some 10,000 urologists in 75 different countries. It is highly unlikely that we would have had anywhere near that number of members if we’d launched a membership program on our own.” 

Launching new journals

Anderton noted that in 2013 BJUI started to witness a change in the wind, as the market became increasingly challenging and competitive. 

“Our flagship journal has always been very heavily focused on quality, but we were finding that we were rejecting more papers than ever. This wasn’t great for community relations, it wasn’t working as a volume-based business model, there were limited financial opportunities, and we were losing market share and brand awareness.” 

In response to this evolving dynamic, BJUI decided to launch BJUI Compass—a new fully Open Access journal, that would take transfers from BJUI’s flagship journal, as well as direct submissions. 

She added: “Overall, this strategy proved to be a big success, and we’ve now been able to publish a lot more papers for our urological community. It’s been good for academics who are required to publish OA, a positive step for the BJUI brand and financially beneficial too. We’re now able to focus on quality, quantity, community engagement and business success, which I would say are the four pillars of journal development.” 

Trial and error

However, launching new journals is not always the answer as one society found out through trial and error. The Biochemical Society traditionally receives 85 percent of its revenue from its publishing activities across a portfolio of seven journals. In 2017, the society took the decision to launch new Open Access journal Neuronal Signaling, to fill what was deemed as a gap in its portfolio. 

“When we looked at the data, there was increased funding and research output in the neuroscience area, so we thought there could be an opportunity for us to grow in this space,” said Clare Curtis, Director of Content and Engagement at the Biochemical Society. “But, from the start, submissions and publications were relatively low and we weren’t really seeing any growth as the years went on, primarily because the journal wasn’t indexed on the Web of Science. At the time there were also very strong existing competitors in the market, such as the Journal of Neuroscience, and the newly launched British Neuroscience Association OA title, Brain and Neuroscience Advances, which made it particularly challenging.” 

In 2023, with the journal operating at a significant loss, showing no signs of growth and diverting significant staff resources away from the society’s core activities, the board took the decision to close it down. 

Reflecting on the decision, Curtis suggested that hard analytics played too great a role in the society’s  journal development strategy—and that subjective research with authors may have tempered their outlook for the launch. “Admittedly, we probably followed the data far too much, instead of discussing with the community and gauging appetite and enthusiasm for a new journal. But we are now able to focus on driving growth to our core titles and have started to take more of a holistic approach—creating cross-portfolio themed collections and sharing editorial board members, for example. As we enter a new phase in our society’s strategy, the growth of our journals—ensuring they are financially sustainable and remain at the heart of the international bioscience community—is a key priority.” 

Implementing a portfolio structure

Over the past two decades, the publishing landscape in nutrition has evolved dramatically, with new OA entrants and a proliferation of research outlets reshaping the market. For the American Society for Nutrition (ASN), these changes highlighted the importance of ensuring its journals were positioned to work together strategically and maintain a strong presence in this expanding field. 

To meet this moment, ASN is transitioning from managing its journals as separate, largely independent entities to a true portfolio approach. This model is designed to align editorial strategy across titles, reduce duplication of effort, and create a more coherent experience for authors. “We recognized that we couldn’t continue operating in silos,” said Gwen Twillman, Chief Programs and Advancement Officer at ASN. “A coordinated structure allows us to think more strategically about how our journals work together rather than compete for the same content.”  

Leading the effort will be a newly created Portfolio Executive Editor role. The position will ensure alignment of scopes and selectivity criteria across the portfolio, while also implementing changes—such as sharing of Associate Editors across titles—that will streamline review and transfer of manuscripts between journals.  

“The goal is to oversee the entire ASN brand and ensure that we’re working as one integrated program,” Twillman noted. “We expect this to help us respond more quickly to trends, strengthen our content strategy, and ultimately operate more efficiently.” 

By treating its journals as a coordinated portfolio—rather than standalone titles working in isolation—ASN aims to sharpen its competitive edge, increase quality submissions, and improve both author and editorial experiences in an increasingly demanding publishing landscape. 

To view the full recording of this ALPSP session, click below:

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