2017 SSP 39th Annual Meeting
Concurrent 6A: Signifiers of Relevance or Identifiers of Communities…
The nature of scholarly journal publishing relies on certain economic constraints like monopolistic competition, imperfect substitutes, and the attributes of a two-sided market. Furthermore, academia itself relies heavily on reputation and a standardised understanding of quality. Yet, the value of brands in such a market remains unclear. Research shows, however, that brands are important for managing audiences of journals: For instance, for readers, brands merely function as filters. For authors, brands generally function as a cascading system: the lower the impact of a brand, the more the authors recognition is replaced with the interest in ease of publication.
This session will provide insights into the role of brands and the origin of brand equity in scholarly journal publishing. The session won’t discuss specific brands, but show where brand equity stems from, how researchers engage with brands, and how publishers can manage brand equity in fast-paced business development processes. The insights of this session draw from research at the UCL Centre for Publishing, which will be highlighted in a brief speech followed by a panel discussion.
Moderator: Marcel Knöchelmann
Twitter Handle: lepublikateur
Speakers
Twitter Handle: scholarlykitchen