About us
The Society Publishers’ Coalition (SocPC) is a group of over 150 not-for-profit learned societies, community publishers and charities who publish trusted research, and who use any financial surpluses from their publishing activities to fund their other mission-related activities and support their disciplines.
SocPC enables its members to:
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combine intelligence and share expertise relating to open scholarship and other issues of interest to scholarly publishers.
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form a collective voice to contribute to policy debates and consultations on scholarly publishing issues.
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collaborate to get the best competitive advantage by acting together.
The members of SocPC represent a diverse range of academic disciplines, sizes and business models. Some members self-publish and others have publishing partners. Regardless of business model or partnership status, SocPC members act for the benefit of their communities and re-invest any financial surpluses from their publishing activities into their disciplines.
We are looking to expand our membership to any like-minded organisation who agrees with our mission statement. We are also keen to make connections with other groups and stakeholders who share our aims.
Council Members
MAGGIE SIMMONS
Geological Society of London
Co-Chair
CHARLES WHALLEY
British Pharmacological Society
STACEY BURKE
American Physiological Society
SHEHNAZ AHMED
British Association of Dermatologists
SIMON BUCKMASTER
London Mathematical Society
Co-Chair
SCOTT DELMAN
Association for Computing Machinery
JAMES RIVINGTON
British Academy
ANNA PERMAN
The Linnean Society of London
Thinking of joining us?
FAQs
How is SocPC governed?
We have a Council of six who are elected by the membership to each represent their organisation. The Council must contain at least one Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) organisation and at least one Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) organisation. The same principle applies for self-published and commercially published organisations.
How are you different from other scholarly publishing groups?
You can be a member of SocPC and other groups. However, our members must be non-profit organisations with their own publishing program (books or journals) who use any surpluses from publishing to support their scholarly communities. This allows us to have very different conversations than we could if there were larger corporate publishers involved. We are not a trade association.
Is it OK that we publish with corporate publishing partners rather than self-publish?
Yes. Absolutely! Most of our members are not self-publishing. Societies publishing with corporate partners often have unique issues to discuss, but there are plenty of challenges and concerns that we all share.
Do you have any geographical restriction on membership?
No. Although most of us are based in Europe at the present time (which makes regular telephone and face to face meetings easier), we welcome members from anywhere in the world. We are also keen to work with similar groups in other regions.
Why are corporate publishers not included?
Our aims and priorities are different from corporate organisations. Knowledge sharing is a primary mission objective of societies in its own right and any surplus we make is reinvested back into our scholarly communities. Many societies depend on this income to survive. There are several trade associations open to corporate publishers, so we have chosen to have a more specific membership to allow us to discuss those issues and challenges of most relevance to society publishers.
What commitment is needed?
The Council meets monthly and the full membership meets bimonthly, with working groups meeting outside of this. Attending and contributing to those activities is optional, but you do need to sign up to our mission statement.
What is the cost of membership?
There are currently no plans to introduce a membership charge.
What are you working on?
We have a number of working groups.