100 members and counting: a snapshot of the Society Publishers’ Coalition

It’s been over two years since our group of like-minded, not-for-profit learned societies, community publishers and charities came together to navigate a sustainable pathway to open scholarship. During that time, the scholarly publishing landscape has shifted considerably and SocPC members have been at the forefront of practical change and innovation that supports openness, transparency, and collaboration within the research community.

SocPC members remain committed to its founding principles and objectives and our mission reflects the outlook of an increasing array of organisations. We’re delighted to mark the joining of our 100th member and take the opportunity to reflect on the breadth of our group’s fields and specialisms as well as the value that SocPC provides for those involved.

All 100 SocPC members are looking for positive pathways to open access. United by our efforts to improve the efficiency of the scholarly communication ecosystem for the benefit of researchers (and society as a whole) in a fair and sustainable way, our members all publish as part of their charitable objectives. Universally re-investing the surplus from publishing activities back into the disciplinary communities they serve, our member organisations spent approximately £1,200 million on mission activities in 2018 alone.

With representation across a broad variety of fields, their work helps support disciplinary areas including chemistry, computing, economics, engineering, geography, history, life sciences, management, mathematics, medicine, political science, psychiatry, physics, sociology, and many more.

Having quickly become one of the most representative umbrella organisations in the scholarly community, our members are leading the transition to fully OA publishing on both sides of the Atlantic. 39 members are taking active steps to transform their publishing outputs to full OA, while 20 members are also offering uncapped OA publishing in their transformative agreements.

One of the main drivers in founding SocPC was to ensure the perspectives of smaller organisations fed into the bigger conversations taking place across the sector. Combining members’ individual voices has enabled the group to contribute to broader dialogues, such as the consultation responses relating to Plan S and the UKRI Open Access review. The establishment of six working groups has been vital to the process of comparing experiences and challenges between members, helping to develop best practice and share ideas about transitioning. Consisting entirely of members who volunteer to join them, the SocPC Working Groups consider transformative deals, best practices for commercially partnered societies, transparency and metrics in publishing services, OA book publishing, and alternative OA publishing models, along with other key areas. A friendly and active conversation on the Basecamp platform, together with 16 full membership meetings since 2018, has also been integral to cultivating an open and collaborative environment.

The importance of the group is as much found in this process of exchange. Driven entirely by members’ volunteer efforts across a variety of disciplines, organisations have contributed their own time and resources to share insights and ideas, and to help promote the group’s joint causes. This collaborative spirit represents a commitment to long-term cooperation and we welcome like-minded organisations from across the world to join us. Email enquiries are welcomed at info@socpc.org.