In the 2024 Publishing Tech Trends report from Silverchair and Hum, we explore the shifting sands of technology for various stakeholders in the scholarly publishing ecosystem. As Silverchair CEO, Will Schweitzer, writes in his introduction: "publishers should be fast followers and make small bets following larger commercial players and the consumer market. More importantly, we all need to evaluate our budgets and decision frameworks. How we should make decisions about experiments and emerging technologies is vastly different than established products and off-the-shelf applications."
How are other publishing leaders interpreting the changing importance of different technologies, resources, and partnerships? Read their thoughts below, then download the full report here for more trends and predictions.
The Year of Experimentation
"Agile Technology partners that facilitate piloting and a/b testing." —Phoebe McMellon, CEO, GeoScienceWorld"In 2024, workflow tools are to become increasingly important for publishers due to their ability to streamline processes, reduce friction, and ultimately lower the cost per manuscript. This shift towards a more efficient workflow will be driven by a heightened focus on the author journey. Additionally, I anticipate an uptick in partnerships between publishers, not necessarily mergers and acquisitions, but collaborations aimed at working together on specific initiatives and projects." —Christian Grubak, Founder & Co-CEO, ChronosHub
AI, But Scalable
"Effective AI tools need really good metadata, so technology partners who can accurately add persistent identifiers and other metadata should increase in importance. However, I suspect in reality it will be flashy new startups promising to leverage AI to simplify workflows (e.g. research misconduct detection), attract readers (e.g. generated plain language abstracts), etc. that will attract the funding." —Tasha Mellins-Cohen, Executive Director, COUNTER"Broader use of AI." —Dave Oakley, VP Licensing, MEI Global LLC
"Training homegrown LLMs with their own validated content." —Marianne Calilhanna, VP of Marketing, Data Conversion Laboratory
"GenAI/ML, access to good, domain-specific, ethically sourced/built models." —Christian Kohl, Director, Technology & Engineering, PLOS
"Generative AI-Publisher partnerships to create more reliable Large Language Models." —Avi Staiman, CEO, Academic Language Experts
"Obviously, AI tools will be a major player this year. Partnerships with AI and data driven organizations, like Hum, will be incredibly important. I think every organization will need to seriously consider their vision, capabilities, and resources then take decisive action. The AI sphere is moving too fast to wait and see." —Will Fortin, Lead Data Scientist, Hum
Audience Data
"Organizations are facing the necessity to allocate increased resources to what is commonly referred to as "modern marketing." This entails the acquisition of new skillsets and the adoption of emerging technologies. The specific requirements in this area depend heavily on the use cases that an organization prioritizes and the technologies it currently employs. One significant gap lies in the availability of tools that offer marketers hands-on, real-time access to customer and audience data, facilitating functions such as segmentation, campaign analytics, and the activation of marketing campaigns. To prevent investing in underutilized technology, careful planning is recommended before making new tool acquisitions." —Colleen Scollans, Marketing & CX, Clarke & Esposito "Search tools, platforms and collaborations that can leverage data from the published research to accelerate achievement of SDG goals by facilitating research collaborations, streamlining funding and supporting policy decisions." —Anjali Chadha, Senior Associate, Maverick
Publishing Specialists
"Publishers are going to have to invest in building these personalized relationships with a largely anonymous audience and will need to do so with CDPs such as Hum and Behavioral Analytics platforms such as Hotjar. How do certain demographics like to consume their data? How can my publishing platform help me deliver personalized experiences? Publishers who aren’t able to understand their audience and act on that understanding risk losing those readers to other publishers or mediums." —Tim Barton, CEO, Hum
"I believe I said content syndication last year, but I see it continuing to increase in popularity. To disseminate content to all the target platforms (and to roll usage up from multiple sources), precise metadata (and potentially new standards) will rule the day." —Heather Staines, Senior Consultant, Delta Think
LOOKING BACK: Remember when Blockchain and SSO were the talk of the town? Technology is advancing rapidly, so it comes as no surprise that the answers to this question have changed the most, year to year.