Strategic Partnerships in Action

As someone who has worked within scholarly publishing for nearly fifteen years and whose strengths lie in strategy, empathy, positivity, ideation, and looking to the future, this is a role I was excited to dive into and one that has really felt like home in the nine months since.

Silverchair’s dedication to collaboration with our clients and other partners is a true differentiator in the industry. We speak of community not with hollow words, but with full commitment backed by resources and processes. Rather than seeing those developing adjacent capabilities to our platform as threats, we instead view them as potential collaborators.

When faced with ideas for new development or alternate products by clients and prospects, we don’t answer with a quick dismissal, but instead with curiosity: “Why would this be valuable to you?” and “Let’s discuss in more detail!” While this approach may also result positively in new platform features developed externally, it also takes a lot of resources to truly commit to partnership. This includes: integrating a partner’s API, connecting their data flows to our backend systems; threading the needle between a client’s specific needs and making the solution extensible to larger swaths of the market; hours of calls with clients and third parties; extensive market research; time with legal to negotiate contracts; and the creation and maintenance of quite a bit of documentation mapping out how all of this works together.

Silverchair’s approach to partnership is epitomized in our Universe program, re-launched and refreshed this month to now also include the well-known ScholarOne Partnership program, in addition to new partners overall. The original Silverchair Platform Universe Program was developed back in 2017, and this relaunch better reflects the new Silverchair as well as the many different products and initiatives that plug into our platforms. It also includes partners that our teams and clients work with on a regular basis who deliver valuable services, products, and functionality to enhance our products and our publishers' experiences.

The Universe program can be boiled down into three major value propositions:

• Decreasing the friction of client implementation of the partner product/service
• Expanding the reach of our partners and simplifying our publishers’ partner research by amplifying collective wins with partners and sharing thought leadership via our communication channels
• Staying connected with other key infrastructure and service providers to keep abreast of developments and collaboration opportunities

Partners within the program span the entirety of the research lifecycle and can be split into three different types:

• Industry infrastructure providers that create and maintain the scaffolding that allows our publishers to reach their audiences, make money, and meet mission-critical needs
• Integration partners that expand the capabilities of our products in line with customer needs
• Delivery and discovery partners that sit up- and downstream of our products and help connect the content held within our products with other key spaces in the research ecosystem

This ongoing success of the Universe program reflects differentiators of both the ScholarOne and the Silverchair Platforms: the ability to create and invest in thriving communities and an independent spirit that seeks out creative collaboration. I am so excited to further dedicate myself to supporting and growing this program in the second half of the year (following my maternity leave, when I'll be embarking on a very different type of growth, support, and partnership).

We welcome your queries and ideas to expand the program at universe@silverchair.com.