Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee

by Alan Nelson

I had an interesting session this week with a group of publishers at Wiley. I know a couple of them from a previous life as a book publisher and they asked me to come in and talk to them about CPD. They asked some great questions and I think everyone got a lot out of it, but perhaps it’s just as they say, that in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king!

What quickly became apparent was how many parallels there are between their relationships with societies – generally as publishers of their journals – and our relationships with professional bodies.

We had both noticed the way that we exist harmoniously with our partners while actually having slightly different objectives – or rather a difference of emphasis. This is most apparent on the publishing side of our business. We create short CPD courses designed to help professionals in a wide range of sectors to comply with the CPD requirements of their professional body. We then form partner relationships with professional associations, who offer branded versions of our courses to their members and share the income from those sales with us. They would describe their objectives as follows:

1. To engage and excite their professional community
2. To extend the reach of services they offer their members
3. To generate additional income

They would almost certainly put them in that order. Now we understand entirely that the way for us to generate income is to make our courses as engaging and exciting as possible, and that these relationships are only successful if they extend the range of services offered to members, but when it comes down to it, we are a commercial organisation, and so the generation of additional income is important to us.

Wiley have a similar transposition of objectives with their society journals. They understand that the way to grow revenues profitably is to deliver a consistently high quality research vehicle, but they would never say that up front. The society understands that if they create a really first rate journal they will make money, but they would never list that as their primary goal.

In both cases we co-exist happily, secure in the knowledge that although we use different language and come at it from opposite points of view, we end up in the same place.