The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) is the home for microbial scientists from around the globe. Its high-quality research publishing covers authoritative primary and clinical microbial research. We talked to Deborah Plavin, UX and Analytics Director at ASM, about how ASM’s partnership with ResearchGate has helped the society to broaden the dissemination of its research content and to better understand researchers.
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You’ve been working with ResearchGate since 2022. What motivated ASM to work with ResearchGate?
ResearchGate has a vibrant community of researchers, which was something we recognised before we decided to collaborate. But our decision wasn’t really solidified until it was clear that ResearchGate was proactively engaging with publishers. Once we saw that others were embracing this opportunity, we were interested to explore working with them too.
ResearchGate has a vibrant community of researchers, which was something we recognised before we decided to collaborate
Were there particular challenges you were looking to address through working with ResearchGate?
Our goal was to broaden dissemination of the science that we publish. We see our Journal Home partnership with ResearchGate as a way to facilitate greater collaboration with the community that exists outside of our current channels, reaching a wider network of researchers. From my perspective, it was also an opportunity to learn about behaviours of researcher communities when they're not on our platform. We've done user research and know who our author base is, but we don't really know what happens before researchers start interacting with us. What is the journey from someone who is new to ASM and doesn’t know about our content to becoming engaged, wanting to read our content, or becoming an author? The opportunity to learn more about user behaviour in a completely different community helps us understand ways that we could potentially better serve their needs.
We see our Journal Home partnership with ResearchGate as a way to facilitate greater collaboration with the community that exists outside of our current channels, reaching a wider network of researchers
What results have you seen from the Journal Home partnership so far?
Our collaboration started with six open access (OA) journals initially. Using our OA portfolio was a chance to test the water and see what kind of community we would be reaching, are we reaching different regions and institutions than we normally do? From the data that I've seen, we are creating greater visibility and awareness of our journals among ResearchGate users, and some of the regions we're seeing usage from do not typically show up in the top five for ASM’s platform. We’ve seen a sustained level of engagement with our content, so we are both broadening our reach and growing interest in our content with the ResearchGate community.
We’ve seen a sustained level of engagement with our content, so we are both broadening our reach and growing interest in our content
You’re now expanding your partnership with ResearchGate to include the majority of your portfolio in Journal Home. What were the drivers for this expansion and do you have any additional aims?
Towards the end of last year, we added six titles that are part of our Subscribe to Open (S2O) offer. There were three primary reasons for the expansion. Firstly, we saw promising results from the pilot in terms of visibility and engagement. Secondly, our platform vendor made efforts to integrate COUNTER-compliant usage statistics from ResearchGate, providing us with a way to deliver recognised metrics to share with subscribing institutions. This is going to be a big benefit for us to be able to demonstrate to institutions that we're providing access. And thirdly, the Journal Home partnership aligns perfectly with our goal to make ASM content available everywhere researchers expect it to be.
...the Journal Home partnership aligns perfectly with our goal to make ASM content available everywhere researchers expect it to be
ASM announced its bold strategic shift from subscription publishing to S2O back in July 2023. How does your Journal Home partnership support this transition?
Our focus is currently on awareness campaigns to institutions, and we will be turning to authors soon. ResearchGate can serve as an additional channel to engage with the researcher community directly, explaining the significance of S2O as we see it, which is broader access and greater inclusivity. We’re also hoping in the future to let our community of users on ResearchGate know that they can publish with us at reduced cost as a result of their institution’s subscription. Leveraging the ResearchGate team’s insight and experience to improve that engagement is something we're also looking forward to.
Leveraging the ResearchGate team’s insight and experience to improve that engagement is something we're also looking forward to.
What would your advice be for others considering a collaboration through Journal Home?
As a publisher, you're always being asked to pursue new relationships and they all cost money. For non-profit publishers, we're always trying to do more with less and so I think one of the things that makes the collaboration with ResearchGate different is this is more of a partnership and they really help to make it successful. That is not always the case, in my experience. The great thing about working with the ResearchGate team is that it's very iterative, they want to understand how publishers are using the information they're providing, so it's been a really helpful and very open dialogue.
For non-profit publishers, we're always trying to do more with less and so I think one of the things that makes the collaboration with ResearchGate different is this is more of a partnership and they really help to make it successful.
My advice to others is to start with a small pilot with clear objectives of what you want to get out of the Journal Home partnership and how you're going to measure it. That could be expanding audience reach, increasing engagement, attracting authors, or just learning more about user behaviour. Setting performance metrics for the pilot is important; you can get so lost in being excited about learning all these things that you forget. It’s worthwhile thinking about how to maximise the benefits of the collaboration across functions: marketing, sales, and publishers all benefit from this kind of partnership.
The great thing about working with the ResearchGate team is that it's very iterative, they want to understand how publishers are using the information they're providing, so it's been a really helpful and very open dialogue
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