Analysis and news


“Authors’ institutions cover 73 per cent of all paid APCs, while 27 per cent of APCs are covered by authors themselves”


our operations. As a company founded by roboticists, we always felt that technology ‘is the business’. In order to support our publishing model and a product that we pioneered, in an industry that was moving slowly and failing to adjust to customers needs, in 2008 we developed our own content workflow processes and a manuscript tracking system for OA book publishing – a tool that provides agility and supports all operations from the commissioning of content, editorial production, review, online publication, file preparation, print, logistics and distribution. However, besides being software that helps with managing internal operations, this


platform was conceived by scientists for scientists, primarily as a tool for authors, to make their publishing process easy, streamlined and – above all – personalised. As a native OA book publisher we


wanted to offer something new on all levels – and technology has helped us achieve that.


The publishing process We developed technology that enabled us to design a publishing process that lasts from nine to 12 months, and consists of two key components: chapter proposal submission and review, and (contingent upon acceptance) full chapter submission and review. Book editors review all the


submitted chapters and have the overall responsibility for the content of the publication. They pay particular attention to originality, research methods and key results, accepting only chapter proposals and manuscripts that meet all scientific requirements. Full chapters are screened for plagiarism and their scientific merit is evaluated. Once a manuscript meets a book editor’s requirements, it is accepted for publication. A publishing process manager helps to facilitate every aspect of this process and is there to guide authors at each step.


Croatia: cost benefits and challenges


While InTechOpen’s first projects were launched in Austria, the company was founded in Rijeka, Croatia (below). Such strategic decisions bring both strengths and weaknesses. For example, the cost perspective is efficient,


while on the other side recruiting talent is arduous in a country with no legacy in the business. Entering the scholarly publishing industry – a closed and competitive market with a long tradition – while being based in a country not


belonging to the ‘big four’ has proven to be challenging but InTechOpen’s growth to become a world leader in the OA segment shows that this can be achieved, irrespective of where a company is physically based.


Customer approach – the character of the company Employing a very strong author-centric approach adds value to our company, as it enables us to differentiate ourselves from competitors. Our current network of authors and editors is global and distributed evenly within the Americas, EMEA, Japan and Asia Pacific regions. We have published more than 97,500 international scientists, and 11,400 authors are currently working on their upcoming OA books. But we do more than say we put our


authors first; we are open, inclusive, we communicate with our collaborators, and we make it a priority to provide a valuable experience during and after the publishing process is complete. Together with meeting the challenges of making critical knowledge freely available to the worldwide community, maintaining the highest standards in our dealings with authors, and offering our collaborators the opportunity to work with international scholars on a single project – we have organised a program of activities to keep them engaged and happy. For InTechOpen, value is both created


and captured when we put our authors and editors at the centre of our activities, and our overall mission is to support these very people – the researchers, scientists and academics – in making a greater impact by giving readers free access to all their published work.


Sara Uhac is managing director at InTechOpen


www.researchinformation.info | @researchinfo February/March 2017 Research Information 15


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