Plan S and purpose: The future direction for UK learned societies

A group of UK‐based learned societies were anonymously interviewed to understand how trends are affecting their missions, strategies, and operations. The societies' missions focus on supporting academics and disseminating knowledge, with publishing being a means to achieve those goals rather than an end in itself. The responses were concerned about addressing open access (OA) but, particularly in the post‐COVID‐19 era, this was not necessarily their highest priority. The societies expressed reliance on larger corporate publishers on them to navigate the transition to OA publishing. The societies' focus is on evolving their missions to meet the changing needs of their academic communities, with issues around premises as a result of COVID‐19 being more pressing than publishing industry changes. The societies face challenges in adapting to the shift to online and digital operations, particularly in regards to maintaining engagement with their members.


INTRODUCTION
To understand this in more detail, we anonymously interviewed the leadership teams of a small set of STEM focussed UK-based learned societies to determine how different trends are affecting their mission, strategy and operational plans, and how they are adapting to the changes around them. Although the numbers interviewed were small compared to the number of UK learned societies, the broad trends and responses can be used to comment generally on the impacts being seen within this segment of the publishing ecosystem.
The responses we received are unexpectedly consistent given the broad range of voices they represent, but perhaps more interestingly the societies are currently less driven by the chal- lenges of addressing open access (OA) than we might expect especially in a post-COVID19 era where the 'big five' publishers are driving forward OA at an accelerated rate.
The transition to OA publishing has apparently accelerated (Michael & Pollock, 2021) under the influence of the higher priority afforded to it by many research funders (cOAlition S, 2022a).
The growth of preprints has also continued (Brierley, 2021) rapidly during the last 18 months and the peer review of COVID 19 articles has been complicated (Hurst & Greaves, 2021). Although interviewees share concern about the viability of their publishing enterprises during the transition of business models, they expressed no desire to 'shake up' existing relationships with their big corporate publishers. In fact, the societies stressed their reliance on them to steer them through the change they are experiencing. As discussed below in more detail there was a significant lack of desire to engage directly with cOAlition S. We believe this is a strong signal that Plan S will likely continue to consolidate the market power of large commercial publishers, perhaps counter to the original desire to disrupt academic publishing expressed upon the announcement of Plan S by many OA advocates and those who state they are against the perceived control of scholarly communications by a limited number of large commercial publishers.
In addition, each society, regardless of their field, age or size, had a clear focus on continuing to evolve their mission to the needs of their academic communities as the worlds of research, education and work change, partly as a result of the pandemic.
Issues around premises were more pressing and significant for societies going forward than any publishing industry changes.

STUDY AND FINDINGS
Following the COVID pandemic, we contacted about 30 UK based societies to understand their priorities going forward and to investigate the impact of COVID, Brexit and OA-and whether this had shifted since the pandemic. We held virtual interviews with 10 UK society Chief Executives and had email conversations with another 4. They represented societies (old and new) and across the breadth of STEM subjects but were primarily focussed in the life sciences. The interviews all took place between Spring and Autumn 2021. The significant majority over 75% published their journals via a corporate publisher. However, their answers were remarkably similar.

Focus on mission and purpose
Overall, our interviewees were extremely consistent in their belief that their societies' missions remain appropriate and relevant. These missions find articulation in the charitable objectives and visions/mission statements of the Societies; they invariably articulate that the purpose of the organizations is to support academics within the relevant subject area or academic field, and the dissemination of knowledge.
Societies' rarely refer to their publishing enterprise or their premises directly in their missions or statements of purpose. However, in some cases the society acknowledged that the organization has become over time synonymous with the publishing operation or iconic building, often partly because the revenue generated by the journal or events in the building subsidize and sustain all of the activity of the society. Whether the society sees the dissemination of knowledge as their mission or merely an expression of their mission will affect long-term publishing decisions, especially if there is less revenue. Several interviewees also express their importance of the public to their missions-ensuring the public are aware of the relevance of the Societies' discipline, or communicating important or cutting edge research beyond the society itself.

Open access and Plan S
These concerns ranked more highly with interviewees than the growth of OA or requirements of Plan S with almost all interviewees, albeit with differing priorities depending upon individual Societies' circumstances. There is substantial variation in the conceptualisation of value created for members between different societies around how each society delivers value for members and drives interest and engagement in their organization.
And although, as mentioned above, we discussed the impact of OA with all interviewees, it was not the highest priority for any of them.
However, it is worth noting that all the interviewees understood the worth in increasing OA and the merits behind it, often connecting it to their societies' missions to communicate research.
As mentioned above societies believe their very existence is to support the dissemination and reach of the academic research their members, and others in their research community, publish. In the past, this was usually provided through the launch of journals, which under subscription models have been hugely successful for all the societies we spoke to. Journals make up between 30% and 70% of the revenue of the societies we surveyed, which allows them to support other activities across their society; this is a huge amount of revenue from one single activity which is driving society missions in a much broader context than research publishing. OA as a movement aligns perfectly with the traditional academic society missions to support the distribution of academic research, so one might expect societies to be fully embracing the move to OA as it increases readership. However, this is not the case from the interviews we conducted. All the interviewed societies agreed that the OA movement aligns with their mission as an organization but all are concerned about the financial impact this transition will have on the society.

Commercial prospects and impact on revenue
Our interviewees felt OA had helped commercial publishers diversify income and drive growth. Many do not see, or perhaps have not yet been introduced to, the opportunities of journal expansion without printed page budget constraints or the ease in which they could launch new titles. There was also caution about diluting the society mission through more journal publications or increasing volume so the financial opportunities many have found from OA could be harder for societies to realize. The message communicated to them by commercial publishing partners has been to expect reduced income over the next 3-5 years.
To help mitigate against that expected reduction in revenue, societies may need to look at diversifying their OA offerings to help minimize the impact-for example Transformative Agreements and Subscribe to Open-could become more important in the society market than a straight switch to charging Article Processing Charges. The group we spoke with had a range of experience of OA publishing with some of the smaller societies keen to perhaps embrace diamond OA publishing (the Diamond OA model has proven popular with some societies who have small publishing portfolios or are launching new journals, but has yet to be embraced for societies with larger publishing portfolios; Bosman et al., 2021) but have no current idea how to create a sustainable business model from this strategy. Some mentioned initiatives such as CAP from PLOS and Read and Publish deals used by many big publishing houses, but without having fully examined these in the context of their own society.
And finally due to the high level of engagement with publishers on Plan S (cOiAlition S, 2022b; Estelle et al., 2021) it was surprising that most of these smaller societies have not publicly commented on Plan S or OA, nor have those we interviewed been directly asked for their opinions. Only one society we spoke to had a publicly stated position on OA as related to PlanS. are not as driven to implement this change as we expected and would rather be guided on this by their publisher partners. The long-term impact of a dramatic shift in revenue income driven by COVID-19 on learned societies is hard to predict but it is clear this will include changes in how they physically operate from their historical buildings, the services they provide to their members, how they increase that membership on a global basis and how they increase revenue whilst embracing OA. The time since each society was launched ranges from 25-over 100 years, but it is clear their aim to serve their members and increase the dissemination and reach of science to all remains at the centre of what they are all aiming to do-with decisions made on revenue and policy embracing those challenges but all with the aim of a lasting legacy for the next 100 years.

CONCLUSIONS
In summary, these UK learned societies seem to be focused on their long established missions to support their researches and continue their financial viability, and whilst aware of OA, and potentially concerned by the impact it may have on their finances, they are relatively happy to delegate the transition of publishing businesses to their existing publishing partners. Their focus, collectively, remains as it was when each society was establishedserving their community, disseminating research and ensuring financial viability.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Sarah Greaves and Jon Treadway jointly conceived the project, conducted the research, developed the methodology, and wrote the article.