Are publishers failing as a service industry?

Publishers (from my experience) are comfortable being part of the knowledge economy and feel pivotal to the wide dissemination and reuse of scholarly content; however, the idea of being part of a service economy perhaps sits rather less comfortably and I suspect we are not (yet) very good at it. The past 20 years have seen a move away from producing physical objects and towards delivering information validation and access, but I am not sure that we have completely understood the ‘customer service’ aspects of what we are now expected to do. ResearchGate has become a ubiquitous part of the knowledge economy, and succeeds partly because (alongside a relatively simplistic offering) it takes great care to flatter the ego of the participants: ‘Pippa you have 1 more citation’ a recent e-mail told me (although I couldn’t find it when I hurried to the site to gloat). A few weeks before that it told me there was a job that matched my profile (sadly, it didn’t); and just before that it asked me if I could verify the identity of an author. It is all clever stuff; both flattering my ego by apparently believing I am able to answer other people’s questions (the Q&A section) and asking my advice (to verify author identities). It congratulates me when other people think my work worthy of citation (flattery, all is flattery), intrigues me by reporting when others answer questions I have already responded to (thus sucking me back to the site), plus it checks it has all my publications neatly listed (like a well behaved PA). In his article, ResearchGate: Reputation uncovered, David Nicholas (2016) suggests that the site leads in researcher engagement (albeit in a sometimes irritatingly frequent manner), and that there are lessons for publishers to learn. The caricature of publishers as monolithic organizations sucking the research lifeblood out of unsuspecting authors and packaging it for their own commercial gain without rewarding them is wrong in so many ways, and yet is often the default position for those looking to unbundle knowledge dissemination and commercial publishing. Perhaps publishers have left themselves open to accusations because of lack of attention to customer service – and I say this advisedly. Authors are mentioned numerous times in the list of ‘96 things publishers do’ on the Scholarly Kitchen blog (Anderson, 2016) – 52 times in case you are interested – but Anderson starts by saying ‘authors only experience a small part of the journal publishing process’ – which is rather my point. We, as publishers, provide a wealth of activities and services, and they are mostly welcome, but they service the needs of the researcher-authors rather than their desires. And good customer services should respond to these desires (preferably before the recipient is aware of them). This is evident in other areas of life. When I take my car to be serviced what makes me really happy is when they clean it. I don’t really care about the hundreds of things they do during the service because that is what I pay them to do, and I expect them to get it right. However, cleaning my car is an unexpected bonus: it gives me a warm glow and it makes me go back again. I’m not undermining the skill of the mechanics or the fact that they managed to keep my car going, and I am grateful to them for this – but it is the added (often unexpected – and usually ‘free’) extras that delight me. Conversely, when I go to the doctor, as much as I am in awe of his skills and knowledge I still find the experience frustrating (sitting in that room with all those sick people, having to wait, nasty plastic chairs, difficult parking ...). Having said this, I know publishers have paid great attention to managing the ‘pain points’ in libraries, and library workshops are a regular feature of publisher outreach. Watching the airwaves, I am seeing fewer complaints about platform problems which is a good thing, but there are still problems and complaints aired on these platforms that reveal a sector of the ‘customers’ that remain unhappy with the ‘providers’ – although how many out of the total is hard to gauge. However, authors are harder to evaluate, since dealings with them are largely left to editorial offices and these are often outside the direct control of the publisher. And unlike librarians, there is no cohesive group to be monitored and responded to. From my own perspective I feel that whilst online systems (ScholarOne, Aries, BenchPress, etc.) have been invaluable in managing the peer review system more efficiently, they have also been detrimental in other respects. Their efficiency allows editors to ignore authors as people and to use standard e-mails rather than to respond directly. Here I