Caitlin MeadowsThe Charlesworth Group

caitlin.meadows@charlesworth-group.com

Summary of main Chinese academic institutions; consortia; and some recent changes (CALIS > DRAA)

Strategy – your China Footprint

Current and future trends; mapping your strategy against them

Top 10 countries submitting manuscripts

38% non-native English countries5% China, 42% USA, 10% UK

63% non-native English countries32% China, 21% USA, 6% UKSource: Thomson

Reuters

$China Academic

Library & Information System, Now DRAA; CASHL

NSTL National Science & Technology Library

Print Acquisition Online Content Acquisition

China

$ $

CAS, Chinese

Academy of Science,

Research

centers

Import Agents (Govt approved)

Increase since WTO,

CNPIEC (Beijing Book Co)

70% market share100k titles imported,

CEPIEC25+ smaller agents

University libraries

$ $ $Corporate sales/MNCs

Membership, Individual subs

Smaller local consortia &

Gvmt agencies

NSTL, National Science & Technology Library Centrally funded to purchase content, MoST 600+ members, 1 licence for all to access Virtual organisation, 9 members: CAS, CAMS, CAAS, ISTIC Have local hosting archive requirements Recent focus local hosted legacy content

CALIS/DRAA, China Academic Library & Information Systems,

Digital Resource Acquisition Alliance of Chinese Academic Libraries

Centrally administered, but not centrally funded, MoE 600 member institutions, each has to fund purchase themselves Deep discount requests on site licence price, lengthy central

negotiation of contract Prefer to do deals with larger publishers Recent change in structure Restrictions if content already sold in secondary aggregations

NSTL

DRAA

National Science & Technology Libraries, National Library of China, Beijing University Library, and National Science Library of CAS…Issued a joint statement to international publishers to protest the planned unreasonable price increases by a few international journal publishers, and to announce joint actions in negotiation with those publishers to keep down the price inflation rate.

http://www.las.ac.cn/subpage/Information_Content.jsp?InformationID=5372

Look at the geographical bias...

1 Peking University2 Tsinghua University3 Fudan University4 Zhejiang University5 Nanjing University6 Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ7 Wuhan Univ8 Renmin Uni of China9 Jilin Univ10 Sichuan Univ

Source: Chinese University Alumni Association 2009 (slides prepared by Adrian Stanley

What are your primary goals?

Subscriptions (direct, consortia) Society members Corporate sales Submissions Networking

Your impact on and with China Sales (market analysis, gap) Online usage (including OA content,

analytics) Local editorial board members (active) Chinese Authors/co-authors Attending/organising local meetings Local language material/website Local staff, contacts and partners Your educational outreach (systems/training) How you are viewed in China/reputation Business development opportunities/ranking

More focus on direct institutional subscriptions

Assess market gaps; arrange online trials; can take longer, but good approach for publishers with mature subscription profile

Corporate sales: key opportunities in pharmaceutical sectors and energy (petro-chem). (Western pharma products = c. 50% of the market.)

Appetite for economics and education increasing

More online site licences and regional consortia sales NB geographical provenance in your subject coverage

Decline in print acquisition, but still opportunities among ‘second tier’ institutions Low-cost print deals

Appetite for legacy content

Emphasis on filling gaps in content portfolio, and acquiring new content streams: databases and books/ebook collections

DRAA, CASHL, CAS, as well as NSTL

Inter-regional Ebook Consortium (4000+ books via MyiLibrary)

Influence of metrics on subscription trends

Tailoring to China’s socio-political trends

Watch ereader/ebook trends

China has the largest number of mobile subscribers in the world

Ereaders are pricey, but... Shanda Literature Group’s ‘Bambook’ costs RMB999; Hanvon (70% market share) – launching in the US; Kindle; Founder

Popularity of Cloud Computing – Shanda’s ‘Cloud Bookstore’ has 3million titles

Smartphone usage and sales increasing rapidly as China becomes more consumer/consumption-driven

Still issues of formats and content predominantly Chinese/general literature

Opportunity for partnership and collaboration with Chinese publishers

Number of English-language publications in China relatively low, but publishers want to gain international profile through distribution and hosting channels that access the West

Co-publication; local language editions (sponsored or self-funded)

Collaborate/form publisher-consortia with other similar publishers

Technical: internet access speed can be an issue: consider mirror servers/CERNET. Social media tools for marketing and searching differ in China (Baidu, micro-blog )

Linguistic: In some subject areas, English still does not predominate so English-language content is still less attractive; ease of doing business requires Chinese interface

Academic: Some elements of multidisciplinary research still novel; emphasis on Impact Factor

Social: ‘China will get old before it gets rich’. (By 2015 the number of people entering the workforce will be dramatically lower than the number of people retiring at the age of 60 that same year.) [Source: US Department of Commerce]

Intellectual: IPR contraventions and piracy still an issue but changing

China’s top universities could soon rival Oxford, Cambridge and the Ivy League, the president of Yale University has warned.

Professor Richard Levin... said Chinese institutions would rank in the world's top 10 universities in 25 years' time, squeezing out some of the west's elite campuses... At the moment, British universities dominate the top 10 rankings... The rest of the top 15 are US universities. China's highest-ranking institution is Tsinghua, at 49.

But the Chinese government now spends billions of yuan – at least 1.5% of its gross domestic product – on higher education with the aim of propelling its best institutions, such as the universities of Tsinghua and Peking, into the top slots, Levin said."In 25 years, only a generation's time, these universities could rival the Ivy League," said Levin.

China has more than doubled the number of its higher education institutions in the last decade from 1,022 to 2,263. More than 5 million Chinese students enrol on degree courses now, compared to 1 million in 1997.

Source: guardian.co.uk (2 February 2010)

Consider your China Footprint

Be patient: deals can take time to secure, and rely as much on ‘guanxi’ – business rapport – as the commercial detail

Consider who can help you increase your Footprint (agents; editors; corporates)

Please contact me:

Caitlin Meadowscaitlin.meadows@charlesworth-group.com

Thank you!