Frankfurt Week: Wiley Opens Its ‘Partner Solutions’ Division

In Feature Articles by Porter Anderson

Two days before Frankfurter Buchmesse opens, Wiley Partners Solution is announced, a new division in research.

Jay Flynn, Wiley executive vice-president and general manager for research. Image: Wiley

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

Flynn: ‘Scholarly Publishing Needs at Scale’
As international trade visitors and exhibitors make their way to Germany today (October 17) for the Wednesday opening of the 74th Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 19 to 23), Wiley has announced the creation of Wiley Partner Solutions. Wiley at Frankfurt is at Hall 4.2, G13.

Created as a new division in Wiley’s research business, the venture stands under the purview of Jay Flynn, the Wiley executive vice-president who leads the company’s research. Senior vice-president Guido F. Herrmann, who is based in Germany, will lead the division’s international operations.

In its media messaging for today’s announcement, Wiley’s offices in Frankfurt say, “Wiley Partner Solutions delivers a broad array of digital platforms, publishing solutions, and services to help partners scale, collaborate, and accelerate their publishing programs, while at the same time supporting the value chain of scholarly publishing.”

Currently, customers of the division include “society publishers,” as they’re called, based in various academic and scholarly disciplines—the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; and the Association for Computing Machinery—as well as academic institutions and international corporations in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, and in life sciences.

In a statement for today’s announcement, Flynn is quoted, saying that Wiley has more than 900 partnerships with society publishers.”We have the expertise, knowledge, and global network to deliver on scholarly publishing needs at scale.

“Through organic growth and acquisitions,” he says, “we have assembled a dream-team of leaders and solutions to solve the big problems facing the academic publishing ecosystem.”

Herrmann: ‘Stages of the Academic Publishing Process’

Herrmann, in his prepared statement, says, “The transition to open access is the driving force in research publishing today.

Guido F. Herrmann

“All stakeholders in the research ecosystem play an important role in ensuring that findings are widely accessible to better support researchers and to enable solutions to real-world problems.

“This new offering further showcases Wiley’s expertise as a partner to societies, reinforces our commitment to innovation, and advances a shared goal among the industry to make peer-reviewed research more broadly available.”

In further promotional copy about its new Wiley Partner Solutions division, we read, “The range of offerings address all stages of the academic publishing process from manuscript submission through publication and beyond.

“Among the solutions available are those that drive and improve author submissions; scale high-quality editorial and production services; provide peer review; grow engagement; diversify revenue; offer career center services; manage open-access payments; and enable connections between researchers and the organizations that serve them.”

Wiley now talks of Knowledge Unlatched’s Oable workflow management tool as part of Wiley Partner Solutions, and lists it as a success from the division, “connecting libraries, authors, and publishers to a fast-growing number of institutions.”

What’s more, the company says in its media messaging that Wiley and the International League Against Epilepsy recently opened a “Wiley Epilepsy Knowledge Hub,” aggregating “the latest research and guidelines to aid in diagnosis, classification, and treatment for people with epilepsy syndromes.

Knowledge Unlatched—which is led, of course, as Publishing Perspectives readers know, by Sven Fund—is one of the companies Wiley has acquired, now gathered under the Partner Solutions banner. Other such acquired companies are Atypon; Inera; J&J Editorial; and Madgex.

In public filings and financial statements, the new division is expected to be reported separately from its research-publishing business, appearing as “Research Solutions” or “Research Partner Solutions.”

In the Agora at Messe Frankfurt, 2011. Image: FBM Alexander Heimann


At Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 19 to 23), find Wiley’s stand at Hall 4.2, G13

Join us on October 19 at 3 p.m. in the Publishing Perspectives Forum for “How the Article-Based Economy Is Transforming Research Publishing.” Curated and moderated by Sven Fund, senior director with Knowledge Unlatched, the discussion features:

  • Tobias Kuhn, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands
  • Liz Ferguson, senior vice-president, Research Publishing, Wiley, the United States
  • Philipp Hess, head of publisher relations, ResearchGate,  Germany
  • Dr. Olaf Ernst, chief solutions officer, Oable, Germany
  • Dr. Irina Sens, head of library operations, TIB Hannover, Germany
  • Moderator: Sven Fund, senior director, Knowledge Unlatched, Germany

This session’s description: Academic publishing is changing significantly as its operating system moves away from big deals and more towards the new realities of an article-based economy.

While a major driver of this change is open access, the impact is being felt far beyond just a shift in access to content. New players are entering the field, new ways of working are evolving, patterns in searching and discovering content are changing, and new intermediaries are emerging to support the changing requirements.

The panel will look at the evolving landscape of scholarly publishing from the perspective of all relevant stakeholder groups.

And that session is just one of two days of special B2B programming featuring leading and influential professionals in the international publishing industry discussing today’s challenges, dynamics, and trends.

Attendance is free of charge for all Frankfurter Buchmesse exhibitors and trade visitors. The program language is English. You’ll find full details and developing news here

More from Publishing Perspectives on academic and scholarly publishing is here, more from us on Wiley is here, and more from us on industry statistics is here.

More from us on the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on international book publishing is here.

About the Author

Porter Anderson

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Porter Anderson is a non-resident fellow of Trends Research & Advisory, and he has been named International Trade Press Journalist of the Year in London Book Fair's International Excellence Awards. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives. He formerly was Associate Editor for The FutureBook at London's The Bookseller. Anderson was for more than a decade a senior producer and anchor with CNN.com, CNN International, and CNN USA. As an arts critic (Fellow, National Critics Institute), he was with The Village Voice, the Dallas Times Herald, and the Tampa Tribune, now the Tampa Bay Times. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman.