The Association continues to collect and disseminate essential information on our sector of the scholarly communications industry, producing both regular statistical reports and topical surveys. Through the past year these have included:
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- Annual University Press Operating Statistics
- Quarterly Sales and Returns Surveys
- Special Pandemic Monthly Sales Reports
- Open Access Task Force Survey 2021 Follow-up
- Biennial Compensation Survey
- Marketing Committee Survey on Social Media Practices
The Association also contracted with the researchers responsible for the 2019 Lee & Low Diversity Baseline Survey analysis to break out the university press-specific demographic data.
The Open Access (OA) Task Force had just closed a community survey of OA practice and perspective as the coronavirus pandemic took global hold in 2020. A summary of results is available to members in the interim report prepared by the Task Force last June. As the pandemic swiftly shifted publishers daily work practice and the access needs of researchers and students, the Task Force decided that a follow-up survey one year later would be advisable. That survey was open in the early months of 2021, and will influence the Task Force’s final report. Aggregate and anonymized results from this 2021 survey will be made public as part of open communication of that report.
From April through August of 2020, the Association undertook monthly sales data gathering to get a real-time sense of how early lock-downs were affecting members’ businesses.
The Biennial Compensation Survey was conducted on its usual schedule, and the report of compensation as of October 1, 2020, will be published in Spring 2021. To better serve a wider range of member presses, and to support efforts to create more equitable workplaces, several changes have been made to the Compensation Survey program. First, the (binary) gender pay analysis that was first commissioned for the Gender Equity and Cultures of Respect Task Force in 2018 will continue as a new section of the Compensation Survey analysis. Second, the statistical researcher was commissioned to undertake more research into the impact of location on salaries, using US Census and Brookings Institution tools to examine how regional price differences affects the purchasing power of salary dollars. Finally, going forward, the Compensation Survey will again be distributed to all member directors for reference in internal compensation analysis. For the past two decades or so, this survey has only been fully available to presses that contributed data to the work.
The Marketing Committee’s data collection work will help shape new and revised sections of the Marketing Handbook.