From campaigns to community

PARTNER CASE STUDY: How CSIRO Publishing is building researcher engagement in China

From KGL Accucoms

China represents a significant opportunity for scholarly publishers, but successfully reaching and engaging researchers requires more than translating existing campaigns or issuing regular calls for papers.

CSIRO Publishing, working with KGL Accucoms, has been developing a more joined-up approach to author marketing in China, moving from individual campaigns towards an ongoing programme that combines research, targeted audiences, useful content, local channels and researcher relationships.

At the heart of the approach is a shift from marketing to researchers to building relationships and creating meaningful campaigns with the research community.

The challenge: reaching the right researchers

CSIRO Publishing wanted to increase its visibility and engagement with relevant researchers in China and, ultimately, encourage more relevant submissions to its journals.

But experience shows that increasing the volume of marketing activity alone is unlikely to achieve a significant growth in new manuscripts.

The challenge was understanding which research communities CSIRO Publishing needed to reach, what matters to Chinese researchers when they are deciding where to publish, and how the publisher could build visibility and engagement in a way that was relevant to the local market.

This meant looking beyond short-term campaign metrics and large contact lists. The aim was to identify researchers whose work was genuinely relevant to CSIRO Publishing’s journals, understand what those researchers needed from a publisher and start building an ongoing relationship with them.

Building a connected author-marketing programme

Before running any campaigns, KGL Accucoms carried out detailed research into CSIRO Publishing’s existing position in China and Hong Kong. This included analysing five years of Chinese submissions, individual journal performance, universities producing relevant research, competitor activity and how researchers were using WeChat.

A second phase of research used feedback from editors and a “Jobs to Be Done” framework to understand what researchers were really looking for when choosing a journal.

The research showed that choosing where to publish involves much more than finding a journal with the right subject coverage. Researchers want international recognition, good communication, a clear submission process, faster decisions and a journal that feels relevant to their work.

These insights were used to develop individual positioning and messaging for five CSIRO journals, researcher personas, priority universities and regions, and a programme designed to build awareness, engagement and ultimately submissions.

Building a qualified researcher audience

One of the first priorities was to build an audience CSIRO Publishing could continue to communicate with.

Rather than creating one large general database, researchers were identified according to the subject areas covered by each journal and organised by journal, research area, university or research institution and subject.

By this summer, the database had grown significantly across the five main journal areas.

The focus has been on qualified leads giving CSIRO Publishing a growing audience of researchers whose work is relevant to its journals and who can be engaged through email campaigns, content, events, webinars and future submission activity.

Creating content researchers want to engage with

The next question was what to say to that audience.

Instead of relying on emails inviting authors to “publish with this journal”, papers, topics and themes from the journals are turned into more accessible research stories covering areas including plant biology, crops, soil science, animal production and reproduction.

Email provides a way to communicate directly with journal-specific audiences, while WeChat has become an important channel for building visibility and engagement in China.

Content has included research stories, practical writing and publishing advice, researcher testimonials and success stories, editor advice and information about what journals are looking for.

Increasingly, researchers and editors themselves are becoming part of the content and the community is building.

Chinese authors who have already published in CSIRO journals provide examples of researchers from Chinese institutions successfully publishing relevant work with CSIRO. Editors can answer the questions many potential authors ask: What is the journal looking for? Is my research a good fit? What makes a strong manuscript? Why are papers rejected? How should I respond to reviewers?

The emphasis shifts from asking researchers for submissions to giving them information they can genuinely use.

Learning and adapting

Reporting is being used to decide what happens next, rather than simply recording what happened in the previous month.

Email and WeChat data helps the team understand which journals and subjects are attracting interest, what type of content encourages researchers to engage, who the audience is and where opportunities are developing.

That insight can then shape the next activity. If readers are dropping off on longer WeChat content, for example, the next content can be shorter. If researchers respond particularly well to editor advice, more editors can be brought into future campaigns.

It means the programme can adapt as the team learns more about its audience, rather than working through a series of standalone campaigns planned out a year in advance.

From campaigns to researcher relationships

One of the most interesting developments has been seeing individual campaigns start to turn into relationships.

We are also seeing examples of initial engagement developing into much stronger researcher relationships.

What began as content around one researcher’s work developed into a researcher testimonial and then into conversations about taking part in a webinar with CSIRO Publishing.

There is much more value in developing that relationship than featuring an author once and moving on to the next campaign. Researchers who engage with the programme can potentially become contributors, speakers and advocates and develop a closer relationship with the CSIRO Publishing community.

The benefit works both ways. Researchers gain additional visibility for their work and opportunities to share their knowledge, while CSIRO Publishing develops relationships with respected researchers who understand its journals and can help it engage with wider research communities.

Reach matters, but so does what happens after a researcher has been reached.

Building reach and engagement

The programme is starting to deliver results.

Alongside the database of qualified researchers, WeChat data is providing a much clearer picture of the audience CSIRO Publishing is reaching. Some 33.6% of the audience is aged 36–45 and a further 35.7% is aged 46+, with Beijing and Shandong among the strongest locations.

This suggests the programme is reaching a significant number of established researchers – people who are likely to publish regularly, lead research teams, supervise students and influence where research is submitted.

Traffic to CSIRO journal content from China has also grown significantly. While it isn’t possible to attribute all of that increase directly to individual marketing campaigns, there are areas where the impact of the wider activity can be tracked.

A significant part of the increase in June, for example, came through a relationship KGL Accucoms developed with the National Agricultural Library. The library promoted CSIRO through its official WeChat account, introducing the content to a much larger Chinese research audience.

The relationship itself is just as interesting as the increase in traffic. Connections with established institutions and research communities can give publishers access to audiences that would be extremely difficult to reach through their own channels.

The combination of audience insight, increased content engagement and developing researcher and institutional relationships gives CSIRO Publishing a strong base to build on.

The CSIRO Publishing perspective

Amanda Rice, Head of Sales and Marketing, CSIRO Publishing, said: “What has worked particularly well is the collaborative approach. The team at KGL Accucoms took the time to really understand what we wanted to achieve in China, and then used their local knowledge and expertise to help us develop the right approach.

“The research and insight behind the programme have been incredibly valuable, but so has the ability to learn from the results and adapt the activity as we go. We’re already seeing stronger engagement and new relationships developing with researchers and institutions, which gives us a great foundation to build on. We are delighted with the results and look forward to seeing what comes next!” 

What’s next?

The next stage is about building on the work already done and taking those relationships further.

A planned webinar involving Dr Chen will combine practical publishing advice, CSIRO Publishing expertise and a live researcher Q&A. It will also create content that can continue to be used afterwards through WeChat, email, short video clips, researcher FAQs and follow-up campaigns.

There are further opportunities to develop relationships with researchers, editors, universities and institutions, with each activity feeding into the next.

It is a joined-up approach: research identifies the audience; the database provides a way to reach them; researchers and editors provide authentic content; email and WeChat provide distribution; reporting shows what is working; and stronger relationships create new opportunities for webinars, partnerships and, ultimately, more relevant submissions.

Why local knowledge matters

Operating successfully in China can be difficult for international scholarly publishers. The channels, researcher behaviours, institutional landscape and ways of building relationships are different, and activity that works in other markets cannot simply be replicated.

KGL Accucoms’ global team includes expertise on the ground in China, combining local market knowledge with wider international publishing expertise. Support can span the market, from sales and institutional relationships through to author marketing and researcher engagement.

Pulvi Popat, Associate Marketing Director, KGL Accucoms, said: “Successful author marketing in China starts with understanding the market and the researchers you want to reach. Having a team on the ground means we can combine that local knowledge with our wider experience of scholarly publishing, but just as importantly, we can listen to what the client wants to achieve and build the programme around that.

“The CSIRO work shows what can happen when research, content, data and relationships are all working together – and when you keep learning and adapting as the programme develops.” 

For CSIRO Publishing, that local knowledge has helped bring the different elements together. The result is an approach designed to build an audience, understand what researchers respond to and develop relationships that can grow over time.