Publish or Perish? Interview with Jan Reichelt of Mendeley | Publishing Perspectives

"The publishing industry, in common with many other content-based industries such as music and news, faces a challenge of 'user engagement and technology disruption,' says Jan Reichelt, co-founder and president of Mendeley, the platform for managing and sharing research papers. 'The questions publishers should ask themselves for the future are how to create continuous engagement with their customers and consumers of their content; how to learn more about them in order to serve them better; and how to leverage technology to develop solutions and to build a relationship with their end-users, so customers don’t go away and get what they need somewhere else. He believes that content, in combination with technology, can create tremendous user engagement, and deliver outstanding value. 'Traditional publishing houses usually didn’t have a strong technology capability, but in the last few years some forward-thinking publishing companies have invested heavily in technology infrastructure and employee skills to become media and technology businesses.' He cites Elsevier among these, as well he might. The Dutch giant bought Mendeley for an estimated £45 million in April last year ... Long a fan of open access (OA), Reichelt believes that although OA’s popularity has grown steadily and substantially over recent years, 'it is still behind a little in terms of acceptance and reputation — and hence market share — in the very broad academic community. For early-career researchers in particular, it seems that well-known subscription-based journals are still the main way to build up a track record. Also, there are still many different ideas about business models for OA publishing, some already established – for example, article processing charges — but some less so, like membership fees. I’m very interested in following these developments. Elsevier has massively increased its focus on OA activities, and Mendeley has always been a strong supporter of the OA community, so we are certainly trying to help broaden the open approach in general and participate in these discussions.'  Mendeley now has deep pockets, thanks to Elsevier, and will use the money to build the team and release new product features. It wants to make researchers’ lives easier. 'Our community is very good about telling us which features they would like to see, so that is one area where the money goes. For example, we knew our community wanted Mendeley to be available on iOS and Android, so we’re busy to put that into action' ..."