“Unparalleled research quality”: An interview with Tanya Laplante, Head of Product Platforms

As part of our Publishing 101 blog series, we are interviewing “hidden” figures at Oxford University Press: colleagues who our authors would not typically work with but who make a crucial contribution to the success of their books.

Tanya explains how, as research behaviours have changed, we use digital platforms to ensure that our authors’ books reach readers worldwide.

What is your role at OUP?

I am Head of Product Platforms in the Academic Division of Oxford University Press. I oversee the strategic development for the platforms, such as Oxford Academic, that host our book and journal products and services.

What is the difference between the product and editorial departments at OUP?

While editorial focuses on individual works like books and journals, product is responsible for the overall success and health of OUP’s digital portfolio. Many departments contribute to our digital products and oversee various aspects of product creation and maintenance that are central to success: editorial, sales, marketing, data strategy, content operations, royalties, etc. Product’s role is to ensure that all of those aspects are working together in as seamless a way as possible to deliver high-quality, author-driven products to the people that read our content, namely researchers.

How did Oxford Academic become our home for academic books?

Research behaviours have changed over the past two decades, as we have steadily seen sales shift away from print towards online. Oxford Academic allows us to better connect the online version of our books into a wider aggregated library of content that is easily found on search engines like Google, which can dramatically enhance the reach and impact of our authors’ work. Digital dissemination allows us to put scholarship into the hands of researchers and learners worldwide who might never have access to a library print copy. 

Oxford Academic came out of a desire within the Press to create a single gateway into Academic’s content to streamline the research journeys of those searching for content in our books and journals. It launched with journals in 2017, with research books following in 2022. Digital-first publishing is a priority for OUP as it increases the discoverability and accessibility of our research, thereby magnifying its reach and impact for our authors.

What opportunities does Oxford Academic offer our authors?

Oxford Academic offers authors a modern, mobile-friendly, accessible, search engine optimized platform upon which to publish research. In practice, this means that it’s easier for researchers to find our authors’ work online. With journals and books on the same platform, reader journeys across the two formats are not only possible but can be informed by AI-driven recommendation widgets, so readers are recommended other relevant research.

Some of the key benefits for readers include being able to:

• Quickly find books, journals, and images by building powerful searches, or using our robust links to related content  
• Access content from their preferred device, and experience a modern platform with updated features and functionality  
• Understand research quickly with our graphical or video abstracts, non-textual outputs such as images, multimedia, data, and code, and text shown with tables or images side-by-side

Our Insight Working Group is constantly reviewing reader behaviors to recommend development that will drive the use of our books and journals content and, consequently, the impact of authors’ research.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

I enjoy working across departments with various stakeholders to find innovative platform solutions for customers, readers, and authors. It can be a challenge to narrow down the areas of the platform that we should invest in. But I, and the stakeholders I work with, have developed a great deal of expertise that informs where investment is best placed. We want to invest in areas that will have the greatest impact for the greatest number of people that use platforms such as Oxford Academic, including authors, customers, and society partners.

How do you see the digital publishing landscape evolving over the next few years?

New publishing models (Open Access) and technological changes (AI) are both impacting scholarly publishing. With the expansion of Open Access and a changing funder landscape, OUP needs to demonstrate the value of what we, as a non-profit publisher, bring to the research ecosystem. We need to better educate funders, authors, and customers about the critical role we play in the publishing process: overseeing peer review, managing distribution, application of metadata, maximizing discoverability on digital platforms, and more.

In terms of AI and other technological changes, we need to optimize the benefits while minimizing the risks. We are entering a period of great change in digital publication, from review to submission to publication and discoverability. The quality of the research we publish on behalf of authors is unparalleled. We need to harness that quality and use AI as a way to enrich the user experience and increase discoverability of the content, while ensuring we are still driving users to a trusted version of record on OUP’s platforms.

In both of these spaces, we will also need to consider unique services and capabilities we can provide for key stakeholders in this space, including authors, customers, and society partners. What can OUP bring to the table to make their role in the publication process a more seamless one?

_{Feature image by Marius Masalar, via Unsplash.}