It’s the dream of every journal to grow, and knowing how to scale growth is crucial. There are many different metrics that you can use to calculate “growth”. What metric (or metrics) you use depends on a number of different factors, but might include things like “number of publications”, “how many employees you have”, or “citations”.
There is no single path to growth, but there are always a few factors that are critically important to the survival of your company. Income, for example, is what makes everything else possible. From paying your staff to managing your overhead, your company needs money.
Now, because all companies (and your journal is no exception) have many moving parts, making sure that you can scale your growth effectively will help to prevent headaches (or disasters) down the road.
Why do you need to scale?
First, let’s quickly explain what scalability means. To be able to scale means that the systems of your company can adjust to more work. “Work” in this context just means the tasks that need to be completed.
Here’s an example. Suppose that a single employee can process 10 manuscripts a week. You have four employees, meaning that you have a theoretical capacity of 40 manuscripts that you can take care of in a week. Now, supposing that you are currently processing 37 manuscripts, you only have a buffer of three manuscripts. If you got four manuscripts or more, you can no longer comfortably take care of them.
In these cases, employees might need to start cutting corners or sacrificing other tasks to be able to take care of the increased workload. Or, you need to be paying overtime (and have employees who are willing to work it).
Keep records
While it might go without saying, but keeping accurate and comprehensive records is critical. From the time that you start your journal, you need to be aware of what your growth looks like. Knowing this information allows you to estimate and plan ahead.
If you know that, on average, you are growing 10% monthly like clockwork, that might mean only an extra or two manuscripts a month at the beginning. But a bit further down the line, this kind of growth might mean that you need to be growing your staff by ten to fifteen employees every month. And it only goes up from there.
Keeping accurate records helps you to understand how you need to scale your journal’s growth going forward.
How should your records dictate your future scaling?
Truthfully, this can be a bit challenging. All companies can make projections based on what they “hope” for, but that isn’t the same as what the numbers say.
Making sure that your expectations are realistic is critical. So, make sure that whenever you are establishing your future targets, that these are based on previous data. Making sure that you have experts (or by comparing your potential growth to other similar journals) can help.
Preparing to scale your company
One of the best things that you can do to ensure that your company can scale effectively is to start with a plan at the beginning. This means to be aware of what parts of your process can be automated and easily adjusted to allow for greater volumes. For example, English editing is difficult to scale properly because you require English language experts who may (or may not) require training and guidance. The submission process, on the other hand, is a very easily scalable process.
Knowing which elements of your business can be scaled in advance will help you to smoothly transition from a small, to a medium, to a large business without having growing pains that can put your business at risk.
The risks of not scaling properly
When it comes to scaling your journal, there are a lot of reasons that you want to make sure that you plan for it. For example, you don’t want your publication processes to be delayed. Delays in publishing can result in unhappy authors, confusion among staff, and a hit to your reputation. It’s critical that you ensure that your company is always putting the quality and customers first. This is why it can be a great idea to ensure that your tools are scalable. While some tools and ideas work in cases where you have only a few staff members, when you scale those processes up to 10x or 100x what you’re currently doing, are they still sustainable?
Tracking your editors in an Excel spreadsheet works when you have five editors, but not when you have 400. Remember that scaling can cause all sorts of problems down the line, so it’s important to make sure that you are planning for the future.
Remember that one of the most powerful tools that you have at your disposal is planning ahead. After that, the best thing to do is to find the right tools for the right job.