Non-profits Navigating the Storm: How Non-APC Models are Becoming a Lifeline for Non-profit Publishing Sustainability

Although every year in the scholarly publishing ecosystem is a balancing act of innovation, optimization, and value creation, 2025 is shaping up to be particularly challenging as the pace and scale of change is accelerating more than we’ve ever seen before. There is increasing pressure to provide value to and to meet the incredibly diverse needs of the global research community while maintaining financial health for our own organizations, living our values, and continuing to protect the scholarly record. With AI, open access, integrity, and mistrust frequently dominating the conversation, we are in the midst of an unprecedented shift in both our industry and society as a whole. As always, the SSP community continues to focus on bringing together academics, funders, librarians, publishers, service providers, technologists, researchers and countless others with a communal interest and stake in disseminating scholarly information. We look to the 47th Annual Meeting as an opportunity to continue this tradition and welcome all colleagues and community stakeholders.

John Edwards is Head of Sales Operations at PLOS where he leads work on the strategic development of PLOS institutional business models and the operational infrastructure required to support their success. Prior to joining PLOS in 2023, John worked for Cambridge University Press, most recently achieving transition and growth for the organization’s open research business in the Americas.

Lauren Kane is CEO of BioOne, the innovative nonprofit collaborative and publisher for 150 societies, research organizations, and independent presses in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. With two decades of experience in scholarly communications, Kane previously held leadership roles at Delta Think and Morressier, and is a Past President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing. She is a frequent industry contributor and advocate for collective impact approaches. Kane holds a BA from Georgetown University and an MBA from the University of New Hampshire.

Sara Rouhi is the new Director of Open Science and Publishing Innovation, reporting to Chief Publishing Officer, Penelope Lewis. Rouhi is charged with developing new publishing models and sustainable business strategies to accelerate AIPP’s mission to advance open, equitable research communication and empower researchers to accelerate global progress. Sara joins AIP Publishing from Public Library of Science (PLOS) where she was Regional Director, Publishing Development, The Americas. In this role she focused on engaging with high-level stakeholders, including funders, policymakers, and institutional leaders in local scholarly communication ecosystems. Before this role she built up PLOS’ institutional business models and partnership base as Director of Strategic Partnerships, launching three new, non-APC business models (including the 2021 ALPSP Innovation in Publishing award winner, Community Action Publishing) and implemented over 200+ partnerships globally. Sara is active in the scholarly communications community as a volunteer and thought leader, speaking frequently on open access, equity in publishing, and diversity in scholarly communications. She is was Board Member for the Society of Scholarly Publishing (SSP) from 2022-204 and was the recipient of SSP’s Emerging Leader award in 2015. She is active in the Washington DC improv comedy scene with her troupe Sistine Robot and she tweets/bleets @RouhiRoo and @RouhiRoo.bsky.social.

Scott Delman has been working in the scholarly publishing industry for over 25 years and currently serves as the Director of Publications for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), where he has overall responsibility for editorial, content development, publications policy, rights & permissions, production, Digital Library sales & marketing, and publications strategy, including ACM’s longterm transition to Open Access. Prior to joining ACM, Scott served in a number of senior and executive level management positions at Springer and Kluwer, including Vice President for Publishing and Vice President for Electronic Publishing at Kluwer Academic Publishers and Vice President for Business Development at Springer before leaving and joining ACM in 2007. In addition to his current role at ACM, Scott is actively involved in the governance of a number of the scholarly publishing industry’s most innovative and impactful non-profits, including Crossref, where Scott serves as the organization's Treasurer and Member of the Board of Directors, CHORUS, where Scott serves as Treasurer and Member of the Board of Directors, arXiv, where Scott serves as a Member of the Member Advisory Board, and as a Member of the Portico Advisory Committee.