About AIP Publishing
AIP Publishing is a wholly owned not-for-profit subsidiary of the American Institute of Physics (AIP). AIP Publishing’s mission is to support the charitable, scientific and educational purposes of AIP through scholarly publishing activities in the fields of the physical and related sciences on its own behalf and on behalf of its publishing partners to help them proactively advance their missions.
The nonprofit manages a comprehensive portfolio of 33 physical science journals and conference proceedings. As an industry leader in initiatives to improve the publishing process and expand access to research, AIP Publishing is dedicated to helping its partners navigate the evolution of scholarly publishing.
AIP’s major focus helps connect its authors and readers to a living legacy of published science, to peers and institutions across the globe, and to services, tools, and platforms that expand the impact and reach of their work.
Situation
How AIP Publishing Connects Scholars and Researchers with Key Journals
As a leading not-for-profit scholarly publisher in the physical sciences, AIP Publishing’s most important audience segment is made up of authors, primarily scientists and academic researchers. The academic’s career arc is largely dependent on how often they publish and where the work gets seen and read by peers. Yes, there is some truth to the familiar dictum, publish or perish. Because AIP Publishing manages so many physical science journals, authors submit original research to it in hopes of having their work published.
The old site’s design was lackluster and required skilled technical support to update. Additionally, the site didn’t function properly on mobile devices, a major hindrance, since the organization’s audiences use smartphones and tablets to interact with the site.
Solution
A Simple Site Map and an Easy-to-Implement CMS
To help guide the website’s top audience groups — researchers and librarians — to their final destination quickly, we designed a flat information architecture. For instance, the navigation offers just three pathways: Resources, Publications and About. Under resources, there is a page for Researchers, Librarians, Publishing Partners and Commercial Partners.
“Now we use the site as a primary communication channel for our very important institutional audience,” says Sara. In fact, “it’s turned into a destination portal for our customers; a place where they can find information, tools and resources.”
The website was built using a custom design integrated into WordPress, an open-source CMS, which makes it easy for AIP Publishing to edit and maintain. Updating general information, as well as video, images, and links to content elsewhere on the web don’t require any coding skills and can be managed by anyone within the company. For example, “Our media team is now able to post press releases directly to the site,” says Sara.
Results
“Windmill Strategy was very responsive to work with; I was comfortable trusting them to guide us through the process!” — Sara Girard, Marketing and Communications Director
Now that anyone can edit AIP Publishing’s new website, there are no more bottlenecks within the organization’s content publishing processes. “We’ve eliminated the middlemen from our process,” says Sara. Additionally, the new site has improved how AIP Publishing is serving its number one audience — librarians. Everything the librarian needs is now organized in an easy-to-find place.
Their responsiveness is great. Our last IT consultant definitely worked on his own time, but Windmill isn’t like that. I only have to ask them once to do something, they get it done right away, and if they need more than one person working on it, they make it happen. I never have to worry about something slipping through the cracks. They’re very reliable.
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