ATG Interviews Karen Phillips Executive Vice President Learning and UK Executive Lead, Sage

By Leah Hinds (Executive Director, Charleston Hub) <leah@charlestonlibraryconference.com> and Tom Gilson (Associate Editor, Against the Grain) <gilsont@cofc.edu>

ATG: Can you tell us a little bit about your responsibilities as the Executive Vice President Learning and UK Executive Lead at Sage?

KS: I have quite a unique role in publishing and at Sage, which is hugely interesting, and combines working in relatively new and innovative areas of publishing alongside more of a cultural leadership role in the business:

• As EVP of Learning, I head up a division of the business responsible for developing and delivering a suite of Learning Resources that support student success and research excellence in higher education.

• As UK Executive Lead, I am the local lead in Sage’s UK office, responsible for supporting a vibrant, inclusive culture, and strong leadership and management.

ATG: Sage recently had several brand changes including refreshing your logo and dropping “publishing” from the company name. Why has Sage made these changes? Do they reflect a new corporate strategy?

KS: The rebranding reflects a really important moment in Sage’s history. In 2021, our founder Sara Miller McCune passed her shares of the company to an independent trust, guaranteeing our long-term independence and our ability to remain a mission driven company indefinitely. Our brand changes and messaging around it are to emphasize the difference that our independence makes to the type of publisher we can be.

As an independent company, we are free to think long term and develop products focused on the future needs of higher education rather than quick wins. We are free to do more in terms of publishing in new areas, areas that are progressive and have social impact. We are also free to work in partnership with our library partners, acknowledging shared long-term goals of a flourishing higher education system that enables excellent research and student outcomes.

Our brand changes better reflect all these core aspects of our independence. And, while we are very much a publisher, dropping “publishing” reflects the additional products and services that complement what we offer today, such as Technology from Sage, the portfolio of digital services that ease the teaching and research workflow

ATG: You have also reorganized and renamed some of your products and resources. Can you tell us more about that? How do these changes benefit your library customers? How do they benefit the end user?

KS: Over the last decade, we have developed a wide-ranging suite of learning resources previously called Digital Products. We have reorganized and renamed the suite Learning Resources, and renamed some of the products. These changes make the range of products within the suite as clear as possible, and enables us to describe more clearly what value our products offer. For example, all our business products come under the section named Sage Business — a section of our suite that now includes Business Cases, Business Skills, and Business Foundations.

With these changes, we’ve created a more seamless experience for librarians and their patrons. And we feel we can better convey how the tools we offer through the library can be used across teaching, learning, and research workflows.

ATG: And what about new products and resources? Can we expect any new additions to the current lineup?

KS: Yes, our plan is to keep building on our suite of learning resources. At this time of accelerated digital transformation, our resources are resonating really well with libraries, faculty, and students as they were designed for a hybrid and digital learning environment which we now find ourselves in.

We publish several new products each year, many building on our existing range. For example, within the Sage Research Methods suite, we launch a new video collection each year. We also have plans within Sage Business to regularly launch new products building on where we see high usage and real need from librarians and their patrons. We also develop wholly new product ranges where we see a need, such as Sage Skills, which was developed with a strong focus on the needs of students to develop study, well-being, and employability skills. And we recently launched a series of online courses, Sage Campus, to support both skills needs and research needs in higher education. We are planning for new additions to Sage Campus shortly.

ATG: Sage has invested in the Skilltype platform, acquired Epigeum, a provider of online courses, partnered with Hum, a data and AI company, and recently acquired Hubro Education, a developer of business simulations. How do these different corporate moves fit into Sage’s future strategy? Are there additional corporate moves in the offing that you can share?

KS: These moves are inspired by a very exciting focus on the future needs of the library as the center of higher education in a more digital environment. We are exploring that future in a number of ways, including building the product suite that I have talked about. And as you mention, we are also forming partnerships with companies such as Skilltype that share our vision for a strong future for the library, as part of our Technology from Sage strategy where we offer solutions to support the library and amplify their voice and impact within higher education institutions.

We are also exploring new types of content that will fit within our overall learning resources suite, which currently includes a range of content types, from cases and digital books to video, data, and, more recently, online courses through Sage Campus and Epigeum, and simulations with the Hubro Education acquisition.

With Hum, we will use their AI engine to gain a better understanding of what our readers want to help identify new topic and content opportunities and to recruit authors, editors, and reviewers who are best placed to create that content.

All of these changes further the Sage mission of building bridges to knowledge — supporting the development of ideas through the research process to scholarship that is certified, taught, and applied. Librarians play a key role in this process and their success is key to furthering our mission.

ATG: Will these corporate moves benefit libraries and end users? If so, how?

KS: These acquisitions and investments continue a history of growing our publishing expertise in a way that meets the needs of libraries and their patrons. They are part of a wider commitment to exploring new ways to support learning and research. Through these recent moves, as well as through our wider publishing plans, we can offer the library products that help them to achieve their goals of supporting student success and research excellence.

As examples, our Sage Campus and Epigeum online courses offer library resources to support students through their journey at university, covering everything from health and wellbeing, to key study and research skills training, and employability skills training. The library is often the go-to place for students to reach out for research and study support, and Sage Campus is an excellent resource for the library to help them effectively support their patrons.

Our acquisition of Hubro Education offers excellent simulations for teaching in business and management. Simulations have increasingly been used for teaching business skills to students as they are an effective approach to “learning by doing” in a digital environment. There is a proven benefit to the student and faculty, and an optional benefit to the library to become a partner with faculty in making provision of sims in course teaching possible.

As we continue to grow our suite and learn how new types of technology and content can support education, we hope to support the library in its continued transition to a digital future, with expertly curated and commissioned resources that map well with the needs of learners and researchers.

ATG: Sage has played an active role in open access for more than a decade. Can you tell us more about Sage’s Open Access Portal?

KS: Sure. We started our open access journey in 2011 with the launch of Sage Open, our journal covering the broad spectrum of social and behavioural research (the first of its kind!). The following year we launched titles in medicine and have subsequently developed a portfolio of over 200 titles across the STM and HSS disciplines, including a number of OA titles that we publish on behalf of societies. Many hybrid titles, of course, also support open access publication.

In addition to offering these access options for researchers, we are dedicated to supporting them through the process of publishing OA. For example:

• We have developed the Sage Open Access Author Portal to provide a rich suite of resources to support authors as they choose the route to publish that is right for them.

• We have published educational videos dedicated to helping researchers broaden their understanding of key open access concepts.

• Our monthly “How to get Published” webinar series promotes publishing open access and publishing options in every webinar.

• Our Sage Perspectives blog includes posts detailing, debating, and advising researchers on various aspects of OA publishing.

Whether we are interacting with an early career researcher or a seasoned tenured academic, we want to provide the resources that help them choose the right route to publish and the right home for their research. We encourage librarians supporting patrons (and researching themselves) to take advantage as well.

ATG: How do you think AI bots like Chat GPT will impact academic publishers like Sage? Do you think publishers should get acknowledgement and/or compensation when their works are used by bots?

KS: Chat GPT and other Large Language Models will impact publishing in many ways. We are focused on understanding what the capabilities will be, experimenting, and learning. At this stage, we can’t predict exactly what the impact will be as the technology is evolving so rapidly. We do, though, already see many opportunities to further enhance areas of the business that currently use AI, such as marketing, production, and customer service, where many existing processes can be automated and enhanced. We are also experimenting in many areas of the business to uncover the potential for creative uses of the new technology. And we are especially interested in how AI can make our publishing output more accessible to all types of learners, including practitioners and policymakers who are using evidence to improve lives.

In terms of whether publishers should be acknowledged and/ or compensated for the use of their works by AI bots, I think the answer is yes to both when it comes to copyright material. From a copyright perspective, you can see similarities to the Google Books or Napster cases where the copyright issues were recognized and acted on. Ultimately, the result in each case has been the development of a functioning commercial market, which benefits everyone.

This type of acknowledgement will also help authors and researchers get deserved recognition for their work and will help AI users sort through the information they are provided and determine what has been vetted by proven scholarly workflows and what may be inaccurate or completely fabricated.