A question we are asked frequently is, When should we begin to think about a publisher RFP?
The answer is almost inevitably, Sooner than you think!
We recommend leaving at least 24 months before your publishing contract termination date for information gathering, managing the RFP process, negotiating the contract, and potentially transitioning to another publisher. (Whether you end up transitioning to a different publisher or remaining with your incumbent publisher, it is essential to leave enough time for a potential transition. More on this later.)
There are also valuable activities (such as a strategic assessment) to consider before the RFP process itself begins – to position your publications for future success. You’ll want to start thinking about these activities 3–5 years in advance of contract termination.
In this article, we outline the timetable for the RFP process itself as well as activities you may want to conduct before the RFP process starts.
This article presumes that you are under contract with a publisher. If that’s not the case, but you are considering whether to do an RFP to evaluate publishers, much of this article will still be useful. Also, we talk about journals in this article, but the advice here applies for the most part to books and other product types.
Before the RFP Process Starts
Check Your Contract: Now
The first thing to do is check your current publishing contract. Look for a section titled something like “Term and Termination” (there’s no rule for what this section is called, so your contract might be different). This section (or sections; the details below may be found in more than one place in your contract) specifies when your contract expires and conditions related to expiration.
Things to look out for and note down include:
- Effective date, which is the date the contract began.
- Initial term of the contract, including the termination date of the initial term. This clause specifies when your contract expires. It might be an actual date of termination, or it might be a specific number of years or after a particular volume and issue are published. If it is a specific number of years, use care (or an online calculator) to confirm the termination date – it’s easy to make a mistake and assume the agreement terminates a year later than it actually does. Mostly journal publishing contracts terminate at the end of the year (31 December), as this aligns with the natural end of the journal’s volume year.
- Renewal terms, which specify any terms under which the existing contract will renew. For example, the agreement might state automatic renewal for X number of years unless notice of termination is given.
- Notice of termination, which specifies the time period in advance of the end of the current term for which either party must give the other party written notice that they do not wish the existing contract to renew. Publishing contracts typically set a notice of termination 12 months in advance of the current contract end date, although we have seen longer notice of termination timelines (e.g., 18 months) in some cases. It’s important to recognize that giving notice of termination doesn’t necessarily mean that you intend to end the relationship, it just means you don’t want to renew under the existing contract terms. (That goes for your publisher too – remember that either party can give notice.) After giving notice, you might decide to renegotiate with your incumbent publisher, or to conduct a competitive RFP process to evaluate other publishers as well. But if you fail to give notice by the required deadline, the contract automatically extends and you are now locked into those terms for the specified period (typically anywhere from 1 to 5 years).
- Termination provisions related to right to consider other publisher bids. Some contracts anticipate a formal bidding process and may set out terms related to that process. For example, the contract may specify that the society permit the incumbent publisher to submit a bid for a new publishing contract. Or it might even specify that the society must negotiate with the incumbent publisher for some period of time before soliciting bids from other publishers. It’s critically important that you understand any conditions the contract puts on termination and a subsequent RFP process.
If you have more than one journal in your portfolio, be sure to check the termination dates and conditions for each journal – they do not always align. Note that you might have different contracts for different journals in your portfolio; make sure to check all contracts and addenda, and don’t assume they all have the same terms. (If the journals in your portfolio have different contract end dates, that can create challenges if you decide to go out for RFP, as publishers will not be able to bid for the full portfolio together, with the same contract start date. Whenever possible, make sure the journals in your portfolio all have the same contract end date; we often work with clients on approaches to bring different contract end dates into alignment.)
If you aren’t sure how to interpret your contract, don’t hesitate to seek expert help. Legal counsel can be very helpful, especially to interpret the specific language of the contract. A publishing business consultant can be a great resource too – they tend to have seen a lot of publishing contracts and can help you interpret not only what the contract language means, but what the implications are for conducting a competitive RFP process (or a contract renewal) in the future.
Consider a Strategic Assessment: 3–5 Years in Advance of Contract Termination
Ideally, any RFP will be preceded by a strategic assessment. You’ll want to ask questions like: How is my journal portfolio doing with my current publisher? Are key metrics like financial return, submissions, publishing turnaround times, and citations moving in positive directions? How well is my current publisher supporting portfolio goals and our specific needs? What are my journal priorities for the next contract term? Your publisher has its own business strategy (which may have changed over the course of working together) – does it remain well aligned with my society business strategy and is it creating positive return for us? How might my portfolio be valued by other publishers?
The strategic assessment may also surface underperformance in key areas that may have impact on how publishers value a journal. Are there steps you can take in the short term (before an RFP) to turn underperforming metrics in the right direction, and shore up your portfolio’s value to publishers? As one example, if you are trying to grow the open access output of your portfolio, do you have a strong pipeline of high-quality submissions? What steps can you take to improve your author marketing and commissioning strategy to attract better papers? Or, what can you do to improve citation rates and thus eventually improve your Journal Impact Factor? This sort of strategic course-correction is something you should be keeping an eye on at least annually, throughout your journal’s publishing contract life cycle, but it’s especially important with an RFP on the horizon.
You’ll also want to assess the performance of your current publishing partner and your level of satisfaction with them, and whether an RFP process is warranted. C&E recently published a blog post that may help guide your thinking about the value of a competitive RFP process: “When Is a Competitive Journal RFP Worth the Effort?“
Another key outcome of the assessment is a clear register of strategic priorities for your portfolio for the next contract term. This prioritized set of goals helps evaluate the fit of your current publishing partner as you look forward to the next contract term, as well as being foundational for an RFP process. You are entering a position of leverage with an upcoming contract negotiation or RFP process – the strategic assessment will help you prioritize what to ask for.
It can be helpful to have an outside perspective for this phase – a consulting firm can bring an objective viewpoint on your portfolio and a wealth of experience across many different society–publisher relationships. Their outside assessment will likely take 3–4 months, and you’ll want to plan for an extra month or two to get on the calendar of your preferred consulting firm. (More on selecting a consultancy below.)
Beware of Running Out the Clock with a Preemptive Renewal Offer
One possible outcome of a strategic assessment is deciding not to issue an RFP and entering negotiations with your incumbent publisher (again, we have written an article on circumstances when renegotiation may make sense). Even when you are renegotiating only with your incumbent publisher, it is essential that you allow sufficient time to run a competitive RFP process if you need to. There are two reasons for this:
- You may not like the offer you receive from your incumbent publisher. We frequently get calls from clients who have received preemptive renewal offers that were not what they expected. What makes this unwelcome news worse is putting yourself and your organization in a position where you have no other options because there is not enough time to secure offers from other publishers and/or to complete a transition.
- Just the possibility of an RFP process will apply some competitive pressure to negotiations with your incumbent publisher. Publishers are sometimes incentivized to provide a favorable offer in order to head off an RFP process, which will be resource-intensive for them and introduces the risk of losing your business. This pressure is diminished if an RFP process is already off the table because of timing; the incumbent publisher will know if you don’t have enough time to solicit proposals and to make a publisher transition, which will reduce its incentive to bid generously.
Select a Consultancy: 3–6 Months in Advance of Project Commencement
We strongly advise working with a consulting firm if you decide to conduct an RFP. We are obviously biased here given that this is a service C&E provides, but we also see the results of RFPs conducted and publishing contracts negotiated without expert advice. There is a fundamental information asymmetry between a publisher and the society or association it is negotiating with. A society might negotiate a publishing agreement every 5–10 years. Publishers, by contrast, may negotiate numerous agreements every month. For most societies and associations, the publishing contract is the single most important agreement they will strike (from a financial perspective). Getting expert help with publisher selection and subsequent contract negotiations will help avoid potentially costly mistakes.
A knowledgeable consulting firm can level the playing field. Make sure to pick one with a demonstrable track record and a high throughput of publisher RFPs and negotiations (for context, C&E will likely negotiate around a dozen publishing agreements this year). Also, look for a consulting firm that has successfully negotiated with all of the major publishers in the market and has represented comparable portfolios to your own. The right expertise will ensure you are working with a firm with a finger on the pulse of the market and that can increase the information and market intel you have access to. They’ll also be familiar with the full range of contract terms across the major publishers for comparable portfolios and can speak credibly to common industry practice.
Equally important is that your selected consulting firm can evaluate the full set of services on offer from publishers and understand how they will impact your publishing relationship. Look for a consultancy with depth of experience in business models, publishing platforms and technologies, digital experience, and modern marketing approaches.
If your Board or other volunteer governance body will participate in your RFP process and publisher selection, it’s important to choose a consulting firm with experience in association governance – one that can effectively and efficiently translate publishing business concepts for volunteers without publishing expertise to support informed decision-making.
Pre-RFP Timeline
| Before the RFP Process Begins | Timeline |
|---|---|
Check your publishing contract for key dates:
| Now |
Conduct a strategic assessment:
| 3–5 years in advance of contract termination, to allow time for course-corrections |
Consider engaging a consulting firm:
| 3–6 months in advance of project commencement, to make sure your preferred consulting firm sets aside availability |
RFP Timeline: 24-Month Countdown
Once you’ve completed a strategic assessment of your publishing program and have decided it’s in your organization’s best interests to issue an RFP (and have booked time on the calendar of your preferred consulting firm), it’s time to start planning. We recommend starting the RFP process no less than 24 months – 2 years – ahead of your contract termination date. That’s probably longer than you were anticipating. That’s why we advise looking at your contract termination clauses as a first step – your RFP countdown might have already begun.
Competitive RFP Process – Duration: 8 months
Eight months may seem like a lot of time for an RFP process. C&E has been running publisher RFPs for over a decade and we have (through trial and error) determined 8 months to be the optimal amount of time. This timeline allows sufficient time to collect and provide the necessary data so that publishers can develop their best offer, to support iterative bidding to take advantage of the competitive nature of the RFP process, and to give your society time for careful decision-making and governance alignment. In C&E’s process, the RFP process does not end until the business terms are solidified. The stages can be compressed, allowing the process to conclude faster, but that might mean additional burden on your organization (more to do in less time).
If you are looking for places to squeeze the schedule, it can be tempting to push publishers on the proposal deadline. However, we find that giving publishers sufficient time to put their bid together leads to a better result. Publishers have to do complex analyses to evaluate the fit of your journals within their own business strategy and portfolio, and they’ll often provide data supporting interesting ideas for your portfolio. They also need to seek internal approvals from their own leadership related to the financial offer. And they want to be well-prepared and to put their best foot forward in a proposal in response to your RFP. You want to give them sufficient time to put together their best offer.
Contract Negotiations – Duration: 3–4 Months
Once you have selected your next publisher and agreed to business terms as part of the RFP process, you’ll enter contract negotiations. Three to four months probably seems like a long time to negotiate a contract. Sometimes it takes even longer! Most of the time is spent waiting for the next turn of the contract draft – businesspeople and legal counsel are involved on both sides of the contract review and negotiation, and their busy schedules can create delays.
We’ve found setting aside at least 3 months for contract negotiations to be a relatively reasonable bet for organizations already working via a publishing services agreement. If you know that your organization tends to take longer on contracts, be sure to build extra time into your process. Also, if your organization is moving from self-publishing, negotiations may take considerably longer as a publishing contract is a new entity for your organization (plan on up to 6 months).
Publisher Transition – Duration: 9–12 Months
In setting your RFP timeline, be sure to set aside enough time for a transition to a new publisher. You may end up deciding that your incumbent publisher remains the best match for your portfolio for the next contract term, in which case you won’t need a transition period. But it’s important to build it into your timeline, in case a transition is the direction the RFP leads you.
Also, if you don’t allow enough time for a transition, publishers might assume that your RFP process is more about encouraging your existing publisher to put forward a better offer, and less about a fair and open evaluation of the market of publishers. Unintended consequences of not allowing sufficient transition time could be that some publishers decline to bid because they don’t believe you are serious about considering a publisher transition (RFPs are a lot of work for a publisher), or that your incumbent publisher puts forward a less favorable offer, knowing you don’t really have time for a transition.
Transitions can be complex and time-consuming processes. Journals have a lot of moving parts, and having enough time to go through the details methodically makes an enormous difference in how smoothly your launch with a new publisher will go. While in our experience having 9 months to complete a transition process is sufficient, any additional lead time will make the process less stressful for both you and your new publisher.
A Note on the Institutional Sales Cycle
The timeline for a publisher transition is also dependent on the institutional sales cycle (which includes OA agreements such as read and publish and transformative agreements). Publishers begin the sales process 7–8 months in advance of the next calendar year. For example, the institutional sales process for 2026 began in May/June of 2025. This is the time when publishers inform their institutional customers and sales agents what journals they will be publishing (and what journals will be in their packages) for the coming year. If you have not signed a contract with a publisher in advance of this window, publishers cannot include your titles in their communications, and this can have significant implications for your revenues.
If you leave 9–12 months for a publisher transition, aligning with the institutional sales cycle will not pose any concerns. But if the transition schedule becomes compressed (either due to starting the process late or contract negotiations taking longer than anticipated), market-driven deadlines associated with the institutional sales cycle may come into play.
RFP Countdown
| Publisher RFP Countdown | Duration | Countdown: 24 – 0 months |
|---|---|---|
Competitive publisher RFP process, up to selection of next publisher
| 8 months | 24 months |
| Contract negotiations | 3 – 4 months | 16 months |
| Deadline for notice of termination of existing contract | 12 months from termination date (typically) | 12 months |
| Publisher transition (if any) | 9–12 months | 12 months |
| Current agreement expires; first issues published under new contract | 0 months |
What If You Are 24+ Months Out?
If your contract end date is more than 24 months away, you may have a little breathing room before you start your RFP process. But be sure to put a reminder on your calendar (or whatever your “tickler” system is) so the notice of termination deadline doesn’t slip through the cracks. Checking a contract only to find out that you missed the notice of termination deadline and are now locked into a 2-year autorenewal is not a situation you want to be in.
Do I Really Need this Much Time?!
An RFP process can be done faster. At C&E we have facilitated many RFPs that have resulted in an executed contract in far less than 12 months. We’ve also supported transitions to a new publisher that have moved faster than 9 months. But as long as we’re planning ahead, why not create a comfortable timeline? There is no penalty (and only potential upside) associated with leaving a sufficient margin of safety in the process.
That said, if you don’t have 2 years before your contract termination date, don’t despair. Take the time to plan carefully for the most impactful steps you can take to secure the best possible partner and contract for your next publishing term.
We Can Help
At C&E, we run significant numbers of publisher RFP processes and incumbent publisher renewals every year and have negotiated contracts with all of the major publishers (a selection of agreements we have negotiated can be found here). This gives us breadth and depth of data and experience and helps us to level the information asymmetry that exists between societies and publishers around publishing agreements.
Our consultants have hands-on experience in editorial, production, sales, digital, and marketing functions, providing a 360-degree assessment of publisher capabilities. We are well practiced in conducting RFP processes, and we can take much of the burden off you, your staff, and your volunteers and bring a best-practices approach to your RFP process. We have a deep understanding of governance processes and decision-making in societies, and we excel at translating complex “publishing-speak” into clear, accessible language so your volunteers fully grasp the implications of their decisions. Our team structure allows us to “load balance” to handle the intense time demands of an RFP process and keep things on schedule. This structure also lets us manage the unexpected, such as illnesses or other unplanned absences during a critical time in the process.
We can also help you understand the terms and conditions of your existing contract as it relates to an RFP process.
A publishing services agreement is often the most important agreement that a society will sign. From a financial perspective, it is often the society’s single largest contract, and journal reputation and revenue are typically strategic pillars for the organization. Helping societies get the most out of their publisher relationship (and the contract that guides it) is a major focus of our firm. We’d welcome the opportunity to share our success stories with you and would be delighted to help your organization.
If you’d like to discuss your RFP timeline or any other element of your publishing contract or publisher relationship, feel free to drop a (virtual) meeting on our calendar. Please don’t hesitate to call on us – even right away if you just finished checking your contract and realize that your RFP countdown has already started.
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