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FOUNDATIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL COMMUNICATION
for publishing the journal from 1 January 1999 with expectations raised that this would
result in some savings.
Difficulties, it must be said, did occur over the first year of the Secretariat taking
on board the publication of the journal, with delays in distribution that were attributed
to deficiencies in the material handed over by Elsevier, including circulation lists, which
required a great deal of effort to put in good order and costs were higher than expected. The
WG
Publications
, chaired by Dr Giulio Costa (Italy) was to take control of this situation
by developing strategies for promoting and increasing sales of the journal that currently
had only 200 subscribers and a circulation of 300 copies.
7
Previously the number of papers
published in WiW
,
on a yearly basis was around 20 papers, which increased to around 35
papers after the journal was changed from its bilingual form to English in 1994.
8
A total of
250-300 technical documents were initially reviewed for publication of which about 30-40
were judged to be most valuable by the Working Units and recommended for inclusion in
WiW. According to size (length) they were either published as journal articles or as a book,
or booklet.
9
Even so, concerns still continued to be expressed
about the deteriorating status of the WiW journal
.
As
a result WG
Publications
was then placed under the
direction and guidance of the TMB in July 2003 with
the intent of improving WiW’s image and circulation
through proper marketing and planning, as well as arresting
declining subscriptions. Subscriptions had become
worrying in 2003 when income was reported to have
fallen by 16% with a significant decline in profits.
10
The year 2005 also heralded a name change for the
WG
Publications
to WG
Communications
(WG-COM), later
changed to WG
Communications and Marketing
(WG-COM&MARK), along with the
appointment of a new Chair, Dr-Ing. Cécile Mayer (France), whose remit was to provide a
new dynamic for the publication of IIW’s flagship, as well as a firm commitment to increase
its status to a premier scientific publication. One of the immediate changes implemented by
the Working Group was to increase the size of the journal to around 12 articles per issue.
This had a corresponding effect on the number of articles published yearly and a workload
that the publication coordinator within the Secretariat, Ms Véronique Souville, handled
with charm and distinction.
In a further measure of its new path to excellence Mayer was to announce, rather
proudly, that WiW had been published within its deadlines for the second consecutive year
in 2007. This still did not disguise the fact that by 2009 WiW was what could be termed
Veronique Souville