Designing an academic journal around its readers

CHALLENGE

Teachers College Record was a highly respected academic journal, but its website had not been meaningfully updated in years.

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Before beginning the redesign, the team needed to better understand the journal’s readers: who they were, why they visited, what they valued, and where the existing experience fell short.

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PROJECT TIMELINE

July 2019

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MY ROLE

I led the research from planning through delivery. I defined the study goals, identified and recruited participants, conducted interviews, synthesized the findings, and presented recommendations to the editorial, product, design, development, and library leadership teams.

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RESEARCH METHODS

Subscriber data analysis and semi-structured interviews

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BACKGROUND

Teachers College Record had been publishing educational research for more than a century and had built a loyal audience across print and digital channels.

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As the team prepared to redesign the website, we wanted to make sure the work reflected how readers actually discovered, evaluated, and used academic research rather than relying only on internal assumptions.

 

 

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

• Who were TCR’s most engaged readers?

• Why did they visit and subscribe?

• How did TCR fit into their research or professional workflow?

• What did they value about the journal?

• What frustrated them about the website?

• What did they expect from the future of academic publishing?

 

 

APPROACH

Identifying a range of readers

 

I used Metabase to explore subscriber and usage data and identify several reader groups:

• Long-time online subscribers

• Newer subscribers

• Readers who purchased individual articles

• Subscribers who used both print and digital formats

 

I also considered how recently and frequently people had visited the site so that the study included readers with meaningful experience using TCR.

 

I contacted 25 potential participants, and eight agreed to take part.

 

Interviewing readers

I conducted 30-minute semi-structured interviews focused on participants’ relationship with TCR, how the journal fit into their work, their experience with the website and newsletter, and their thoughts about the future of academic publishing.

 

The flexible format allowed me to follow up on unexpected themes and better understand the context behind participants’ behaviors and opinions.

 

A colleague joined the sessions to take notes and support debriefs after each interview.

 

Synthesizing the research

After the interviews, I reviewed the notes, identified patterns across participants, and organized the findings into a narrative that introduced stakeholders to the journal’s readers.

 

Because the audience included editorial staff, library leadership, product managers, designers, and developers, I focused the final presentation on both reader context and clear implications for the redesign.

 

 

OUTCOME

The research gave the team a clearer understanding of who TCR readers were, how they used the journal, and what they expected from a modern academic publishing experience.

The findings helped ground the redesign in reader needs and gave product, design, and editorial stakeholders a shared basis for discussing priorities.