The Society of Plastics Engineers is outsourcing publication of Plastics Engineering magazine and reducing its frequency to 10 times a year.
Brookfield, Conn.-based SPE self-published the periodical but ran into financial troubles doing so, and decided to contract publication to Wiley-Blackwell, a division of publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc. in Hoboken, N.J.
SPE staff will continue to generate paid advertisements and select editorial content under the arrangement with Wiley-Blackwell.
SPE has about 18,500 members.
``[This agreement] will allow SPE to focus on what it does best, providing excellent technical information on plastics and polymers, and will allow Wiley-Blackwell to focus on what it does best, providing a world-class global publishing platform both online and in print,'' said SPE's executive director, Susan Oderwald, in an April 16 news release.
Plastics Engineering has operated as a monthly, but SPE intends to combine the magazine's upcoming July-August and December-January issues. The periodical was launched in 1946.
Plastics Engineering's online directory will continue to be handled by SPE's current third-party partner, Oderwald said via e-mail.
In 2004, SPE partnered with Wiley to publish SPE technical journals including the monthly Polymer Engineering & Science, monthly Polymer Composites, and the quarterly Journal of Vinyl & Additive Technology.
Wiley-Blackwell publishes more than 1,400 scholarly peer-reviewed journals.
