A New Era in Publishing

For the last 500 years, publishers have relied on paper to distribute information. Now their readers are going online for their morning news, movie schedules, and restaurant reviews. It’s no surprise that publishing is going through seismic changes that affect how content is created, produced, distributed, discovered, and sold.

The convenience of anywhere, anytime access to information is driving the rapid conversion of print content onto the web. Over the last decade, there has been a progressive migration of content beginning with indexes and reference tools, journals and their back files, and now books propelled by investments from Google and Microsoft. Readers also have the option of hearing an audiobook, listening to music, or watching videos.

During this transition, publishers and vendors have invested in digitizing and tagging in XML massive amounts of new and existing content. The creation of an electronic copy that essentially replicates the print is a precursor to the gradual transformation of these formats. Newer platforms that enable search across both books and journals allow the user to choose a chapter as easily as an article. Without the covers, print formats begin to blur.

Historically, how print content was packaged signaled its purpose: books are more comprehensive, require years to produce, and therefore are less timely, while journals publish more frequently and address the results of recent research. In contrast, products born digital are conceived without these constraints and can be designed to serve users’ need for information. These factors influence the length and timeliness of the work, how it is linked to other works including other forms of media, and the level of interactivity with readers.

For example, publisher Morgan & Claypool’s “Lectures” is a short updatable book authored by an expert and designed to provide graduate students and field engineers with a succinct summary of a dynamic topic in a particular area of engineering or computer science. Lectures combines the in-depth feature of a book with the currency of a journal and the reference quality of a handbook.

When print content moves to the web, it acquires functionality and becomes a service. Readers now take for granted the ability to search, to receive alerts, and to link from a reference to the full text of a cited article. XML, as Bill Kasdorf explains (see “The XML Advantage,” p. 12), is the key to making content fully accessible by turning the entire document into metadata and allowing it to be output in print, HTML for the web, or flowed to a handheld device.

The digital environment enables mash-ups, and the combination of different types of information creates a more complete picture. A practical example with commercial implications was demonstrated at the Bloomberg booth in the exhibit hall during the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting. Users viewing a company’s financial history can select the stock price from several years ago and then display related news showing events at the time and their impact on stock performance. Integrating content provides context that expands understanding and adds value.

Another emerging application is text mining, which Collexis, a software company, employs to provide sophisticated analysis of the authors, topics, and areas of research covered in the life sciences. In addition to fee-based services, Collexis has just launched a free service, BioMedExperts, containing profiles it has generated on 1.4 million scientists by analyzing articles and authors in PubMed. Researchers can use this network of authors to identify who is conducting related studies and then instantly connect with them using the social software provided. BioMedExperts leverages the human connections identified through published content to build topically oriented communities regardless of their location.

The electronic version effectively shifts printing to the user’s desktop and offers a more efficient and economical way to reach global markets. While most journals are still published in dual formats, the Association of Research Libraries released a report in December 2007 that reveals that publishers are beginning to explore shifting to e-only to eliminate printing and mailing costs.

As books move onto the web en masse, products such as the Espresso Book Machine will enable distributed print-on-demand (POD) books. The Espresso can turn a PDF into a printed book in 15 minutes for a penny a page and is expected to be in commercial release in 2008. Fully automated beta versions have been installed at the World Bank and New York Public Library, and a model with a smaller footprint is in design for use in libraries, bookstores, coffee shops, and airports.

The availability of books printed on demand opens the door to a virtual inventory of PDFs that would eliminate the costs and waste associated with warehousing, shipping, returning, pulping, and handling unsold print copies. Readers can select from a much broader list of titles than has previously been available and then “look inside the book” at Amazon or preview sections through Google to choose what they want to print. This is the long tail of bookselling described by Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail and editor in chief of Wired magazine.

These developments reverse the role of print in the publishing process. Instead of printing to distribute, publications will be distributed to be printed for consumption. Ingram Digital is well positioned in the supply chain as it supports publishers’ need to store digital files and distribute them in multiple formats, including print on demand through sister company Lightning Source.

As readers adapt to technological enhancements and new devices, printing will likely diminish over time. A recent magazine ad for a scanner showed the scanner replacing the inbox, reinforcing the portable value of electronic content.

The shift to electronic information is about more than just new formats and functionality. It is also about the changing economics of publishing. In his 1998 book, New Rules for the New Economy, Kevin Kelly, also of Wired, cited economist Paul Krugman, who pointed out that the supply and demand curves get inverted in the networked economy. In the industrial world, scarcity increases the value of a product since two people can’t both have the same physical item. The opposite applies to the value of information, which increases as it is used and shared. Abundance, not scarcity, determines value—and that is reshaping business models.

While existing publishers have established reputations based on their high-quality content, they also have subscription revenues at stake. Making the transition from fee to free is daunting.

With the costs of storage, processing power, and bandwidth decreasing dramatically, more content is being made available with experimental economic models. Two recent examples of free online content supported by ads are the New York Times and Elsevier’s OncologySTAT. Readers of the Times can view content for free but must sign in with an email address to share a news story with a friend, register for an alert or RSS, or recommend an article. Elsevier requires that readers sign in with an email address to view free content on OncologySTAT, which contains articles from 100-plus Elsevier journals and summaries of articles from other leading journals, plus regulatory news and data on drug interactions and chemotherapy regimens.

New companies starting from scratch use creative approaches. Footnote combines images of original historical documents from authorized sources with those images posted by individuals who can then communicate with each other. Through a partnership with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Footnote digitized content for which it will charge a fee for the first five years (to recoup costs), and then the content will be free to all on the NARA government web site. Footnote is creating a digital space where visitors to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial can leave images of mementos and letters similar to those that are often left at the wall and offer comments on the significance to them. This interactive approach makes historical records available to a community interested in history and gives its members the ability to expand it with their own contributions.

Wikipedia has surprised everyone. It is widely accepted as a convenient and reasonably accurate resource that demonstrates the collective intelligence proposed by James Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowds. Inspired by the concept of crowd sourcing, the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania and the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence sponsored a book, published by Pearson Education as We Are Smarter Than Me, based on the collaborative effort of a group of more than 4000 individuals. In contrast to their expectations, however, authors Barry Libert and Jon Spector found that many of the ideas and examples used in the book were not entered in the wiki but came instead through the forums, blog posts, podcasts, and comments contributed on the web site.

Organizations, too, are starting to experiment with these tools to support the creation of a virtual community with profiles for their members. Societies are the natural communities of scholars and could use social software to facilitate communication and engage younger members. However, it is unlikely that providing these services will unleash pent-up demand unless the needs of members are clearly defined and appropriate services selected to support them.

GoingOn is one example of social networking software as a service (SaaS) that offers support for member profiles, networking, publishing, media distribution and advertising, and online meetings.

Given that publications are written by their authors for specific audiences, connecting with those readers is a natural extension of publication—so natural that commercial publishers are experimenting with creating community around content. Elsevier has introduced 2collab, which allows researchers to store, share, tag, and comment on bookmarks for their favorite web sites. Nature publishing has launched the Nature Network for connecting scientists, enabling them to discuss issues, read blogs, browse forums, and create profiles.

One of the more innovative services creating buzz is Sermo, a community of 50,000 physicians formed to allow them to exchange anonymously clinical observations and conclusions that can then be challenged or corroborated, accelerating the emergence of trends and shared insights on medications, devices, and treatments. The service is free to physicians, who are authenticated when they register, and there are no ads. Sermo leverages the wisdom of a select crowd for the crowd’s own benefit and that of its sponsors—financial institutions, health-care companies, and government agencies—which benefit from early insight into clinical events. While Sermo is not a publication, it is a solid example of community-contributed content.

Publishers have a lot of experience in creating high-quality publications designed to meet their readers’ needs. But reader expectations are changing. They now want content that is well integrated with their workflow and the opportunity to communicate and collaborate with colleagues.

Will publishing in the future depend upon tools for group collaboration? Will the development of an article evolve from peer review to group review and comment with letters to the editor being incorporated into a continuing thread? Will tagging by readers emerge as a practical way to identify related content, confirming the shift from a focus on published products to cultivated communities?

What these services look like has yet to be determined, as are the business models to support them. Successful approaches will depend on understanding the needs of readers and involving them in the development and use of tools that can advance their thinking and draw upon their collective wisdom.