Professional Publishing: The Britannica Method
February 9, 2013
I listened to the Harvard Business Review “ideacast” with Jorge Cruz. You can find this 16 minute “living case study” on iTunes and at this link. Harvard types love euphemisms, so we have audio program morphed into ideacast. You will need to perform a number of mental transformations to interpret what it means to Encyclopaedia Britannica to have killed the print product. Interior decorators will have to find older editions for the dens of the nouveau riche. Libraries with the 11th edition will have another asset to make their Boards salivate with the profit potential of musty old volumes.
The point of Mr. Cruz’s comments is that the CD ROM was a big problem for print publishers like the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Broad Internet access is the next big thing. The “ideacast” omitted some detail. I assume that most “ideacast” listeners are too darned busy to hear a chipper interlocutor ask such questions as:
- What are the cost efficiency measures you have implemented and will be implementing?
- What changes in editorial processes have allowed your firm to produce accurate content without compromising quality?
- What is the technical infrastructure for your publishing operation?
- What are your plans for “pay to play” articles from scholars who need to toot horns now that peer reviewed publications are under attack?
- What are the new products and services you envision for 2013?
- What are your plans for acquisition of properties to accelerate growth?
- Where does your firm’s information fit in today’s content landscape?
Alas, these questions were not asked. What a happy coincidence that as I was listening to the ideacast, I read “The Elsevier Boycott One Year On.” The trigger for this write up was the birthday celebration for the Great Elsevier Boycott. Scholars have been grousing about having to pay to get their content into “real” journals. Once the money has been handed over, the Elsevier-type scholarly publications go slowly in the best tradition of the good old days of clubby publishing. I think of soft lighting in London clubs where careers are made and shattered amidst chuckles, cigars, and conversation.
The write up asserts:
In one respect the boycott has been an unqualified success: it has helped to raise awareness of the concerns we have about academic publishing. This, we believe, will make it easier for new publishing initiatives to succeed, and we strongly encourage further experimentation. We believe that commercial publishers could in principle play a valuable role in the future of mathematical publishing, but we would prefer to see publishers as “service providers”: that is, mathematicians would control journals, publishers would provide services that mathematicians deemed necessary, and prices would be kept competitive since mathematicians would have the option of obtaining these services elsewhere.
Elsevier and I assume other professional publishers have figured out that the Young Guns of academia are capable of pumping out tweets, blog posts, and talks at conferences suggesting that:
- Professional publishers charge a lot for scholars’ work which scholars’ had to pony up some dough to create
- Subscription prices are too high. Libraries cannot afford the gems of wisdom contained in a traditional scholarly journal.
- The time delays in traditional publishing, even when equipped with fancy technology from XML centric publishing systems, are unacceptable in today’s world. Hey, grant money may be available for a short time, and scholars want that citation in Twitter time, not hot metal type time.
The write up adds this point:
We acknowledge that there are differing opinions about what an ideal publishing system would be like. In particular, the issue of article processing charges is a divisive one: some mathematicians are strongly opposed to them, while others think that there is no realistic alternative. We do not take a collective position on this, but we would point out that the debate is by no means confined to mathematicians: it has been going on in the Open Access community for many years. We note also that the advantages and disadvantages of article processing charges depend very much on the policies that journals have towards fee waivers: we strongly believe that editorial decisions should be independent of an author’s access to appropriate funds, and that fee-waiver policies should be designed to ensure this. To summarize, we believe that the boycott has been a success and should be continued. Further success will take time and effort, but there are simple steps that we can all take: making our papers freely available, and supporting new and better publication models when they are set up.
My question, “Will Encyclopaedia Britannica’s new business model emerge as a beacon for professional publishing?” My hunch. Nah. The Harvard Business Review will, however, explain how management did the buggy whip thing. That old chestnut should be tossed in la poubelle. The hip scholars either look information up via Google or follow in the footsteps of Emilio Delgado Lopez Cozar et al.
Stephen E Arnold, February 9, 2013
Commercial Professional Publishers: Aced Again?
February 8, 2013
In June 2012, an insular commercial database and professional publishing operation paid me to show up and share the trends my team had identified in online information. We were deep in the open source search study, which will be available to registered attendees of the Lucene Revolution in May 2013. I showed up, ran down a list of five areas which looked like potential investment areas. The group said, “We have these on our list already. What the heck did we hire you for anyway?”
Flash forward eight months. The insular outfit is still insular. And one of the opportunities I highlighted just became much more expensive. Navigate to “LinkedIn Eyes Future as Professional Publishing Hub.” The story points out that LinkedIn is profitable and growing organically. Here’s the passage I noted:
LinkedIn plans to hook you with business content you can’t get elsewhere — whitepapers, news articles, educated discussion threads, and so forth. When you come back more often and stick around longer — LinkedIn likes to use the term “engagement” to describe your attention — the professional social network can get clients to list more jobs and spend more on ads.
Oh, oh. Content marketing. I think the approach is a variation on Augmentext type content.
Most professional publishing and database companies do not grow organically because after years of trying to move into new markets and channels, the outfits just raise fees to lawyers, accountants, librarians, and financial analysts. When that stops working, the companies buy stuff and try to make the investments work. Whether it is medical fraud or crazy online encyclopedias, the path to the good old days of commercial professional and database publishing are harder and harder to recapture.
LinkedIn, like a couple of other outfits, is now heading into professional publishing land. If one of the big guys like Thomson Reuters or Ebsco try to hop on the train, the price of ticket has gone up a lot.
I don’t like to say, “I told you so.” I am more inclined to point to Williams James’ comment about “a certain blindness.” If you don’t see it, you cannot react. This is not Google or Facebook “arrogance” on the part of these traditional publishing companies’ management. The inability to spot an hot opportunity, overcome the friction of the “way it was,” and then act in a purposeful manner is the core problem in this business sector. Mark Logic can run conferences that cheerlead slice and dice as a strategy for growth. Outsell-type consultants can spin reports about innovations in publishing. The failed Web masters and unemployed journalists who bill themselves as mavens and poobahs can explain what’s happening in content created by and for professionals.
The problem is that making money means getting in before the CNet’s of the world report the obvious. So, no I told you so. Just a certain blindness. One can get run over crossing the street when blind. Stakeholders, are you listening? Some of the management in the companies in which you have invested may not be able to see the opportunities on the information superhighway.
Stephen E Arnold
Open Access Puts Publishers Out Of Work
January 29, 2013
The Internet is a wonderful resource, offering researchers the ability to information that they would never have had access to before. It also makes it easier to access databases (if you have subscription), but one problem that has come up concerns the publishers. Nature has the news on, “Mathematicians Aim To Take Publishers Out of Publishing.” The Episciences Project is run by a group of mathematicians with the goal to launch free open access journals that will electronically publish their peer-reviewed articles. The goal is that researchers will be able to get their work reviewed and published at a very low cost. The main goal is to offer mathematicians access to a bigger research community without having to rely on commercial journals.
“Many mathematicians — and researchers in other fields — claim that they already do most of the work involved in publishing their research. At no cost, they type up and format their own papers, post them to online servers, join journal editorial boards and review the work of their peers. By creating journals that publish links to peer-reviewed work on servers such as arXiv, Demailly says, the community could run its own publishing system. The extra expense involved would be the cost of maintaining websites and computer equipment…”
The Episciences Project is starting small, but the more prominent mathematicians join the more recognition it will gain in the academic community. The good news is that it makes it easier and cheaper to write a research paper, but the bad news is that trusted journals will fall out of favor.
Whitney Grace, January 29, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Elsevier Moves More Quickly than Its Competitors
January 24, 2013
Well, quite a surprise for a giant, traditional, print-centric outfit. Elsevier may be gearing up to put a head lock on ProQuest (high dollar databases) and Ebsco (databases with stunning names). Both of these competitors, along with outfits like Ovid are trying to adapt to a world in which libraries have to decide between paying the electric bills and licensing six and seven figure online databases. Can these companies continue to grow and generate profits.
Some say, “Yes.” Others say, “Not a chance.”
I am indifferent to the plight of this market sector. Isn’t everything a modern person requires available on a free Web system? If not, do today’s researchers care? With made up results and marketing taking the place of thinking, I am okay with the Google type system. The students whom I know are even more fond of Google than I am.
However, Elsevier may be hip to the new direction in revenue direction. I read “Elsevier Acquires Knovel, Provider of Web-based Productivity Application for the Engineering Community.” Knovel had funding from what I think of as venture sherpas. The K2 task was to develop a different type of electronic information which served specific market needs and warranted real dough. Think thousands for a “content object,” not $0.50 an abstract.
Elsevier, modestly described as “a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services,” acquired Knovel. No misspelling. Just some cute word play which may be lost on some recent college graduates.
Knovel is an electronic publisher which recycles high value content and adds value. Here’s how Knovel describes its “live PDF” innovation:
Knovel is the leading online technical reference resource for 3 reasons. First, Knovel locates more potentially relevant answers in a collection. Second, Knovel is better at quickly narrowing the potential answers to those most relevant to your search. Third, Knovel has interactive tables and graphs to help engineers use and export relevant data, making Knovel so much more than just e-books. (See http://why.knovel.com/company/about-knovel.html)
The key point is number three. The PDF instance allows the reader to plug in data and get an output. Think a baby version of Mathematica for civil engineers and others of their ilk. The idea is that an engineering text can be interacted with.
Elsevier has fired blanks in the electronic publishing sector for years. I won’t wander through the history of Elsevier, but I would like to give the company a happy quack for what looks like a reasonably good move.
How will Elsevier’s competitors respond? Raising prices is one option. Talking about doing bold actions may be another. At some point, fresh thinking and reaching for new opportunities will be necessary. Otherwise, there will be one or two commercial database outfits, one or two database aggregators, and one or two sources of professional content. Once that consolidation takes place, the revenues will be under severe pressure from folks who get advertisers to foot the bill for online information.
In short, nice move Elsevier. Time for the ProQuests and the Ebsco to do something which pumps up the top line in a meaningful and returns a healthy profit to the companies’ stakeholders. Even rich people want a return.
Stephen E Arnold, January 24, 2013
Datamatics Picks Up Important Technology from TEMIS in Strategic Partnership
January 3, 2013
Another partnership in the IT and knowledge management realm has been announced. Datamatics Global Services has decided to create a strategic alliance with TEMIS, a provider of semantic content enrichment solutions. We learned more about this alliance in the article from Semantic Web called “Datamatics Partners with TEMIS.”
As for existing clients, the Digital Publishing Solutions division at Datamatics offers next generation digital solutions to several top publishing houses around the world. The semantically enriched content solutions from TEMIS will enable users to intelligently work with and share increasing volumes of information.
Michael Thuleweit, Managing Director of Datamatics in Europe commented in the article:
“Semantically enriching content enhances the ability to discover, navigate and analyze the most relevant content. Today, this is an essential part of the modern digital publishing workflows. Through our partnership with TEMIS for semantic content enrichment, we will be able to help our customers attract new visitors, differentiate their products and also engage with them with a personalized experience.”
Semantic enrichment is an important aspect to a suite of technology tools that claims to be next-generation. It seems like the folks at Datamatics know what they are doing to strike up a partnership with such a company.
Megan Feil, January 03, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com developer of Augmentext
Some Factoids
December 19, 2012
For a number of years, I have exchanged emails with a person known as “yachts.” In our last exchange, Yachts sent me these factoids.
- Every minute more than 1,649,305 tweets get shared.
- Every minute more than 3,472,225 photos get added to Facebook.
- Every minute more than 2,060 brand new blogs are created.
- Every minute more than 52,488 minutes of video are added to YouTube.
- Every minute more than 31,510 new articles are created by an online newspaper.
- Every minute more than 3,645,833,340 new spam emails are delivered online.
Accurate? Who knows. Interesting? You bet.
Stephen E Arnold, December 19, 2012
At $6,000 This Search Report Is an Autonomy Scale Deal
December 8, 2012
I received a promotional link to the bargain basement enterprise search report, which is hot off the press from Research and Markets. The report “Global Enterprise Search Market” reveals:
At present, the global enterprise search market is in a state of transition on account of the massive consolidation activities in the market in 2010-12. The growing relevance of Big Data has made enterprise search highly valuable. The concept is not restricted to any one vertical as diverse end-user segments are witnessing an explosion of data, all of which has to be navigated through and used optimally for making informed business decisions. It also optimally utilizes resources that exist within the organization – if you can’t find it, you can’t use it. With customers developing a clearer understanding of their enterprise search needs, the solutions too are expected to evolve in tandem.
The contents include:
- Executive Summary
- Market Overview
- Enterprise Search Market
- External Challenges: Drivers and Restraints
- Forecasts and Trends
- Market Share and Competitive Analysis- Total Market
- Market and Technical Trends
- On-premise Segment Breakdown
- Cloud Segment Breakdown
- Hot Company Watchlist
- The Last Word
- Appendix
Hop to buying this report. We are confident that the analysis goes way Beyond Search. Even better, the report contains the last word. Is it Omega?
Stephen E Arnold, December 8, 2012
Dow Jones and MarkLogic Search
December 5, 2012
I remember learning from one of MarkLogic’s marketing professionals that MarkLogic was one of the following an enterprise search system, a big data system, and an analytics system. The person who briefed me before I cut my ties to the company asserted that MarkLogic XML Server was still part of the plumbing, but the company was moving into important new market segments. XML, I concluded, was not as hot a marketing hook as other buzzwords.
I just learned via a spam PR message that Dow Jones is going to deliver a “new generation of user experience” using MarkLogic technology. The XML server part of MarkLogic seems to be unimportant. MarkLogic, therefore, is now an experience delivering machine.
That’s okay with me. With vendors like Vivisimo morphing into “Big Data” players or search vendors like Coveo becoming customer relationship management specialists, I take a broad view.
However, the slicing-and-dicing capability of an XML data management system can boost some types of information processing services. On the other hand, the XQuery language and the verbose nature of XML adds some spice to the mix.
Companies who embrace the XML slice-and-dice thing often generate so many variants of the information that confusion results. Examples range from “auto generated textbooks” to the wild and crazy product line up from Thomson Reuters.
Dow Jones, a traditional publishing company, has reorganized. In its new fit and finish, Dow Jones wants to generate substantive revenue from its various digital products and services. Will MarkLogic trigger a flood of new revenue? This story is one I want to watch. Dow Jones has been in the online business for a long time. Last time I checked Consumer Reports’ online service was outperforming Mr. Murdoch’s property.
With new content players gaining traction, MarkLogic may be Dow Jones last heroic effort to shift from the BRS search approach that has dogged the company for many years. MarkLogic, on the other hand, has to find a way to meet its investors’ expectations for revenue growth. The target, last I heard, was north of $150 million which may be $200 million or more by now. Licensing XML tools to traditional publishing companies may not do the trick. Just my humble opinion offered from rural Kentucky where I am lucky if my hard copy of the Wall Street Journal arrives each day. The longest journey begins with a single step. Perhaps the path circles endlessly through traditional publishing?
Stephen E Arnold, December 4, 2012
Real Journalists and the Daily iPad App
December 3, 2012
Short honk: Publishing companies are good at selling ads, working distribution systems, and creating content for a known audience. I want to ad that these three capabilities work best in the world of paper, educated readers, and business processes set up around the time of Gutenberg.
Creating online success stories is a different kettle of fish. One can’t even wrap the old fish in newsprint any longer. That tells me something.
I read “News Corp. Shutters The Daily iPad App.” Launched with much fanfare a couple of years ago, another “real” journalism outfit has steered its high-tech digital speedboat into a reef. I learned from the article:
The app was initially hampered by technical problems, but the Daily’s key issue was a conceptual one. While the app boasted lots of digital bells and whistles, in the end it was very much a general interest newspaper that seemed to be geared toward people who didn’t really like newspapers. You can’t make that work no matter what kind of platform it uses. The real surprise would have been if News Corp. had found a way to keep the Daily around, since the tablet newspaper’s fate was essentially sealed this summer, when the corporate split was announced.
I think this is a gentle description of another real journalist goof. I am 68 and have worked at a couple of pretty good publishing outfits when paper was king. The ability to use an app and to talk about an app are different from delivering a winner. Paper is one world. Digital is another world. Different in my opinion. Dinosaurs don’t like snow but think the thaw is coming. Did not happen based on what I read.
Stephen E Arnold, December 3, 2012
Print is Dead but Journalism is Still Alive
November 20, 2012
Print media is going down, while digital media continues to grow. Big news moguls have been commenting that anyone with a computer or phone can be a reporter, but that leads into the quantity vs. quality argument. But with the digital media onslaught, new tools have entered the journalism world that makes the field better. Computer World makes note of a new tool in “Open Source Spotlight: How DocumentCloud Adds Depth to Digital Journalism.”
DocumentCloud is an open source product designed for the Internet journalist or college student. It provides bibliographic information, annotation tools, and a Cloud where it can be added a primary source document. DocumentCloud was made for journalist by journalists and it is already being used by many top news Web sites. As an open source project, DocumentCloud is powered by:
“Behind the scenes the project is driven by software including Apache’s Solr/Lucene search platform. DocumentCloud also uses the Tesseract OCR engine developed by HP and open sourced in 2005. “We, in turn, have been giving back to the open source community as well,” Pilhofer says.”
Since the open source community prides itself on sharing, DocumentCloud shares every line of code. Journalism and technology have always worked hand and hand, though print and digital fight each other. DocumentCloud closes the barrier for any reluctant technology users. The DocumentCloud team takes advantage of the Apache Lucene search, much like how LucidWorks did for its search applications. LucidWorks uses Apache Lucene to power its powerful and trusted enterprise and Big Data search products.
Whitney Grace, November 20, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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