From: <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 12:10:04 +0000 Jim, Many thanks for your kind words. I'll elaborate on what I spoke of: Our gratis OA versions are free for everyone (who has an Internet connection) and offer a read-only experience. No links, no ability to print, no ability to copy-paste but 100% access to the content. However, we do offer the ability for users to share these editions via social media and to embed them in their websites or blogs (and quite a few do). Our premium versions come in two flavours: PDF and ePub (not all titles, yet). Since we are allergic to DRM, there is no DRM. ['Leakage' of premium editions out to non-paying audiences happens but it does not erode our ability to generate sufficient income to pay our bills and wages. We're non-profit, so our financial target is 'just' to fund investment and pay bills and wages.] Personally, I think offering DRM-free editions is an important part of our offer and is one contributory factor to the loyalty of our subscribers. Subscribers can offer unlimited use to their patrons (including walk-in visitors), so if everyone in a class needs simultaneous access, no problem. Educators can include our content in course packs if they are at subscribing institutions. When can you have e-books with more functions? Well, for many of our titles, now. We offer links to underlying data (in Excel) to each chart and graph (in most books, not all authors will give us the data) and we're getting better at linking out from bibliographies and references. Each chapter, chart and table is available as a separate object (each with its own homepage and DOI) so users can discover and download just the parts of the book they need. Since we also publish working papers and datasets on the same platform, we're able to offer these as related content and via the same search engine. We also publish interactive indicators from the datasets which can be shared and embedded. So, we're some of the way toward the knowledge resource I wrote about. However, we're a long way from where I would like to be, the journey is long! Carey Newman made the point about separating discovery from delivery - and we agree. We deliver MARC records to subscribers and have recently completed work to have all our titles discoverable via the likes of Summon and ExLibris. We are also part of the group of publishers working with Gardner and Inger on a study to learn more about how our users discover content - we see this as a vital piece of the puzzle. We're constantly looking to add further value for both readers and librarians. So, we're investing in XML conversion (you'd be surprised how many authors give us 'ready-made' PDFs so they can control how the content looks on a page. Re-engineering this 'dead' content so we can offer the sorts of service you've listed, is non-trivial). This year we're going to be running some experiments with semantic tools and will be re-engineering our platform from top to bottom (it's seven years old, so, in Internet time, aged!) So, when will what you describe come about? Well, I can only say that we're able to deliver some of it now and we're working on being able to offer more. The challenge is cost and complexity. As I hinted above, one of our challenges is getting authors to play ball. They are increasingly tempted to do the layout themselves because tools like InDesign are very accessible. This gives them greater control over how their content is presented and this, they like. Not all are willing to give us data or do the detailed work of hunting for persistent links to referenced content. However, if we, as publishers, are to build the experience you're looking for, we need to have the content in a consistent, structured, form across the whole catalogue. There's an interesting tension here with what the author is aiming for and the cost of 'unpacking' what an author gives us and adding the value that will deliver the features you seek is significant. One would have thought authors would be keen to offload the layout work and just hand over the manuscript, but from our experience the desire to do-it-yourself seems to be strong right now - and I've yet to meet an author who really understands that digital content means the end of the 'page'. One final comment: all of what I describe is expensive and can only be cost-effective at scale. We publish c250 new titles a year (English language editions, we also release c150 translations) which translates into some 30,000 digital objects (because we publish as a granular level) each of which has to be processed and managed each year. This complexity means having a sophisticated e-publishing infrastructure to give the service librarians and readers need at an affordable price. A couple of years ago, we came to the conclusion that our catalogue's not big enough to sustain the IT investments needed in the future. Our solution was to invite other International Organisations to share our e-publishing infrastructure and two are now using it (The Commonwealth and the Nordic Council) with one to launch next month (the United Nations). I can only imagine that other scholarly book publishers must be looking to 'scale-up' in one way or another because e-publishing's overheads (both IT kit and skilled staff) are significant and are unlikely to get any smaller. I hope this gives some insight into what it will take to deliver what librarians and readers are asking for. Toby Toby Green Head of Publishing OECD > On 27 Jan 2016, at 02:42, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 20:11:23 -0700 > > > My thanks to the various contributions here. Carey Newman was most > provocative, essentially telling me in the very nicest possible way to > get over it – stop wanting an e-book to please my book-wanting eye. > Others performed more as enablers for my hankering, and I’m still > inclined to accept their encouragement. I had forgotten, until one old > friend here reminded me, that it was another old friend, Mike Jensen > at National Academies Press, who first successfully implemented the > cripple-your-book strategy for making material available on-line and > sustaining print sales. Revolutionary twenty years ago, an albatross, > I fear, now for many of us. > > BUT: the Jensen strategy put the crippled books up on the > open web for worldwide free access. My complaint a few nights ago was > about “e-books” that we “buy” at a price I could complain about and > that are only accessible to our university community inside the > paywall and come crippled. That’s a distinction with a difference, I > think. In the new technical language of librarianship that I’ve begun > to master, that’s nuts. > > AND: I learned one incidental thing in reading this > thread and looking at the Open Syllabus thread started by the article > the other day in the New York Times. Of their > books-most-frequently-taught (where, as somebody pointed out, they > follow in the footsteps of the BYTES project Ann O. led some years ago > and which produced, on a smaller data set, quite similar conclusions), > 33 of the top 50 are readily available in open access, howbeit often > in translations that now ring a little quaintly to our ears. The > aging of translations gives print publishers the opportunity to keep > lots of versions of Augustine and Plato and Marx in print, selling > briskly in exactly the place – the curriculum – where open access > might be thought most welcome. > > ONE COMMENT: To my admittedly biased eye, the structure > by which our vendors make content available for discovery, then charge > us when we begin to use it (so many clicks into the content and the > library has bought it, though the user does not know they have > triggered a purchase) is potentially useful, but right now, the number > of clicks is too small and the price is too high. I still wonder if > publishers actually see what a hash the e-book vendors make of their > products. > > SO: what is to be done? I’ll go back to Toby Green’s > admirable post and ask him to say what it will take and when it might > come about for there to be the premium e-book editions of which he > speaks. I still seek (and tens of thousands of ASU students need) > books that are fully functional when accessed on-line. Charts, > diagrams, illustrations, footnotes, indices, hot-linked references and > cross-references, ease of use – in short, digital objects with the > ability to meet the demands of those who could be reading the same > book in print and of those who want to take advantage of the new media > to get new functionality: when and how can we get these? We can > argue about price later, but that artifact does not now exist. > > The e-book hasn’t been invented yet. Who will do it and when? > > Jim O’Donnell