Category Archives: Disruption

On Qscience, Innovation and optimism in journals publishing

Posted on July 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Over the last few months my activity levels on my blog, twitter and elsewhere has taken a downturn.

This was in large part because of the high degree of uncertainty surrounding my departure from Emerald, and my arrival in Qatar to take up the post of Chief Technology Officer at Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals. I’m now into my second week and it feels right to reflect a little, and put down a marker that I can look back in six or 12 months time and see how things panned out.

Once I decided to put something down here I was wondering where to start, and then I read this piece from The Tao of Innovation on Optimism in Innovation.

Moses Ma writes that “the greatest risk for startup failure lies in not being optimistic enough”. And he’s right. Try building something when you and your co-workers are pessimistic about it’s chances for success, or approval from the management team, or even an acknowledgement that you tried something on behalf of everyone else. Basically, it can’t done.

Even the most optimistic would happily acknowledge that there are so many ways in which your project/idea can go wrong you need deep wells of resolve and persistance. In other words one must be optimistic about the final outcome, otherwise all is lost.

This applies to nations too, as well as people. Which brings me back to the Qatar Foundation.

I’m still struggling to fully understand the scale and scope of this venture, started in 1997 by the Emir of Qatar to improve education, research and science capability in the country and the region. It’s become a world class facility in the last couple of years – I read last week the researchers here even discovered a new exo-planet and called it Qatar 2-B!

And given all the turmoil in the region, and the sometimes shaky ground upon which ventures like this are built, it’s working! The optimism that drives the QF vision is infectious and inspiring. Perhaps I became a little cycnical but the freedom, indeed the insistence, that one simply “does it” is energising and life affirming. That’s remarkable and is exactly what I’m here for – to make happen the things I wanted to make happen in the UK but couldn’t.

The mandate with BQFJ and our platform Qscience.com is simple – connect researchers from around the region, and the world and make their research easily available everywhere. Simple really. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to working with others to build new services for Open Access authors and researchers. Qscience.com is going to be an amazing research facility and showcase for original arab research and hopefully a means to cross a sometimes tricky cultural divide.

Much of what is built might not work but some of it will, and what does work will make a difference to the research capability of the entire region.

And the vital catalyst – optimism that the freedom exists to try and to fail, optimism that hard work will be rewarded, and optimism that what qscience is doing can make a difference!

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Posted in Discovery, Disruption, Social Web, Technology

Resolving the OA affordability question :Micro-Finance and Open Access Publishing.

Posted on May 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

A few years ago I was introduced to KIVA. Kiva are a non-profit organisation whose mission is, quote “to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world”.

I have become deeply impressed with the Kiva mission, and it’s astonishing success. Since it was found in 2005

Attracted 586,369 Kiva lenders
Paid out $216 million in loans
Oversees a 98.75% Repayment rate

How Kiva Works

Kiva Partners with a local Microfinance Institution
Field Partners Disburse Loans and Upload Stories tot he Kiva web portal
Lenders Browse Profiles and Lend
Kiva Disburses Lenders’ Funds to the Field Partner
Entrepreneurs Repay Their Loans
Kiva Provides Repayments to Lenders

It’s a simple system that appears to work well for a particular segment of the population.

Micro Finance and OA Affordability?

Can the model be adapted to provide the funds for Author Processing Charges (APC) for Open Access research papers? I think it can, here’s how it might work.

An Open Access Exchange stores preprints of papers from authors. The abstract is free to view and alongside it is the preferred OA Journal and the cost of submitting it to that Journal – the APC
Academic and researchers can become members ($10 per month?). They can contribute to the APC fund for their chosen author’s paper – as little as 5$ to any amount. Members contributing more than 50% of a papers APC are credited in the final paper as a co-author
Authors can ‘earn’ additional APC credits by agreeing to review papers from other authors. Credits are debited to the reviewer’s Open Access Exchange account when a publishers accepts the reviewed paper for publication
When a Paper (a) has enough to cover APC charges and (b) has been reviewed by at least one other author it is (c) submitted to the preferred OA journal for publication

I imagine that the Open Access Exchange would be best operated as a OA industry-wide, and OA industry funded, Not For Profit organisation.

Alternatively, a forward looking publisher or VC could provide the startup capital required to get this going and help the make the OA model truly sustainable.

Who benefits?

Authors from emerging and developed economies would benefit from the exchange because their paper would be published and given the widest possible exposure in a OA Journal.

OA Journal publishers benefit from a stable supply of papers from a global pool of authors, without having to subsidise the business with the offer of waived OA charges to authors from institutions or economies that can’t or won’t pay. Ultimately this may have the effect of bring down APC charges in the long terms since the charges won’t need to cover the cost of authors who can’t pay APCs. And since the paper has been reviewed in the xchange prior to publication the publisher need not bear the cost of peer review, bring down APCs even further.

I should stress that this a thought experiment right now, scribbling it down here helps me to spell out the structure.

If you would like to help me set up the Open Exchange and make OA accessible and affordable, get in touch!

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Posted in Business Models, Community, Discovery, Disruption, Library, Social Web, Technology

Combining NFC technology and print?

Posted on April 27, 2011 | 1 Comment

I can’t believe It’s only a year since I developed a print to digital QR Code service that linked printed articles to dynamic bibliometrics pages.

And now, if you believe the hype, Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is set to make QR Codes obsolete.I think this is a shame, and an opportunity missed.

For more information on NFC and some recent market analysis, AccuraCast have a story here

Unlike NFC Tags, QR Codes can be created for free, and then saved and printed however many times you need them. Embed them in a PDF article and there is a viable link to a digital space that can show rich media, enhanced metadata or even the social graph of the content readership.

I’m not sure I can do that with NFC technology; it altogether seems more complex – and much more expensive.

Perhaps there’s a ray of light with TagAge. TagAge aim to combine print and digital experiences using NFC tags with no minimum order quantity. It still isn’t free to create the tag, but for limited pilots and experimenting until costs come down it might be the way to go.

http://www.tagage.net/

I’d really like to print posters, books, journals and articles embedded with NFC Tags around customer library spaces – publisher and librarian giving patrons a really interactive and engaging content experience, while promoting the values of each – win win?

Any librarians out there who willing to give it a go should call me.

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Posted in Business Models, Discovery, Disruption, Library, Mobile, Personalisation, Technology

My Digital Strategy Manifesto for Scholarly Publishers

Posted on March 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

Some publishers are struggling to cope with digital disruption

It’s been over a year since I submitted a vision and mission for Digital Strategy here at Emerald. I reviewed my thinking recently, and the statements that formed the basis for communicating the strategy. For the most part I’m comfortable with it as a basis for approaching digital disruption and opportunity in scholarly publishing. In truth there’s nothing here other than plain common sense in my view but it’s suprising how the common-sense view is often looked over.

Since this manifesto was published the iPad has been released, and only yesterday iPad 2 was announced. I don’t think I would substantially later the core of the strategy; if anything it simply underlines the need for publishers to focus on content agility, work with good partners and focus on the needs of their audience rather than the spec of the shiniest new toy on the block.

Here’s a generic version of the digital strategy manifesto I put together last year.

Mission

– Provide access to content for subscribers how they want it and where they want it

– Seek to understand and exploit digital channels that support research and learning better than anyone else

– Ensure digital service operations are cost effective and deliver value for money to customers and your business

– Design and develop services that drive usage and promote sharing of the best research practices and new knowledge in your markets

– Become a highly interoperable and standards compliant business that is easy to do business with

Strategic Focus

– Convenient: In observing and supporting a diverse access policy that is easy to use, stable and is evidenced in your support of a wide range of consumer and professional channels, devices and standards

– Value for Money: The creation and management of Digital services that promote usage which continue to demonstrate relevance of your content and value for money to the customer

– System Management and Service: Aspire to attain 100% uptime for Reliability and Quality of Service access to holdings for all subscribers

– Standards : Observe industry standards where they exist, providing high levels of confidence in your ability to support access or content standards around the world

– Market and User Behaviours : Ensure knowledge about your markets and user behaviours is up-to-date, accurate and informs your content and service development programme

Growth and Sustainability

– Increase access and alerting options and usage year on year

– Direct investments into digital channels that are viable and relevent to the academic and professional audience

Critical Success factors

– Managing Flagship portals and sites. You web site is a showcase for Digital Scholarly Publishing. It affirms your commitment to easy to use and powerful services that provide access to content from a leading publisher of research

– Embedding in professional and Academic communities. Your non-Article content will provide guidance, insight and support communities of interest and practice. Provide tools and mechanisms that support and encourage dialogue that foster a greater sense of community and attachment to your mission

– Management of Access Complexity. Recognise that consumer electronic devices and ubiquitous web access has raised user expectations of access and service. Acknowledge and manage channel complexity to ensure consistency and quality of service in support of digital access to learners and researchers.

– Management of Content Complexity. Appreciate that the web space is social and participative. You may need to manage an increasingly diverse range of content, other than plain text. You uwill ndertake to manage content complexity in an easy to understand manner that provides opportunities to create new content products and community based services.

– Content and Service Agility. Your web and IT partners will strive to produce hardware and software designs and working practices that deliver greater levels of re-use, modularity and a superior return on investment

– A Global presence, with local sensitivity. Research is growing in all parts of the world so you will develop a sophisticated understanding of the means by which users prefer to access and search for content and work to deliver access to content from regional centres and social media portals.

– Work in Partnership. Seek to work closely with customers and partners to develop services and access options that improve usage and awareness of your content and research focus

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Posted in Business Models, Community, Disruption, Personalisation, Technology

Scholarly Publishers : How to Make Money from your API

Posted on March 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’m a firm believer in the strategic value of our API. However, it’s no surprise to me that the most common question I am asked regarding the API is – “How are we going to make money from it?”.

A contributor to The ProgrammableWeb, Daniel Jackson, of NPR has put together a really good article that tries to answer this question – http://blog.programmableweb.com/2010/08/25/how-to-make-money-with-your-api/

In truth the article was published last year but that makes it no less valuable today – it’s packed with good advice, not least the fact that you may find your most valuable audience different to the one you have in mind right now.

Often, the common target audience for an API is the developer community. And while that audience is an interesting and potentially important one, it is not where the greatest value can be realized.

When Emerald started to rebuild it’s content platform I worked hard to ensure that their would be an API, and that it would become the cornerstone of our content platform. That happened, andEmeraldInsight (our flagship site) is now the key audience for the Emerald API. We are preparing to deploy the API for other audiences – including developers, partners and customers – as well as Emerald content product managers.

I would love to be able to look at our API usage two years from now. I wonder if it will show the same breakdown as the NPR API in the ProgrammableWeb Article?

NPR’s experience is worth inspection. Their page views increased over 100% in the year they introduced the API. The API was the main driver of growth, but the people who used it were NPR product and content owners, not the developer or partner community.

In other words, the API enabled NPR to more quickly develop the content services that the NPR team wanted to build out; it improved their internal processes and liberated innovation in the firm.

I sincerely believe that our API can do the same for Emerald; we need to encourage and educate our content product owners to use the API services that are available and build really great services for their communities – and that’s how your API will make money.

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Posted in Business Models, Disruption, Mobile, Personalisation, Technology

The era of ‘free digital content’ is coming to an end – thanks to Google.

Posted on March 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’ve posted about the disruption to publishing models brought about not by publishers but by technology firms before.

Here’s another piece from Campus Technology.

Google Enters the E-Book Fray. What Does It Mean?

The new Google eBooks platform could change the way readers look at digital literature.

By John K. Waters

02/28/11

When one of the country’s biggest technology companies–a company
that has already digitized more than 15 million volumes as part of a
mission to make humanity’s literary treasures available to all–decides
to sell e-books, it’s easy to see the move as a defining moment.

You can read the rest of the article here

It’s a good article and outlines how Google may change the whole access model for digital books – 15 million titles have already been digitised. In tying the content together with a retail mechanism, and the very recent One Pass development, Google is saying it’s OK to pay for content.

Apple effectively brought the free (and Illegal) MP3 to an end by providing the users with a seamleass and childishly simple retails experience- Google may well do the same for digital content, and if the music publishing experience is anything to go by, we should tread carefully.

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Posted in Business Models, Discovery, Disruption, Technology

The eBook since 1971.

Posted on March 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

This is a fascinating infographic. I for one didn’t know that the history of the eBooks went back as far as 1971. I might have said late 80′s but that would have been a guess.

Discovered on the TeleRead blog – http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/40-years-of-ebooks-infographic-by-piotr-kowalczyk/

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Posted in Disruption, Library, Technology, Uncategorized

TOC 2011. Reflections.

Posted on February 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

The TOC in the title stands for Tools of Change. It’s a technology conference for publishing and publishers hosted by O’reilly. It started in san Jose in 2007, and now takes place in New York each February.

THere are other publishing technology jamborees but the depth and breadth of contributions from media companies, publishers, artists, agents, authors technologists and entrepreneurs is unmatched.

This was my third TOC and it’s come a long way in a short space of time. The first TOC was held 2 weeks before the iPhone was first released, and here we had a very big number of delegates with iPads and I’m pretty sure upwards of 70% had an iphone (or similar). And nobody thought anything of it. My memory of the first few TOCs is that they were super future oriented and very exciting, but when it ended, and I trooped back to our day job, I couldn’t put what I saw in TOC into practice, or improve my business based on the lessons of others at conference sharing their experiences – it was all so new everyone was making it up as they went along.

This time it was different. This TOC appealed to the head and heart, not just the heart.

This is perhaps exemplified in the Day 1 Keynotes. A barnstorming change-is-a-coming-and-y’all-need-to be-ready speech/lecture/sermon from Skip Pritchard warned the publishing industry and everyone in it to prepare for a period of continous change. There’s nothing new in that, but it does make sound commerical sense to stay focussed on one’s business, while not allowing the past to control the future. Definitely one for the head – it’s a shame it almost got lost in the rest of the noise.

Juxtaposing Skip was Margaret Atwood. I think it’s fair to say that for many this was the highlight of the conference. Margaret played down the ‘change’ hype from Skip with wit, charm and wisdom. Margaret asked about the future of the author in the highly connected, social and digital world where users expect content for free, and expressed concern for authors and their main source of sustenance – the cheese sandwich.

Referring to her Canadian roots, she compared authors like herself to Moose. Moose are a Primary Source in the food chain. About 30 species depend on the moose for their own survival. Even a dead moose can sustain others. Make the moose extinct, and the others soon follow. It’s hard not to follow the logic. Margaret’s slides were photo’s of her hand drawn pictures, and they made for a wonderful picture book to her audio story. Our hearts were tugged.

Theo Grey and his Elements for the iPad, and a sneak preview of Solar System expertly combined both. Theo displayed the passion and tenacity of someone who really cares about what he does. It’s important to him, but so is paying the bills. The Elements, and the Solar System are beautiful, tactile, exploiting the best of the book and the capabilities of a connected digital platform. Theo shared with us how the Elements came to be, and we learned that he actually built a Periodic table table after discovering the Periodic Table from Mendeleev wasn’t actually a table! What was interesting was that while his website was appreciated he couldn’t make any money from it. He needed to print a hefty coffee table book to do that. And then came the iPad. With commendable focus Theo and his team designed and built a new kind of textbook for the new platfom, inventing new tools along the way. Head and Heart as one.

The conference sessions were a good mix of head and heart too. Some were filled with hard data on ebook sales, and consumer behaviors. Others provided practical, real-world advice on how to get things done. Special shout out to Ken Yarmosh for an outstanding session on the Business, Strategy and Marketing of Apps.

Another strong theme thoughout was standards. Metadata standards in particular. I often despair at the complexity of the standards landscape but when Mark Bide (Editeur) pointed out that compromising (i.e. simplifying) one’s metadata means that the content product is compromised too, and will lead to less sales and poorer usage. As a Journals Publisher reliant on usage this point was well taken.

The ePUB3 standard was formally unveilled here. ePUB 3 promises much, and if combined with HTML 5, it could signal a step change in the quality of content available to portable devices. I won’t go into these standards here, others can do a way better job of explaining these than me.

And of course there are the vendors and exhibitors. Lots of eBook conversion businesses, and content database/technology providers to talk to.

This was a tweeter’s conference too. With over 6000 tweets (my last count), there was as much conversation online as offline. I love this development. If you haven’t followed a conference’s live tweets from the delegates you’re missing a very important and very instructive dimension from your conference experience. Give it a go!

As the conference unfolded Apple announced their subscription plans, and a day later Google announced One Pass. I suspect we’ll know by TOC 2012 how these new developments have played out but one thing’s for sure – it confirms the structural and irreversable shift in power from the publisher to the tech firm. Why? Because the publisher most powerful bargaining chip/asset they ever had was distribution, which now rests with tech giants. More on this to come.

As ever I learned a lot, met some inspiring and exciting people and returned to the UK energised and hoping to put into practice some of what I saw in New York. And this time I think I might be able to do so.

TOC 2011: Margaret Atwood, “The Publishing Pie: An Author’s View”

james Bridle. Delivered a fabulous closing keynote

[Caption]

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Posted in Business Models, Conference, Disruption, Technology, Uncategorized

55 Interesting Social Media Infographics

Posted on December 5, 2010 | 1 Comment

I like Infographics; here are some good examples from Yanuar Prisanto

Fantastic news for all you social media addicts out there
because we’ve complied a total of 60 infographics that are related to
social media! Here are some of the interesting one “How are mobile
phones changing social media”, “Journey of a Tweet”, “Evolution of
Twiter” and a lot more. Prepare to get information overwhelmed. Full
list after jump!