IP News Fall 1996 Table of
Contents IP News Title Page
|
On September 10, 1996, the AAP/PSP Journals Committee conducted a seminar in New York City on "Internet Case Studies: How to Publish Electronically." The Seminar was moderated by Alberta Fitzpatrick from the _New England Journal of Medicine_ and featured some of the best talent in electronic publishing including Robert Badger from Springer-Verlag, Karen Hunter from Elsevier Science, Taissa Kusma from Academic Press, and Gregory St. John from John Wiley & Sons.
The audience was a mixture of publishers from both the commercial and society sectors as well as a scattering of printers, subscription agents, and one information broker. What was missing from the audience was a real, live systems house representative who could have shed some light on the process from the other side. One speaker should have been from the technical side to balance out the presentations.
While the case studies were helpful and informative they raised more questions than they answered. Many of the traditional business and organizational issues were covered in depth such as proper planning, careful project management, choosing an effective partner, and testing.
The audience enjoyed the openness and straight forwardness of the publishers on confessing what really happened to each of the projects and identifying the pitfalls to avoid such as working with a vendor that knows both publishing and systems.
Publishing on the Internet is just in its infancy. The initial attempts to convert main line print STM journals is challenging as one has to re-engineer the internal workflow to a production level and in many houses that is no easy effort. Moving every title to SGML and selecting a production model to support Internet delivery is costly and challenging according to Karen Hunter who chronicled Elsevier's experience in getting ready for Science Direct.
While most of the technical issues are contracted out to specialists, the real issues facing publishers are not in the technical arena, but in the commercial reality of making the transition to the Internet.
Of primary concern is how will anyone make money in this new medium. Everyone agrees that the Internet is here to stay and some even argue that the STM journals will all be available in electronic form in the new [near?] future and as a discipline will be the first to face the transition issues.
Unanswered at this time is how will publishers survive the successful financial transition from the paper subscription model to delivering their journals via the Internet. Academic Press's Ideal service described by Taissa Kusma is a bold step in a new direction in marketing STM journals to large consortiums in a broad package arrangement. Other publishers may find this approach enlightening but subscription agents will be hard pressed to find any role for their services in this new model.
The library user community is growing impatient for solutions that lower the cost of journals and are still very vocal about the models arriving in the marketplace. Publishers reported some of the exchanges from libraries about passwords, restrictive licences, and other forms of limiting access to qualified users. No system is perfect.
What is clear is that we are all in for a wild ride with libraries looking for cost savings and publishers trying to protect the revenue base while at the same time experimenting with the new technology. Instead of lower cost, the experience from the publishers reporting in the various case studies indicates that the cost to move to Internet journals is as, or more, expensive for the publisher than the print. Maintaining two production flows is expensive, re-engineering the pipeline to support electronic publishing is expensive, and finding qualified staff to run these operations is frustrating (and expensive). As soon as someone is trained, they are hired away by other publishers who need the talent and want to avoid the long training time.
Publishers are experimenting with different financial models that would produce the returns required to continue in business. Having everything out on the 'Net without proper security protection is still a concern as is watching out for a new breed of competitor such as the start-up HighWire Press out of Stanford. The cost to enter the electronic publishing business is far less if one does not have years of print baggage to convert and a production line to transform.
The pressure to experiment and develop new electronic products comes at a time when subscription units continue to decline and the pressure is on library budgets to purchase more electronic products such as CD-ROMs, local databases, and full-text journals. The acquisitions money for books and journals is being divided into more areas making the scramble for funds more difficult each year.
The publishers predict a growing number of electronic experiments with different software packages that will continue to hit the marketplace. New companies or aggregators will continue to mount electronic journals for publishers, control the subscription access, and provide the marketing feedback. The STM community seems to be the first all-electronic community possible and many end-users are ready for desktop delivery.
On the horizon is a new type of electronic journal that is multi-media and requires high-speed bandwidth such as ISDN. Both publishers and some universities are working in this area. The ability to deliver far more information in different formats will change the publishing landscape but not before more secure intellectual property systems are in place.
The Internet represents an exciting frontier full of challenges and risks, some of the bravest have started moving forward and the case studies showed what can be done but clearly there is much more that is coming. We are just at the beginning of a new age in publishing.
| IP News Fall 1996 Table of
Contents |
IP News Title Page |
|
 |