It is always interesting to read the predictions laid forth by institutions, organizations and individuals around December/January time each year, as they decide what they feel will be important in the industry for the year ahead. Now that the New Year is fully underway and things have calmed down somewhat, we have decided to take a few of these lists and frame them together in a review piece on the trends in academic publishing and libraries. Think of it as a quick-reference guide to the key topics at play today.
Impact
Discussed at length, analyzed and pulled apart, but by no means concluded. Discussing the measurements of academic impact is at the top of a lot of agendas this year, particularly where institutional funding relies on it, as in the UK, for example (see the REF14). Despite this, there is a growing movement within research communities looking to demonstrate the personal impact of research projects, mostly metered by the various types of output; journal articles, datasets, presentations, blogging and so on. Writing for Publishing Perspectives, George Lossius, CEO of Publishing Technology questions the survival of the Impact Factor in these digital times. The emergence of alternative (or ‘complementary’) tools such as Altmetric.com, ImpactStory and other altmetric services has opened up new possibilities for measuring digital footprints across the web for scholarly content. Will they win widespread adoption in 2013, or will the three main traditional bibliometric indicators remain strong? Ian Craig from Wiley, in his blog post, “Metrics – Alternatives to Altmetrics?” certainly suggests that in terms of reliability and simplicity, impact calculations will remain with the traditional citation-based Thomson-Reuters Impact Factor, the SCImago Journal Rank indicator or the Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP). Altmetrics are still very much in their early days but the future will be exciting for those wishing to see a more complete picture of impact, interest or awareness.
Data
Big data, small data. 2012 really was the year of data, and its big variety has left its mark like a good New Year’s hangover. While many failed to see the point, or are left confused by extraordinarily complicated datasets, many jumped on the bandwagon to see how data might bring added value and new services to the industry. As Gartner relayed in an article for Campus Technology, big data will become the basis for a new generation of applications, and will employ around 4.4 million people by 2015. The apps will be connected to complex, massive data sources, and offer real-time insight for end users to make informed decisions. 
One such tool, Mendeley Institutional Edition, Swets worked to develop in partnership with Mendeley. It looks at the data being recorded by the Mendeley database of over 68M documents, collated by more than 2M users, to focus its efforts on providing useful insights to librarians on journal usage and publication output within their institution. The take up has been excellent, and attracted prestigious institutions across many regions of the world.
Mobile
The consumer industry is very focused on making digital content work for mobile. Can the same be said of the academic world? More and more publishers of journals and eBooks are adopting delivery techniques and better coding into their websites and content delivery systems to render content more effectively on mobile operating systems. James Long, Editorial Director of Digital for Macmillan concentrates on mobile for his 2013 predictions in a post on The Literary Platform site. He stressed the need for publishers to really focus efforts on building content that works across formats, and also uses the full scope of capabilities that mobile devices offer; he refers to digital color picture books and heightened functionality across them. The New York Times also hails mobile as the dominant force in tech for 2013, and it’s easy to see how this will spill over to many sectors, including the academic. On the other side, there is the hardware itself. The MindShift blog from KQED has predicted, as many others have, that the concept of BYOD for classrooms (bring your own device) will become increasingly important in 2013 and beyond. This idea renders content as key, making it completely format independent, provided it works across all common devices and operating systems. For libraries, this may mean hosting multiple formats of the same content within the library collection, which in turn relies on publishers providing the various versions.
Openness
Undoubtedly one of the larger topics today in academic publishing, open access (OA) will certainly not go away in 2013, and is destined to become much larger. A NISO working group has recently been established, looking into the standardization of metadata for OA content, which will mean even further levels of discovery, indexing and aggregation for free-to-read academic material. Open Education Database (OEDb) uses 4 of its 8 2013 predictions on various OA-related topics. Although incorrectly calling open access “open source” on several occasions, the post covers the transition to OA from subscription journals, gold open access and Creative Commons licensing. Add in a bit more on discovery and metadata standards as mentioned above, as well as the pilots to manage article processing charges and it’s nearly a complete picture. Libraries are also very keen to avoid publishers benefitting from ‘double-dipping’, and are pushing for price reviews on subscription titles.
Let’s not forget some of the players in 2012 openness: Figshare for data sets and non-traditional content formats; eLife and PeerJ who have both now launched their early content offerings and look to make a play for some of the market currently dominated by PLoS and BMC. There are many other OA-related organizations that will be closely followed in 2013.
MOOCs?
Not a brand of synthesizers, but MOOCs (massive open online course) are free online courses for anyone, anywhere who wants to learn something. These courses have been revolutionizing the learning experience for a while now, with relative giants Coursera, Udacity and edX being the dominant organizations in this growing trend. Most industry commentators have covered them at one point or another, and their popularity is likely to grow even more in the coming year or two. A WCET Learn post covers MOOCs in some detail, suggesting that in the future they will dish out credit to course attendees, become monetized (which seems inevitable), and may even implode to become simple online courses that are neither free nor open. The prevalence and importance of MOOCs is further stressed by Michael Feldstein in an interview for Inside Higher Ed, where he shares his own predictions for 2013.
Print on Demand
This came from a comment on a blog post, rather than a blog itself. A publisher at Flying Pen Press has predicted that over the course of 2013 and beyond, publishers will look for 
more revenue from their booklists, and particularly look at implementing more wide scale print on demand (POD) availability for the more profitable titles. The comment is more related to consumer books, but it is easy to see how, in the STM context, the same might happen very quickly as publishers try to diversify revenue streams by making the most of what they already have first. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.
eBook lending
While we have a blog post dedicated to the conundrum of inter-library loan (ILL) of eBooks, there is a growing concern that ILL will not be possible as a way to share resources and effectively expand the boundaries of a single library’s collection, as was done in the days of print ILL. In the UK Guardian’s article, “Our publishing predictions for 2013”, they envisage a conflict between libraries and publishers on this topic. There is definitely a lot of discussion going on at the moment in this area and it seems the likely best-fit solution is for eBook sellers or aggregators to arrange standardized short-term, and low-cost, licenses to meet the demand for ILL.
Enhanced eBooks will finally flourish...?
We have heard a lot about enhanced eBooks, and their day certainly seems to have been coming for several years now. In another SwetsBlog post we looked at the lack of user-centered design approaches for eBooks, and how the academic eBook market really began as a by-product of the print market, and therefore functionality and enhancements were missing from the start. Quoting industry figures from Wiley, Bowker Market Research and Booktrix, Digital Book World predicts that 2013 will be the year for more interactivity in eBooks. Mostly fuelled by the exponential growth in tablet computing, the academic segment will generate more demand for non-fiction and learning eBooks to be more immersive and intuitive. Perhaps the equivalent of an enhanced eBook is merely just an “app”. Coliloquy, a digital publisher, asks whether the book formats still work (ePub etc) or if the app environment will be the leading force in making eBooks more useful ,they say, “Publishers will increasingly need to figure out if the app platforms (with their interactivity, multimedia capabilities, and controlled environments) serve their authors better, or if books (with their ubiquity, increasing flexibility, and familiar interface) do better.” Interesting ideas, and ultimately it seems up to publisher will, and budget.
The textbook
Another conundrum perpetuated by academic publishers in is the digital textbook. Many titles are simply not converted to electronic form by publishers to avoid cannibalizing their extremely lucrative course adoption market, where updated editions are frequently published to update older, out-of-date content. Our library customers at Swets frequently mention this as an issue they hear about from their student members. As eBooks become the norm, more and more end users are getting comfortable using this format, so the natural step is to digitize textbooks as well to meet this demand. Of course, many textbooks have already been digitized and circulated, but it is by no means the norm. Referring again to George Lossius’ post for Publishing Perspectives, he touches on the positive aspects of a digital textbook program – easy content updates, search, interactivity and excellent potential for end-user behavior metrics and measurements. The negatives suggest that perhaps e-reading devices are not yet standard among student populations, which accounts for the low adoption rates that have been observed. “Watch this space” is the message, but it seems unlikely that 2013 will be the year of the e-textbook.
Did we miss any?
There are many topics running through our industry at the moment and it’s hard to capture all of them in one go. Are there any other areas you think will be of keen interest in 2013?
What are your predictions for this year and beyond? Add a comment below and let us know.
A Review of 2013 Academic Publishing Predictions
19 feb 2013 Filed under: Research ProductivityIt is always interesting to read the predictions laid forth by institutions, organizations and individuals around December/January time each year, as they decide what they feel will be important in the industry for the year ahead. Now that the New Year is fully underway and things have calmed down somewhat, we have decided to take a few of these lists and frame them together in a review piece on the trends in academic publishing and libraries. Think of it as a quick-reference guide to the key topics at play today.
Impact
Discussed at length, analyzed and pulled apart, but by no means concluded. Discussing the measurements of academic impact is at the top of a lot of agendas this year, particularly where institutional funding relies on it, as in the UK, for example (see the REF14). Despite this, there is a growing movement within research communities looking to demonstrate the personal impact of research projects, mostly metered by the various types of output; journal articles, datasets, presentations, blogging and so on. Writing for Publishing Perspectives, George Lossius, CEO of Publishing Technology questions the survival of the Impact Factor in these digital times. The emergence of alternative (or ‘complementary’) tools such as Altmetric.com, ImpactStory and other altmetric services has opened up new possibilities for measuring digital footprints across the web for scholarly content. Will they win widespread adoption in 2013, or will the three main traditional bibliometric indicators remain strong? Ian Craig from Wiley, in his blog post, “Metrics – Alternatives to Altmetrics?” certainly suggests that in terms of reliability and simplicity, impact calculations will remain with the traditional citation-based Thomson-Reuters Impact Factor, the SCImago Journal Rank indicator or the Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP). Altmetrics are still very much in their early days but the future will be exciting for those wishing to see a more complete picture of impact, interest or awareness.
Data
Big data, small data. 2012 really was the year of data, and its big variety has left its mark like a good New Year’s hangover. While many failed to see the point, or are left confused by extraordinarily complicated datasets, many jumped on the bandwagon to see how data might bring added value and new services to the industry. As Gartner relayed in an article for Campus Technology, big data will become the basis for a new generation of applications, and will employ around 4.4 million people by 2015. The apps will be connected to complex, massive data sources, and offer real-time insight for end users to make informed decisions.
One such tool, Mendeley Institutional Edition, Swets worked to develop in partnership with Mendeley. It looks at the data being recorded by the Mendeley database of over 68M documents, collated by more than 2M users, to focus its efforts on providing useful insights to librarians on journal usage and publication output within their institution. The take up has been excellent, and attracted prestigious institutions across many regions of the world.
Mobile
The consumer industry is very focused on making digital content work for mobile. Can the same be said of the academic world? More and more publishers of journals and eBooks are adopting delivery techniques and better coding into their websites and content delivery systems to render content more effectively on mobile operating systems. James Long, Editorial Director of Digital for Macmillan concentrates on mobile for his 2013 predictions in a post on The Literary Platform site. He stressed the need for publishers to really focus efforts on building content that works across formats, and also uses the full scope of capabilities that mobile devices offer; he refers to digital color picture books and heightened functionality across them. The New York Times also hails mobile as the dominant force in tech for 2013, and it’s easy to see how this will spill over to many sectors, including the academic. On the other side, there is the hardware itself. The MindShift blog from KQED has predicted, as many others have, that the concept of BYOD for classrooms (bring your own device) will become increasingly important in 2013 and beyond. This idea renders content as key, making it completely format independent, provided it works across all common devices and operating systems. For libraries, this may mean hosting multiple formats of the same content within the library collection, which in turn relies on publishers providing the various versions.
Openness
Undoubtedly one of the larger topics today in academic publishing, open access (OA) will certainly not go away in 2013, and is destined to become much larger. A NISO working group has recently been established, looking into the standardization of metadata for OA content, which will mean even further levels of discovery, indexing and aggregation for free-to-read academic material. Open Education Database (OEDb) uses 4 of its 8 2013 predictions on various OA-related topics. Although incorrectly calling open access “open source” on several occasions, the post covers the transition to OA from subscription journals, gold open access and Creative Commons licensing. Add in a bit more on discovery and metadata standards as mentioned above, as well as the pilots to manage article processing charges and it’s nearly a complete picture. Libraries are also very keen to avoid publishers benefitting from ‘double-dipping’, and are pushing for price reviews on subscription titles.
Let’s not forget some of the players in 2012 openness: Figshare for data sets and non-traditional content formats; eLife and PeerJ who have both now launched their early content offerings and look to make a play for some of the market currently dominated by PLoS and BMC. There are many other OA-related organizations that will be closely followed in 2013.
MOOCs?
Not a brand of synthesizers, but MOOCs (massive open online course) are free online courses for anyone, anywhere who wants to learn something. These courses have been revolutionizing the learning experience for a while now, with relative giants Coursera, Udacity and edX being the dominant organizations in this growing trend. Most industry commentators have covered them at one point or another, and their popularity is likely to grow even more in the coming year or two. A WCET Learn post covers MOOCs in some detail, suggesting that in the future they will dish out credit to course attendees, become monetized (which seems inevitable), and may even implode to become simple online courses that are neither free nor open. The prevalence and importance of MOOCs is further stressed by Michael Feldstein in an interview for Inside Higher Ed, where he shares his own predictions for 2013.
Print on Demand
This came from a comment on a blog post, rather than a blog itself. A publisher at Flying Pen Press has predicted that over the course of 2013 and beyond, publishers will look for
more revenue from their booklists, and particularly look at implementing more wide scale print on demand (POD) availability for the more profitable titles. The comment is more related to consumer books, but it is easy to see how, in the STM context, the same might happen very quickly as publishers try to diversify revenue streams by making the most of what they already have first. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.
eBook lending
While we have a blog post dedicated to the conundrum of inter-library loan (ILL) of eBooks, there is a growing concern that ILL will not be possible as a way to share resources and effectively expand the boundaries of a single library’s collection, as was done in the days of print ILL. In the UK Guardian’s article, “Our publishing predictions for 2013”, they envisage a conflict between libraries and publishers on this topic. There is definitely a lot of discussion going on at the moment in this area and it seems the likely best-fit solution is for eBook sellers or aggregators to arrange standardized short-term, and low-cost, licenses to meet the demand for ILL.
Enhanced eBooks will finally flourish...?
We have heard a lot about enhanced eBooks, and their day certainly seems to have been coming for several years now. In another SwetsBlog post we looked at the lack of user-centered design approaches for eBooks, and how the academic eBook market really began as a by-product of the print market, and therefore functionality and enhancements were missing from the start. Quoting industry figures from Wiley, Bowker Market Research and Booktrix, Digital Book World predicts that 2013 will be the year for more interactivity in eBooks. Mostly fuelled by the exponential growth in tablet computing, the academic segment will generate more demand for non-fiction and learning eBooks to be more immersive and intuitive. Perhaps the equivalent of an enhanced eBook is merely just an “app”. Coliloquy, a digital publisher, asks whether the book formats still work (ePub etc) or if the app environment will be the leading force in making eBooks more useful ,they say, “Publishers will increasingly need to figure out if the app platforms (with their interactivity, multimedia capabilities, and controlled environments) serve their authors better, or if books (with their ubiquity, increasing flexibility, and familiar interface) do better.” Interesting ideas, and ultimately it seems up to publisher will, and budget.
The textbook
Another conundrum perpetuated by academic publishers in is the digital textbook. Many titles are simply not converted to electronic form by publishers to avoid cannibalizing their extremely lucrative course adoption market, where updated editions are frequently published to update older, out-of-date content. Our library customers at Swets frequently mention this as an issue they hear about from their student members. As eBooks become the norm, more and more end users are getting comfortable using this format, so the natural step is to digitize textbooks as well to meet this demand. Of course, many textbooks have already been digitized and circulated, but it is by no means the norm. Referring again to George Lossius’ post for Publishing Perspectives, he touches on the positive aspects of a digital textbook program – easy content updates, search, interactivity and excellent potential for end-user behavior metrics and measurements. The negatives suggest that perhaps e-reading devices are not yet standard among student populations, which accounts for the low adoption rates that have been observed. “Watch this space” is the message, but it seems unlikely that 2013 will be the year of the e-textbook.
Did we miss any?
There are many topics running through our industry at the moment and it’s hard to capture all of them in one go. Are there any other areas you think will be of keen interest in 2013?
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