illuminea | EDITORIAL
contents
3 The Future of Sharing University Press Content Lenny Allen, Director of Sales, Wholesale & Online, OUP USA
4&5 Discoverability-Driven Business Models: The Way Ahead?
Chris Bennett, Head of Library Sales, OUP
6&7 Interview with Sarah Pearson,
‘Search and discovery tools offer libraries the potential to reach every patron, and, for publishers, access to a truly global audience for the first time,’ says Chris Bennett, Head of Library Sales, OUP, about the potential of discoverability in today’s libraries.
E-Resources and Serials Co-ordinator, University of Birmingham & Group Chair, KBART Working Group
8&9 Behind the Scenes at the North Carolina Serials Conference
Tricia Hudson, Senior Marketing Manager, Journals, OUP USA
10&11 Directory
Conferences and contacts
T
his issue of Illuminea focuses on discoverability, looking at the increased flexibility it offers both libraries and publishers. We look at some of the initiatives Oxford University Press is working on to enhance routes to our content and improve the research journey, as well as some of the challenges this presents. In his article, Lenny Allen, Director of Sales, Wholesale & Online, OUP USA, looks at a new initiative to make other University Press content available alongside OUP’s content, while Chris Bennett, Head of Library Sales, OUP, surveys business models developing around increased discoverability. A report into the 20 th Anniversary of the North Carolina Serials Conference ref lects the broad range of topics covered at the event, ranging from author attitudes to open access journals to investigations into cost-per-use data analysis. And, finally, we talk to Sarah Pearson, E-Resources and Serials Co-Ordinator at the University of Birmingham and Group Chair of the KBART Working Group, who gives the librarian’s perspective on developing discoverability initiatives.
12 News Editor: Claire Dowbekin Editorial Team: Damian Bird, Alison Bowker, Amanda Hirko, Patricia Hudson, Margaret Love, Colin Meddings, Cath Mundell, Caite Panzer, Lizzie Shannon-Little, and Aviva Weinstein. Design: Sequel Group Ltd (www.sequelgroup.co.uk) We value your feedback and would like to know what you think of Illuminea. If you have any suggestions for future issues, or would like to contribute, please email claire.dowbekin@oup.com www.oup.com/illuminea
The Future of Sharing University Press Content Lenny Allen, Director of Sales, Wholesale & Online, OUP USA
T
he title of the classic Philip K. Dick story asks whether androids dream of electric sheep. I don’t know the answer to that particular question, but I do know that we’re all, at this very moment, asleep or awake, dreaming of a digital monograph platform that is financially viable, sustainable from the perspective of a rapidly shifting market environment, intuitive, and adaptable enough to be able to meet both the short and long-term needs of scholarly research at all levels, as well as the development of new library acquisition models. And as we dream, scholarly publishing is at this same moment facing a phalanx of critical issues, and our responses to these issues in the short-term (time is no longer a luxury we can afford) will determine not only our success or failure, but the breadth, depth, and quality of information available to future generations of scholars. Declining print runs, increasing production costs, library study after library study demonstrating the lack of use of print monographs, budget cuts, etc. I could go on but you’re likely already intimately acquainted with this litany.
Mission and methodology In spite of all the rapid technological developments and
2
the ensuing seismic shifts in the market, one thing has remained constant, and that’s the nature and methodology of scholarly research. This concept is often lost in the clamour of our current discussion, so it’s worth reminding ourselves from time to time that this is at the very heart of what we do and why we do it. The missions of an academic press, such as Oxford, and academic libraries are inextricably linked together. But how best fulfil these missions and meet the ongoing needs of academic research? Simply
In the newlydawning era of Demand-Driven Acquisition (A.K.A. Patron-Driven Acquisition) the discoverability of content has become of paramount importance
comment | publishing scholarly content and making it available in electronic format isn’t enough. How we publish it will determine everything from where that content turns up in an initial search result to the quality of linking and cross-searchability once a researcher has hit upon material relevant to their particular line of inquiry. The ‘how’ thus includes key decisions about file format, platform, and accessibility, and must always bear in mind the needs of scholarly research.
‘How’ we publish: OSO and XML Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO), launched nearly a decade ago and conceived of when e-books were perhaps not even in their infancy, has blazed a trail that is only now being followed in the marketplace. In 2003, digital platforms geared toward scholarly needs were primarily focused on STM content or were major database products like EBSCO Host and ProQuest. Print monographs still formed the core of our publishing output as well as library purchases, and their broader adoption in electronic format was several years away. OSO has been enormously successful, and the key to that success can be boiled down to the ‘how’ I referred to earlier: how we publish monographs in digital format. First and foremost is the XML format. Rather than being a mere replication of the print book usage experience, XML tagging instead offers accurate search and discoverability tools by identifying each piece of data and allowing it to be found in the context of the search being made. In the newly-dawning era of Demand-Driven Acquisition (a.k.a. Patron-Driven Acquisition), the discoverability of content has become of paramount importance. The higher the quality of the XML tagging, the easier it becomes to
illuminea
discover the content users are looking for amid the endless onslaught of online information that is, at best, lacking in the authority guaranteed by the peer-review process, and, at worst, utter dross.
UPSO and the future of scholarly research As OSO now evolves into University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO), and we begin the process of including other university press content on our platform, (see our pilot partner Fordham Scholarship Online at www.fordhamscholarship.com) we’re more focused than ever on the viability of the monograph as a key medium of scholarly communication and meeting the needs of scholarly research. Again, how we publish is critical, as the ability to search across multiple presses within the same platform is a development that promises to do much in the way of advancing scholarly research. UPSO streamlines the research process by making disparately published monographs accessible, discoverable, and fully crosssearchable via a single platform. And at the same time it provides highly intuitive tools to deepsearch across all the content on the platform. Research that previously would have required users to jump between a variety of books and disconnected websites can now be concentrated through a single search engine. Looking forward, it’s easy to imagine the further development of University Press Scholarship Online in ways that are mapped to the future needs of scholarship: the addition of press partners, the inclusion of non-monographic scholarly content, links to relevant reference sources, and, more than likely, functional enhancements of which we haven’t yet begun to dream.
3