ALPSP: at the heart of scholarly publishing

British Library INCD Licensing Framework - Update

2011-12-08T15:01:00.001Z

The Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) in the UK has agreed an extension to the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) document delivery agreement with the British Library. This will mirror the framework agreement negotiated by the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) in consultation with the Publishers Association (PA) and will particularly assist smaller publishers who may not wish to set up an agreement with the British Library directly.

Publishers who currently mandate PLS will be contacted in the near future regarding this licence extension. If you are not a mandating PLS publisher and wish to know about the services they provide, please contact them at pls@pls.org.uk or +44 (0)20 7299 7730. Further details can be found at: http://www.pls.org.uk/default.aspx

Audrey McCulloch
Executive Director, UK
audrey.mcculloch@alpsp.org

ALPSP endorses new British Library INCD Licensing Framework

2011-11-07T14:32:00.004Z

ALPSP endorses the soon-to-be launched British Library INCD Service for the supply of copies of articles to non-commercial end users via not-for-profit libraries outside the UK. The INCD Service is underpinned by agreements with publishers, for which a framework licence agreement, to be entered into directly between individual publishers and the British Library, has been agreed with the British Library by the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) in consultation with the Publishers Association (PA).

ALPSP recommends that its members sign up to licence agreements with the British Library based on this framework before 29th November.

The Framework Licence Agreement
Under these agreements, articles supplied via the new service will only be available to an individual student or lecturer at an educational institution served by an authorized library or a person affiliated to the institution in another manner, for non-commercial research or private study only.

Authorised libraries, defined as non-commercial libraries linked to educational institutions that choose to use the new INCD service, will actively monitor and ensure end users' compliance with the differentiation between commercial and non-commercial use. There will be a cap on the number of deliveries to each authorized library in any calendar year. The cap is set at nine items from each volume of a journal or serial or from the same book.

INCD licence agreements with the British Library could deliver additional sales for publishers by exposing their content to a wide range of potential subscribers. The British Library will supply details about who is ordering copies under the service enabling publishers to target potential customers for subscription, where usage suggests this would be appropriate.

Additional security for publishers is provided by the cap on the number of items that can be ordered by an individual authorised library in each calendar year; once this cap is exceeded, the publisher's set fee will apply.

Fees for the INCD service will be the standard BL supply fee plus the appropriate royalty fee (as set by the publisher). Any order fulfilled using the 24-hour service will attract the full commercial fee.

The new service will start from 1st January 2012.

Next Steps for ALPSP Members
As the British Library will phase out its current non-commercial cross border service in order to start its new INCD Service at the start of 2012, publishers are encouraged to sign the licence agreement as soon as possible so that the new service can be implemented on time.

The British Library has already contacted all publishers with which it has subscription agreements.

Publishers who have already been contacted are kindly requested to send their signed licence agreements to the British Library by Tuesday 29th November.
Publishers who have not yet been approached, should contact the British Library for more information and to obtain a copy of the agreement.

If you require more information, need a copy of the agreement, or want to return your signed agreement, please contact: Matthew Bailey, Licensing Manager, The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB; Tel. +44 (0) 20 7412 7308; Email: matthew.bailey@bl.uk

Full information on the INCD Service can be found on the British Library's FAQs (pdf).
In order to assist Publishers who wish to enter into the licence agreement, there is also a Toolkit for Publishers (pdf)

Sarah Durrant
Chief Executive
sarah.durrant@alpsp.org +44(0)1728 604204

SSP 2011 Fall Seminar Series

2011-10-28T11:26:00.003+01:00

The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) presents its 2011 Fall Seminar Series, being held on November 8th and 9th at the American Geophysical Union in Washington, DC.

Attendees are invited to join colleagues and experts from across the industry for these exciting and informative seminars:

Seminar 1 – Tuesday, November 8, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm
Content and Apps for Mobile Devices: Engaging Users in the Mobile Experience

The increasing popularity and use of mobile devices are transforming the way users access and interact with information. This seminar will feature a detailed case study and presentations by STM and humanities publishers and librarians who will share their perspectives on delivering, providing and accessing content in the mobile arena. With a focus on the user, the following topics will be addressed:

How are publishers and libraries engaging the user?

What does the user want from the mobile experience?

How does the user interact with mobile content?

For more information on the stellar presenters lined up for this seminar – including Jonathan Stark, the mobile app consultant that the Wall Street Journal has called an expert on publishing desktop data to the web – see http://bit.ly/nxhapN.

Seminar 2 – Wednesday, November 9, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm
Moving to the Online-Only Journal: Breaking Free of Print Constraints

If you are considering moving your publications to an “online-only” format, this full-day seminar will explore the issues that will arise and the opportunities that become available when you break away from the print-based medium. The speakers will address concerns about eliminating print, including:

Protecting advertising revenue

Converting print subscribers to online readers (including those who receive print as a member benefit)

Managing challenges of archiving

Developing pricing strategies

The seminar speakers, who represent publishers breaking new ground in the online presentation of content, will provide examples of their features, discuss issues related to continuous publication, and examine the expanded and creative use of linking and videos. For a full list of speakers, see http://bit.ly/nxhapN.

The end of an era

2011-10-28T11:23:00.002+01:00

For those of you who don’t already know, long-standing ALPSP member and industry legend, John Cox retires at the end of October after 42 years in the business.

John, who originally trained as a barrister, maintains he was ‘side-tracked’ into publishing! He spent ten years with the Open University before running the UK arm of Scholastic during the 1980s. He then joined BH Blackwell with whom he stayed until 1994 when he joined Carfax - later purchased by Routledge - as MD. When Routledge was sold to Taylor & Francis, John started his consultancy, John Cox Associates.

One of his earliest pieces of consultancy work was developing a set of model journal licences which have proved invaluable for over a decade to publishers and libraries alike, and which will continue to be available through Ringgold. ALPSP members will also be familiar with the ALPSP Scholarly Publishing Practice Surveys which John undertook with his daughter, Laura.

John will remain connected to the industry through his Non-executive Directorships and occasional consultancy projects. He will also continue his life-long work with the UK Civil Aviation Authority. In one guise or another, John was a member of ALPSP for over 20 years and on behalf of ALPSP Council, members and staff, I would like to wish him enjoyment and fulfilment as he begins this next exciting chapter.

Sarah Durrant
Chief Executive

Forthcoming events at the Stationers' Hall

2011-08-26T14:28:00.002+01:00

On Monday, 12 September at 6.30 pm the Digital Media Group of the Stationers’ Company, in association with the Marketors’ Company, are holding one of their roundtables on "How do you win in today’s Digital World?"

The format will be a keynote speaker, Rory Sutherland, Executive Creative Director Ogilvy Group and a moderator, Venetia Howes, Immediate Past Master of the Marketors’ Company, with a panel who are: Fergus Boyd, Head of e-Business at Virgin Atlantic, Daniel Finkelstein, Executive Editor of The Times and Professor Merlin Stone, IBM Professor of Marketing at Surrey European Mgt School.

Click here for more detail and to book tickets

On Monday, 17 October 2011 at 6.30 pm The Industry Group of the Stationers’ Company, in association with the Freemen’s Association, will host an evening on “The Changing World of Procurement within the Printing and Publishing supply Chain”.

The speakers will describe procurement in the Publishing, Print Management, Printing, Paper Merchanting and Paper industries, addressing key concerns for the future as well as current practices in purchasing and will include: Mark Cruise, Head of Print Management at BSkyB, Tony Palmer, European Procurement Director of Sun Chemical, William Oldham, General Manager of UPM-Kymmene (UK) Ltd and Nigel Lyons, Managing Director of Pinstripe Print Group.

Click here for more detail and to book tickets

Both these events will take place at Stationers’ Hall, Ave Maria Lane, London EC4M 7DD and will be preceded by a drinks reception and followed by drinks and canapés.

National Occupational Standards for Publishing

2011-08-05T16:27:00.004+01:00

Skillset is updating the National Occupational Standards for Publishing to include journals and the latest digital developments and they want to know what you think.

This important project comes at a critical time for the industry, when digital developments provide both threats and opportunities. As a result, ALPSP is fully supporting the project and we urge all members to take part.

Skillset are organising a series of focus groups for publishing professionals to discuss and develop the standards:

London, Tuesday 13th September, 10:00 - 12:00
London, Wednesday 21st September, 14:00 - 16:00
Edinburgh, Wednesday 21st September, 13:00 - 15:00
Belfast, Thursday 22nd September, 10:00 - 12:00
Cardiff, Wednesday 28th September, 11:00 - 13:00
Oxford, Thursday 29th September, 10:30 - 12:30

Visit the Skillset blog to register.

If you can't get to one of the focus groups, you can also contribute through telephone interview or by completing a questionnaire please contact Debbie Warren (email) no later than Wednesday 7 September.

If you know someone else who may be interested please let them know about this. Each focus group lasts up to 2 hrs and refreshments will be provided. Skillset can also assist with travel expenses.

PLS 30th Anniversary

2011-07-04T16:58:00.001+01:00

The Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) is 30 years old and will be celebrating at its Open Day on Tuesday 12 July. The Open Day will take place at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA, Portland Place, London, W1B 1AD) from 2pm and a full programme can be found on the PLS website. The Open Day will be followed by a drinks reception.

To confirm your free place, contact Imogen Forbes at PLS (020 7299 7732 or email).

ALPSP seeks part time Events & Database Administrator

2011-06-13T12:18:00.003+01:00

The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) has a vacancy for a part-time Events and Database Administrator (30 hours/4 days per week), to assist with the organisation of its UK events programme and management of its information services. (Full details: http://bit.ly/k6Wmok)

Reporting to the Senior Coordinator, Events and Information Systems, you will assist in the organisation of UK events, management of our database and website systems, coordinate ALPSP presence at exhibitions and other conferences and administer the supply and storage of publicity materials.

ALPSP staff are home-workers so you will be expected to work under minimal supervision, but in close liaison with other members of the team. This is a customer-facing role, therefore you will need exceptional communication skills combined with good time management and organisational skills. Experience of event/exhibition organisation is essential. Good computer skills are highly desirable and familiarity with database administration would be advantageous.

ALPSP UK events are primarily organised in and around the London area, so the ability to travel easily to London is essential. The ALPSP International Conference will also involve overnight stays.

The salary for this position is circa £25,000, pro rata, depending on experience.

If you would like to find out more, contact Lesley Ogg (email events@alpsp.org; telephone 01245 260571). To be considered for this post, please send a CV with covering letter outlining your suitability for this position by email to events@alpsp.org.

The closing date for applications is Thursday 30 June 2011 and interviews will be held on Wednesday 20 July (in central London).

SAGE announces library travel grant for ALPSP International Conference

2011-04-04T18:12:00.002+01:00

SAGE has supported the ALPSP International Conference as silver sponsor since the first meeting in 2008. This new travel grant will offer a free place at the conference for a librarian or information professional, including entry to the ALPSP awards dinner, travel within the UK and accommodation for one person. This year's conference will be held at Heythrop Park near Oxford UK from 14-16 September.

SAGE will be running a competition to win the sponsored place, with entries submitted either via Twitter or email. To enter, librarians must answer the following question in 140 characters or less:

Question: Why should librarians be talking to publishers in 2011?

Completed answers should be sent to @SAGElibraryNews tagged with #SAGEALPSP or email to events@sagepub.co.uk by 27 May 2011. Further terms and conditions can be found at www.sagepub.co.uk/alpsp2011.

ALPSP Seminars - tell us what you think

2011-03-28T15:57:00.008+01:00

As part of its professional development activities, ALPSP organises seminars for its members and others in the scholarly publishing and information world. We endeavour to make these as relevant and useful as we can but would value your feedback. Please let us know how we're doing and how you think we might improve the seminars by completing this short survey.

If you complete the survey before 21 April you'll have the chance to win one of two places on an ALPSP seminar, webinar, training course or eLearning course of your choice.

Please encourage your colleagues to complete the survey too - it will only take a few minutes.

HERE AND NOW: The Digital and Ebook Market 2011

2011-01-24T16:16:00.002Z

Half day seminar organised by the Publishers Association on the current ebook market
Wednesday 9th February

Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London

8.30am for registration and breakfast
9.00am – 12.30pm : Seminar

Chaired by David Roth-Ey, Digital Director at HarperCollins, the seminar will reveal the very latest research on device and ebook buying habits in the UK. Speakers will include from the US Michael Tamblyn, Kobo, Peter Balis, John Wiley & Sons, and Theresa Horner, Barnes & Noble. Richard Mollet, CEO of the Publishers Association will give the keynote, followed by an overview of the UK and US markets by Jo Henry, BML. We then see 2 expert panels led by Sara Lloyd, Digital Director, Pan Macmillan and Fionnuala Duggan, Digital Director of Random House profiling the US ebook market and looking ahead at the international and UK ebook markets.

This is a very this low cost and content rich seminar over a half a day, and one not to be missed if you are involved or interested in the ebook market.

To register please go to www.publishers.org.uk/events

Renew Training

2011-01-13T12:00:00.001Z

Technology has removed the barriers between production, editorial, marketing, sales, customer services and most importantly – the customers. Renew Training’s Understanding E-Journal Technology course is aimed at anyone in working in these departments and will help them connect with their customers and better understand their requirements.

Many publishing companies routinely send all their customer facing staff on Renew Training’s courses and 100% of course delegates have said they would recommend this course to others in their organisations.

Delegates will gain a business-level grounding in e-journal delivery technologies, gain greater insight into customers' technical and business requirements and better understand the role technology plays in e-journal deployment and discoverability. The course will educate attendees about key issues affecting the delivery of e-journals and how these affect licensing, customer service and even pricing. Participants will also learn what necessitated technological change in libraries and publishers and how to solve some of the key problems posed by library technologies such as link servers, A-Z lists, federated search, web scale discovery, DOIs, OpenURL, Athens and Shibboleth

Courses will be held in London on Tuesday 15^th February, 2011, Washington DC on 14^th March and Philadelphia on 16^th March.

Visit http://www.renewtraining.com/schedule.htm for more information and to book a place. Members of ALPSP, ASA, and SSP are eligible for affiliate discounts.

New prize from Routledge commemorates former editor of 'The Round Table'

2010-12-15T12:50:00.004Z

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
13 December 2010

New prize from Routledge commemorates former editor of
‘The Round Table’

Routledge has donated to Britain’s oldest international affairs journal, The Round Table, an annual prize in memory of Peter Lyon, the journal’s editor from 1983 to 2004. The £1,000 award will be for the best article relating to policy and the contemporary Commonwealth that the journal has published during the previous calendar year.

The first award of the ‘Peter Lyon Memorial Prize’ will be made in early 2012. All articles appearing in The Round Table during 2011 that contain a significant emphasis on policy and the Commonwealth will automatically become entrants for the prize. The journal’s editor will select the winner, in consultation with Routledge and the journal’s editorial and international advisory boards.

Peter Lyon (1934-2010) was a leading expert on the Commonwealth and bridged the divide between academia and policy-making. He was Reader in International Relations at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London and, while editor of The Round Table, wrote almost 100 editorials and articles for the journal about issues affecting the Commonwealth.

Kamalesh Sharma, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, paid tribute to Peter Lyon as an integral part of the Commonwealth family, whose “knowledge of the Commonwealth on five continents was second to none”.

Sir Shridath Ramphal, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth from 1975 to 1990, said: “Peter Lyon's unique blend of academia and the real world was dedicated to the service of the Commonwealth…… The whole Commonwealth is in his debt for his superlative work at The Round Table….. His contributions are immense and imperishable. Memorialised, they will help to inspire the Commonwealth to fulfilment of the great goals he saw for it.”

Chief Emeka Anyaoku, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth from 1990 to 2000, said: “Peter Lyon will long be remembered for his sustained intellectual contribution to the evolution of the Commonwealth. He has left a worthy legacy, not only at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and The Round Table, but also at the many forums where he often contributed to public discourse on the Commonwealth.”

Sir Don McKinnon, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth from 2000 to 2008, said: “Peter Lyon’s death is a loss for the whole Commonwealth. He was an almost unrivalled authority on Commonwealth issues and had a fine mind for its history.”

Founded in 1910, The Round Table provides analysis and commentary on all aspects of international affairs. The journal is a major source of coverage of policy issues concerning the contemporary Commonwealth and its role in international relations. It combines informed scholarship, opinion, and judgement, and draws its authors and readership from the worlds of government, business, finance and academe.

To submit or propose an article for publication in The Round Table, contact the Editor, Dr Venkat Iyer, at the School of Law, University of Ulster, Jordanstown campus, Shore Road, Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim, BT37 0QB, or e-mail him at theroundtable@hotmail.co.uk.

Routledge, the foremost global publisher of policy-relevant books and journals in the Social Sciences, has been awarded the prestigious International Publisher of the Year award by the International Printers Network for the environmental sustainability of its publishing programmes. For further information please contact Jennifer McMillan, Library Marketing Manager, Taylor & Francis: Jennifer.McMillan@tandf.co.uk

Further information on The Round Table is available from www.tandf.co.uk/journals/ctrt.

- ends -

Media contact: Andrea Hutchinson, Marketing Executive
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN.
Telephone: +44 (0) 207 017 5344 Fax: +44 (0) 207 017 6713
Email: Andrea.Hutchinson@tandf.co.uk Website: www.informaworld.com/politicsandir

New ALPSP Advice Note No.40: Tiered Pricing

2010-10-22T21:31:00.002+01:00

Written by Lois Bacon and Ann Lawson, EBSCO Information Services.

In recent years an increasing number of publishers have adopted tiered pricing models for journals, databases, e-books, data sets and other resources. However introducing a new model invites the librarian to review and evaluate a subscription. This advice note outlines the key issues publishers need to take into account to ensure a smooth transition and minimal impact on renewals.

Free to download from www.alpsp.org for ALPSP members

BookVault wins business with cost-saving link between publisher and printer

2010-10-22T09:02:00.005+01:00

Press release 21 October

Printondemand-worldwide’s system transfers orders from web shopping cart to production floor

Printondemand-worldwide is bridging the gap between publisher and printer to make the production of books faster and more efficient than ever before.

The leading UK-based digital printer has seen rising demand for its web-based BookVault system, which provides publishers with fingertip inventory management through a virtual library of titles.

Many publishers are seizing the opportunity to have BookVault integrated into their own website shopping cart, so that orders from customers are immediately transferred to the print floor – saving inestimable time, administrative and processing costs. Printondemand-worldwide’s unique technology allows for BookVault to be bolted on to an existing website very easily, but a technical team is also available to manage the process where necessary.

Early advocates of BookVault include Gareth Jarrett, Inventory Manager at Taylor and Francis Books, who said: “We have recently started using BookVault, primarily for reporting purposes, which is very useful, and to check on the status of titles in development. We haven’t yet begun to exploit its full potential but it certainly seems very user friendly and shows a lot of promise.

“We have been working with Printondemand-worldwide for around five years, during which time the company has grown to become one of our key on-demand printers. It enables us to have more titles consistently available, but without the costs of having stock waiting in storage. So the benefit is twofold – you’ve got greater revenue opportunities by making more titles available than would otherwise be possible; and you save on the storage costs of stock.”

BookVault, launched at last year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, enables publishers to upload and store a library of titles, any of which can be summoned for printing, in almost any quantity, within 48 to 72 hours, and then dispatched directly to the end customer if preferred.

Orders through BookVault now account for around 25 per cent of Printondemand-worldwide’s overall business, resulting in around 4,000 books produced each day.

Printondemand-worldwide Managing Director Andy Cork said: “This is on-demand printing in its purest form. With less than half-a-dozen clicks of your mouse, you can instantly order any quantity of books, from a single copy upwards. And whether they are perfect-bound, case-bound or saddle-stiched, full colour or black and white, the production process begins as soon as the order is received.

“It gives publishers direct control at their fingertips and in difficult economic times, that level of flexibility is proving to be a significant advantage.”

Printondemand-worldwide, the leading UK digital printer, serves publishing clients across Europe from its base in Peterborough, near Cambridge. In addition, it has recently created a network of global print partners – in the USA, Asia and Australia – all of which have had the BookVault system installed and can facilitate orders from their own countries to avoid the time, financial and environmental costs of shipping from the UK.

(ends)

Notes to Editors

Advantages of BookVault:

· Save time with easy ordering via web-based simply order system

· Minimise capital outlay by removing the need for stock printing

· Reduce associated storage, distribution and transport costs

· Save money and resources on administration

· A personal data library listing all your BookVault titles

· Real-time reporting as the job progresses through production

· Range of delivery options, including dispatch direct to end customer

· Simple to integrate with e-commerce website via a custom web application programming interface (API)

Printondemand-worldwide is one of the UK’s leading digital book printers, with a workforce in excess of 40, a cutting-edge print production facility in Peterborough, an annual turnover in excess of £2m and global roster of clients.

Printondemand-worldwide will be at Frankfurt Book Fair from October 6-10, Hall 8, Stand A937.

Established 16 years ago, the short-run specialist has taken an innovative approach to directly address the needs of diverse client groups, whether they wish to print one unit or 1,000 units.

The range of services provided by Printondemand-worldwide include Fast Print, which offers user-friendly packages to self-publishers, and BookVault, which enables publishers of all sizes to manage a digital archive of their books and call any up any of them to be printed at any time, no matter how small the volume, at pre-agreed rates.

Advantages of Printondemand-worldwide’s proposition include high quality, cost-effectiveness and flexibility. By overcoming the need for bulk storage, reducing reliance on warehouses, cutting wastage, taking action to reduce its carbon footprint, opting for ecologically-approved facilities and production methods and limiting the use of long-distance freight, the company offers print solutions that are not only efficient but also environmentally-friendly.

Visit www.printondemand-worldwide.com for further details.

For more information or images please contact:

Nick Henderson, Katie McBreen or Richard McCann

Friday’s Media Group, 18 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QL

Telephone: 0845 500 1140

nickh@fridays-group.co.uk, katiem@fridays-group.co.uk or richardm@fridays-group.co.uk

James Murdoch opens Copyright in the Digital Age (8 November, London)

2010-10-15T17:43:00.000+01:00

James Murdoch (son of Rupert and Chairman and Chief Executive, Europe and Asia, News Corporation) leads off a very impressive line-up of speakers at the Copyright in the Digital Age: Industry issues and impacts event being run by the Stationers' Company.

The Stationers' Company (or the wonderfully named Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers to give them their full moniker) pretty much invented copyright and were responsible for its enforcement until the implementation of the Statute of Anne in 1709 so it's very appropriate that they should be organizing this debate.

The event will take place on 8 November 2010 at the Stationers' Hall in London.

More information and online booking.

ALPSP Seminar: e-Learning. Online and Distance Education, 21 October, London

2010-10-11T15:38:00.003+01:00

Chair: Oliver Jones, Education Projects Manager, RCOG
www.alpsp.org

This seminar offers a practical look at how organisations can embark upon or develop existing e-Learning Programmes, and more importantly how to do so successfully.

Why is E-learning publishing different; or is it not different?
What standards exist in terms of 'E-learning publishing standards'
Can I publish E-learning if I have no technical expertise?
How is it possible to keep online content up to date?
How big would my E-learning team need to be?
Where are the markets, is E-learning publication successful for other businesses?

Who should attend?
Small to medium publishers and societies without the resources or funds to experiment and research the options but who can see the potential of E-learning, yet don't know where to start
Editorial teams becoming involved in the instructional design of content to be published on the web
Course and events leaders involved in transforming components of a course in to an E-learning or blended learning package
Publications managers requiring advice on the processes involved in E-learning publication
Educationalists who are new to E-learning
Project managers who have experience of product development but who are new to the publication of E-learning
Commissioning editors responsible for ensuring publications are innovative yet educationally robust.

Full details

CCC presentations at Frankfurt Book Fair

2010-09-24T12:29:00.004+01:00

ALPSP members attending Frankfurt may like to note that The Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) is presenting on two interesting subjects in the Forum Innovation. Topic 1: Leveraging Technology to Automate Online Licensing.
Topic 2: Monetizing Content in a Sophisticated Digital World.
For times and session details, visit www.copyright.com/frankfurt.
To RSVP, email events@copyright.com.

Books International (US) and Turpin Distribution (UK) announce strategic alliance

2010-09-23T16:08:00.002+01:00

Press Release 17 Sept
International now offers global fulfilment and distribution to their American client publishers through their new alliance with Turpin Distribution. US publishers can now contract with Books International for global fulfilment using the services of Turpin for order processing, customer service, cash collection outside the North American market.

Turpin Distribution can now offer its book clients enhanced services and faster delivery times within North America. Turpin is now using the fulfilment services of Books International for warehousing, picking, packing and distributing product to the North American market.

The Turpin US customer service operation will continue to support its book and journal clients from their facility within New Milford, Connecticut.

Contacts:
Books International
Ellen Loerke
ellen.loerke@booksintl.com

Turpin Distribution
Elizabeth Just (North America)
Elizabeth.Just@turpin-distribution.com
Neil Castle (Rest of the World)
Neil.Castle@turpin-distribution.com

Launch of the OAPEN Library at the Frankfurt Book Fair

2010-09-20T09:33:00.002+01:00

Posted on behalf of OAPEN

We are pleased to announce that OAPEN, the European project dedicated to Open Access publishing of academic books, will officially launch the OAPEN Library at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The ceremony will take place on Wednesday, October 6, 12 PM in Hall 4.2 - C 1433 (Education Hot Spot stage) of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The launching ceremony of the OAPEN Library will mark the start of the first dedicated collection of freely available academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences from across Europe. Through the OAPEN Library we aim to build a branded collection of Open Access peer-reviewed books and to increase the visibility and retrievability of high-quality European research. We also aim to promote Open Access book publishing by developing common standards, based on transparent procedures for peer review and recommendations for OA licences.
It is of course no coincidence that we have chosen the Frankfurt Book Fair, the oldest and largest book fair in the world and vitally important to the international book trade, to launch the OAPEN Library and introduce a new business model for academic books, based on Open Access to academic information. We believe the OAPEN Library will contribute to a new and vibrant future of the academic monograph in the digital age.
We hope to welcome you at the ceremony. If you wish to attend, please let us know through oapen@aup.nl

OAPEN will have its own stand at the Fair, in order to talk to interested publishers. In the coming months, we will approach academic publishers from across Europe to take part in the OAPEN Library. If you wish to learn more about OAPEN at the fair, please make an appointment with project coordinator Eelco Ferwerda, info@aup.nl. Our stand is in Hall 4.2, C412.
For more information please contact Eelco Ferwerda (Amsterdam University Press) e.ferwerda@aup.nl or learn more about OAPEN by visiting the website: www.oapen.org

CLOCKSS Executive Director Position Opening

2010-09-17T17:40:00.001+01:00

The CLOCKSS archive [www.clockss.org] is searching for an Executive Director. CLOCKSS is a global nonprofit, community-governed archive that preserves digital scholarly materials for the very long term through a geo-physical and geo-political distributed network of archive nodes. The Executive Director runs the organization and reports to a Board made up of major scholarly publishers and university libraries from around the world. The Executive Director will grow the organization as a major global scholarly archive and a valuable collaborative community of scholarly publishers and academic libraries.

This is a wonderful opportunity for an energetic leader who wants to make a visible impact in the scholarly community. See http://www.clockss.org/

The Tragic Tale of Toby Green (chapter 2)

2010-09-10T21:00:00.000+01:00

Chair of ALPSP Council, Toby Green (OECD) couldn't make it to the 2010 ALPSP International Conference this week. Unfortunately Toby was laid up in hospital in France with a fractured pelvis following an accident.

Toby broke a leg right before the Frankfurt Book Fair last year and used his misfortune to raise money for Della Sar's terrific charity Friends of Della and Don and is doing the same this time around. Delegates at the Conference raised a stunning £520 for the charity to hear the story of how the latest accident unfolded so here is the story right from the horses mouth:

"I was out riding with my children and a couple of gauchos on a estancia (ranch) a couple of hours outside Buenos Aires. As we turned to head back, my horse started skittering and rearing for no apparent reason – there are various theories, it saw a snake, was bitten by an insect, smelt an armadillo (seriously!) – but whatever it was, I lost my balance and fell off. So far, so good; nothing hurt except my pride. But as I lay on the ground, to my surprise the bloody animal fell onto me. I rolled onto my side but not fast enough and the horse landed on my hip, compressing the pelvis (and everything inside!). They’re heavy, are horses. Anyway, it bloody hurt and I figured something wasn’t right so I stayed still, pleased that my toes and feet could move, reassuring the children I wasn’t about to die (that was their first question!) and that all would be well. Thankfully one of the gauchos had his mobile and he called for help. 45 minutes later an ambulance bounced across the field to pick me up and then bounced back across the field and then 20 minutes down the unmade road to the nearest town and the Argentinean equivalent of a cottage hospital. An antique X-ray machine confirmed an indeterminate number of fractures (evidently the pelvis is a bugger to X-ray because X-rays are not in 3D – where’s that man James Cameron when you need him [Ed: I wonder if we could sell the film rights: Broke Butt Mountain 3D!]). So, next day, I was transferred to a very posh clinic (thank you medical insurance) in Buenos Aires, complete with nuns, where they could do a CAT scan. Argentinean diagnosis: 3 fractures (both sides of the pubis and left sacrum – the bit where the pelvis joins the spine) but despite all the bumping about, everything was still in the correct position so no need for the knife or even a sticking plaster – just endless bed rest flat on my back. I then spent two weeks listening to nuns singing in the morning and then was flat-packed courtesy of Air France back to Paris. French diagnosis from the same scan, 4 fractures – but then the French are all hypochondriacs and have a tendency to exaggerate. Sadly the French clinic has no nuns (singing or otherwise) but is giving me a taste of what living in an OAP home might be like, I reckon I’m the youngest inmate by around 20 years. I've started re-hab in the clinic’s pool – walking about on crutches waist deep in water, very strange. Nearly fell over backwards. Muscles have forgotten how to walk!"

Toby hopes to raise enough to support four orphans (one for each fracture) for a year and he's already half way there thanks to the generosity of attendees at the ALPSP Conference and it's not too late to give an online donation of any size to help support Della's charity!

Library Choice - supporting customer choice

2010-09-03T13:50:00.000+01:00

Have you heard of the Library Choice initiative from the ASA?
The ASA and its members believe that libraries and consortia should be free to order via preferred methods and not be obliged to order through any particular channel. Library Choice enables the agent to support any deal which has been negotiated with a publisher, by an individual library or a consortium. In this way, the customer will get the assistance they need with the extra work associated with the access and management of e-journal collections, whilst being able to take advantage of the pricing and terms negotiated by a buying group or consortium.

More information can be found on the ASA website.

Endorsement from Publishers
By signing a Library Choice letter, publishers pledge their support for libraries and consortia to have a choice, for example to place their orders directly with the publisher or, if they prefer, through an agent. Where an agent is preferred, the agent becomes the billing and payment partner, and provides both library and publisher with management data: a win-win for everyone.

The ASA website explains how publishers can participate and also hosts the growing list of publishers who have endorsed Library Choice to date.

In Focus: The London Publishing Partnership

2010-08-23T10:12:00.000+01:00

The London Publishing Partnership (LPP) is a new publishing services company that has recently joined ALPSP and that specializes in working with learned societies, research institutes and think-tanks. Since getting started in the spring of this year they have signed contracts with the London School of Economics (the Centre for Economic Performance and the Paul Woolley Centre), the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the International Growth Centre. Their first book (published for the LSE) is The Future of Finance: The LSE Report.

The business is focused on books (all disciplines), this being an area that one of the directors, Richard Baggaley, identified as being a problem for many learned societies and research institutes: “Books tend to be occasional publications and, unlike journals, need to be produced and marketed on a one-off basis. They can be expensive to produce and sell, and can therefore lose money for societies. Tie-ups with other publishers, such as university presses, can bring kudos but can also be frustratingly slow, cumbersome and hard to control. Our aim is to solve this problem – starting from the premise that the society has its own kudos, knows its market and with help can reach it as well as anyone.”

The business works by bringing together high-quality production expertise (the London firm T&T Productions) with Richard's long editorial experience and the marketing skills of Oxford Publicity Partnership. They are using both print on demand and traditional printing. For more information see www.londonpublishingpartnership.co.uk

10% discount for ALPSP members from Renew Training

2010-07-27T10:57:00.000+01:00

We are pleased to announce that Renew Training - who provide specialist training for journal publishers - are now offering a 10% discount off of their courses for all ALPSP members.

Renew Training is operated by Simon Inger and Tracy Gardner, who between them have over 30 years' experience in scholarly publishing, and was formed to help publishers and intermediaries improve their knowledge and understanding of the behaviour of authors, customers and end users.

They currently offer two courses: Understanding the Journals Industry and Understanding E-Journal Technology.

Research Information in Transition - free RIN seminars in London

2010-07-14T11:46:00.000+01:00

Our colleagues at the Research Information Network (www.rin.ac.uk) are organizing three FREE evening seminars on RESEARCH INFORMATION IN TRANSITION which will be held in London. Details are as follows:

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN at http://www.rin.ac.uk/news/events/research-information-transition-series-evening-events-2010

11 October The future of scholarly publishing – where do we go from here?
18 November Research data – policies and behaviours
13 December Quality assurance – responding to a changing information world

The Research Information Network welcomes you to this programme of events over the course of autumn to explore the huge changes that are taking place in the way that research information and data are created, managed, used and disseminated; and to consider the implications for all those, in the academic realm and beyond, with an interest in the good health of the UK research base.

All three events are free and open to all involved and interested in these issues. We are expecting a lively debate led by experts in their ﬁeld and hope that we can come to some degree of common understanding of how these changes can be marshalled for the beneﬁt of UK research and what this may mean for the different stakeholders in the foreseeable future.

This series of events will take place at the Royal College of Physicians, in London. Each will run from 17:30 - 20:30, and will consist of a series of short presentations, followed by discussions and opportunities for networking over drinks and canapés. Speakers include:

Robert Kiley, Head of Digital Services, Wellcome Library
Phil Sykes, Chair of RLUK and University Librarian, Liverpool University
Mark Patterson, Director of Publishing, Public Library of Science

Information and registration can be found at http://www.rin.ac.uk/

For enquiries contact Kissley Leonor at kissley.leonor@rin.ac.uk

M&A activities brokered by Bertoli Mitchell

2010-07-05T17:10:00.000+01:00

We've just been contacted by Bertoli Mitchell drawing our attention to the following transactions that took place in the first half of 2010 (some of which you may have missed):

Willan Publishing sold to Taylor & Francis
Willan Publishing was founded by its Managing Director Brian Willan in 1999 with a clear focus to publish high quality books on Criminology, Criminal Justice, Policing, Forensic Psychology and related disciplines for the whole spectrum of student, academic and practitioner markets. It is now arguably the leading UK publisher in its field.

In addition to successful textbooks such as Professor Tim Newburn’s Criminology and Roger Hopkins Burke’s Introduction to Criminological Theory (3/e, 2009), Willan has developed a group of best-selling multi-author Handbooks in various disciplines, and also a number of respected series, such as the Cambridge Criminal Justice series, published in association with Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology.

Willan Publishing was an Independent Publishing Awards winner in 2008 and 2009. It is the third such IPA winner to have been represented in sale by Bertoli Mitchell in the last three years.

Bertoli Mitchell structured and led the transaction, acting on behalf of the Willan shareholders.

Hodder Education acquire Royal Society of Medicine Press books programme and examdoctor.co.uk website
Hodder Education, part of the Hachette UK group, reached an agreement with the Royal Society of Medicine Press to acquire both their commercial books programme and the medical exam preparation website examdoctor.co.uk. The programme comprises approximately 200 backlist titles and a new publishing programme of 20 titles a year. Hodder Education, through its Health Sciences imprint Hodder Arnold, will continue to publish and develop RSM Books using the RSM logo under licence from The Royal Society of Medicine. Bertoli Mitchell brokered the transaction, acting on behalf of The Royal Society of Medicine.

CIMA merges its Mastercourses Division into BPP Professional Education
The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) outsourced its Mastercourses Division via a merger with BPP Professional Education’s Finance and Tax Courses Division. CIMA Mastercourses is a training business focused on the UK financial professional CPD market. Bertoli Mitchell was retained by CIMA to review the terms of the transaction, both the proposed financial terms and the operating partnership workings.

London School of Economics’ classic social sciences database acquired by ProQuest
ProQuest, an information technology firm supporting global research, acquired the London School of Economics’ classic International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS). Established in 1951, IBSS is the foremost Abstracting and Indexing database for social science and interdisciplinary research, currently holding more than 2.5 million bibliographic references. IBSS also expands by more than 120,000 new additions each year. Bertoli Mitchell, acting as exclusive strategic and financial adviser to the London School of Economics, led the negotiations and managed the transaction process to completion.

Premier History journal acquired by Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis acquired The International History Review, the only English-language quarterly devoted entirely to the history of international relations and the history of international thought. Since 1979 the Review has established itself as one of the premier History journals in the world, read and regularly cited by both political scientists and historians. Bertoli Mitchell, acting as exclusive financial adviser to the founding owners, led the negotiations and managed the transaction process to completion.

ALPSP International Conference - don't miss the early bird discount!

2010-06-11T16:34:00.002+01:00

The early bird discount ends 14 June .... book your place now!

ALPSP INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2010
8-10 September, 2010, Wyboston Lakes, near Cambridge UK (www.alpspconference.org)

The ALPSP International Conference is the ideal opportunity for the scholarly publishing community to share information and discuss new ideas and developments in a relaxed setting. The diverse programme reflects the breadth, innovation and creativity of the industry and with early bird fees held for a third year and free pre-conference workshops, it's excellent value!

The winners of the ALPSP Awards will be announced at the Dinner on 9 September.

Keynotes: Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief, The Lancet and John Vaughn, Executive Vice-President, Association of American Universities

Conference sessions include:

Scholarly Kitchen Live! with Kent Anderson, Michael Clarke and David Crotty
eBooks at the End of the Decade: Discoverability, Devices and New Developments
Building BRICs - selling into emerging markets
They're all out to get us ... government policies on scholarly publishing
The Social Web is a two-way conversation. Are you listening?
Web 2.0 technologies and post-publication peer review will supplant 'traditional' peer review - an Oxford Union Style Debate
Transforming research outputs - what we'll all be publishing in 5 years' time....
Industry updates

Conference Sponsors - we're grateful to all our sponsors:
DHL Global Mail; SAGE; CrossRef; Swets; River Valley Technologies; Portland Customer Services; Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals; Publishing Technology; Wiley-Blackwell; Turpin Distribution and Cadmus Communications

2010 Digital Book Printing Forum - June 9 (London, UK)

2010-05-27T16:11:00.000+01:00

ALPSP is one of the supporting organizations of the 2010 London Digital Book Printing Forum which has been organized by market and technology research company INTERQUEST and will take place on June 9, 2010 from 9:00 to 17:00 at The Royal Society in London, UK.

The event is designed around recent INTERQUEST research into digital book printing and as part of the event INTERQUEST analysts will present key results from the company’s new study, Digital Book Printing: Market Analysis & Forecast, 2010-2015. The full programme is now online.

As a supporting organization for the Digital Book Printing Forum, we are pleased to say that ALPSP members get a 20% discount on the registration fees. Simply enter the code IQDISC20 in the 'optional registration code' box under the regular price on the registration page to take advantage of the special ALPSP 20% discount.

Copyright for Publishing Professionals - online seminar

2010-05-27T15:29:00.000+01:00

For the first time ever ALPSP – in cooperation with the Copyright Clearance Center – is running an online seminar. The seminar will take place on Thursday 17 June 2010 from 2-3pm EST (9-10am BST).

Presenters Dru Zuretti (Manager of Copyright Education) and Ed Colleran (Senior Director, International Relations) will focus on the basics of US copyright law, including a copyright holder's privileges and obligations, and when permission may be required. Participants will also have the opportunity to take part in a question and answer session for clarification on some of the nuances of copyright they may encounter in their everyday work.

You can register online now – space is limited so don’t put this off!

IOP Publishing announces appointment of Steven Hall

2010-04-30T17:40:00.004+01:00

30 April 2010
Bristol, UK
IOP Publishing today announced the appointment of Steven Hall as the company's new Managing Director.

Dr Robert Kirby-Harris, Chief Executive of the Institute of Physics, said: "Steven's track record in publishing, and STM in particular, is extensive and impressive. Having started out at Macmillan Press, Steven went on to Chadwyck-Healey as Sales and Marketing Director and then Managing Director. Following ProQuest's acquisition of Chadwyck-Healey, he was appointed Senior Vice-President, Publishing and Publisher Relations of ProQuest. He moved on in 2004 to become Journal Sales and Marketing Director for Blackwell Publishing and later Commercial Director for Wiley-Blackwell. Steven then used his considerable breadth of strategic experience to form and run his own scholarly publishing consultancy from 2008 onwards.

"Steven joins IOP Publishing at a particularly exciting time, both in terms of the company's strategic direction and also given the challenges and opportunities facing scientific publishing. He starts his appointment as Managing Director on 5 July, which will allow time for a smooth and effective transfer of operations from Jerry Cowhig.

"Jerry Cowhig will be retiring from IOP Publishing having successfully led the company for the past 15 years, during which time he has been the driving force in building its reputation, growth and effectiveness - both commercially and also in the eyes of the scientific community - with the result that IOP Publishing is regarded as one of the world's leading scientific publishers. He is recognised as a highly influential champion for the publishing industry, where he has played a significant worldwide representational role, including acting as Chairman of the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers from 2005 to 2008."

Jerry Cowhig said: "I am grateful to the Institute of Physics, and especially to its wonderful publishing staff, for the privilege and enjoyment of working with them over the past 15 years. I welcome Steven and I confidently wish him and the company a successful future."

Additional information

The Institute of Physics
The Institute of Physics is a scientific charity devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics. It has a worldwide membership of more than 36,000 and is a leading communicator of physics-related science to all audiences, from specialists through to government and the general public. Its publishing company, IOP Publishing, is a world leader in scientific publishing and the electronic dissemination of physics. Go to www.iop.org.

For further information, please contact Joe Winters at IOP.
Tel: +44 (0)207 470 4815
Email: joseph.winters@iop.org

Webinar - Understanding Digital Natives: How does academic publishing need to change to serve tomorrow's scholars?

2010-04-17T09:59:00.000+01:00

Register Now for the SSP/AAUP Web Seminar: Understanding Digital Natives: How Does Academic Publishing Need to Change to Serve Tomorrow's Scholars?

To be held Tuesday, May 4, 2010, 11.00 am - 12.30 pm EST

There has been much talk about the challenges of publishing for the "Google generation," digital natives for whom the availability of Internet connectivity is assumed. As the first members of this "millennial" generation begin to enter graduate school, the need to understand how they interact with specialist information, and whether they will research and publish differently or in much the same way as their predecessors, has become acute.

This seminar takes advantage of the webinar format to bring together researchers from two important, but geographically widely spread, centers that have pioneered the systematic study of scholarly behavior. Using the data they have collected, these experts will focus on evidence of particular relevance to scholarly publishers. Their findings will be discussed by an expert commentator, and they will answer questions from participants.

Presenters:
David Nicholas, Ph.D., Director, Department of Information Studies, University College London
Sophia K. Acord, Ph.D., Research Associate, Center for Studies in Higher Education Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California at Berkeley

Organizers:
Rebecca Kennison, Director, Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, Columbia University
Charles Watkinson, Director, Purdue University Press

Join us if you want to:
- Hear focused summaries, designed for scholarly publishers, of the latest information science research on “digital native” scholars
- Acquire important evidence about emerging trends vital to shaping your publishing strategy
- Question international experts about changes in behavior among your authors and users

The Society for Scholarly Publishing in collaboration with the Association of American University Presses presents another great web-based seminar on a hot topic. With web seminars, you don't have to leave your office to learn. All you need is a telephone and a computer with Internet access. You can submit questions to the speakers using your computer, and there will be plenty of time for questions and discussion. Registration is per-computer rather than per-site, but you can invite as many staff as you like to participate using a single speakerphone and projector. Why not use the seminar as the basis for your own brainstorming session? All participants receive a recording of the seminar after the event, so you are free to review the presentations again and again.

Who Should Attend:
Supplying focused and evidence-based information, this seminar will be invaluable to senior managers and other individuals responsible for setting strategy at small- to medium-sized publishers of scholarly content, and for the consultants advising them.

REGISTRATION FEE: $99 for SSP and AAUP members; $149 for non-members

To register and for more information please go to the “Events” tab on the SSP website: https://www.sspnet.org/

Submitted by Karen King on behalf of SSP

Your vote counts! Vote Scholarly Kitchen for a Webby!

2010-04-16T10:38:00.001+01:00

Earlier this week some great news filtered through...

The Scholarly Kitchen (the excellent blog from the Society for Scholarly Publishing) is up for a Webby - the web's version of an Oscar!

This is a really big deal! The Webby will be determined by a public vote and Scholarly Kitchen is currently running in a strong second place - YOUR VOTE COULD LIFT IT INTO FIRST PLACE!

Quite apart from anything else it would be great to have a site on scholarly publishing win such a prestigious award.

Voting is open until 29 April 2010; you can register (which is very quick and easy) and vote here.

Incidentally, we're delighted that members of the Scholarly Kitchen team will be speaking at a plenary session of the 2010 ALPSP International Conference - registration now open!

New innovations in collective licensing boost payments for UK publishers...

2010-03-12T15:43:00.003Z

UK based publishers especially will be interested in this (I think impressive) announcement from PLS.

Ian

For immediate release

London, UK – 12 March 2010

New innovations in collective licensing boost payments for UK publishers

The Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) reports that in March 2010 it will distribute £4.3m to publishers from the business sector, up from £3.4m for the previous equivalent distribution.

This increase is mainly due to two new initiatives raising payments to publishers. Firstly, a move to include digital publications, i.e. e-books, e-journals, and e-magazines, to the copiable repertoire of collective licences has increased the overall value of licences. Secondly, a new revenue stream of public lending payments from the Netherlands is being distributed to UK publishers via PLS.

The first licences to encompass digital publications were launched in 2008 on an opt-in basis for rightsowners. Since then, over 1,300 UK-based publishers have signed up to support the new digital licensing initiative. Today, the completion of data gathering exercises mean that PLS is able to pay publishers royalties for copying from their digital publications in a fair and representative way.

Alicia Wise of PLS commented: ‘Licensing is an easy and flexible way to gain legal access to intellectual content, while providing remuneration to ensure that publishers continue to source, develop, and distribute really high-quality publications from topflight authors. I am really grateful to the 2,700+ UK publishing companies who actively support collective licensing, and encourage us to innovate in ways that complement their primary business.’

Jenny Pickles of John Wiley & Sons said: ‘It’s critical that copyright is respected in a digital world as well as print. We are pleased that the CLA digital licences contribute towards the protection of our digital publications, and compensate rightsowners should their titles be copied by any of the broad range of organisations that own a copy licence’.

The new revenue stream from the Netherlands is equivalent to the UK Public Lending Right scheme which remunerates authors for the lending of their works through public libraries. However, the Dutch scheme differs in that publishers are included in the list of rightsowners that are entitled to a portion of fees. This money contributes a total of £60k to the March distribution.

The increase in distributions to publishers will further the PLS contribution to the UK publishing industry’s bottom line. In 2009, PLS distributed a combined total of £26.1m to UK publishers, contributing 5.2% to the estimated £500m annual profit that the UK publishing industry generated over the same period.

David Bishop, Email: d.bishop@pls.org.uk, Tel: 020 7299 7775
Publishers Licensing Society, 37-41 Gower Street, London

Last chance to book a place at UKSG Conference

2010-03-12T09:27:00.000Z

Booking closes TOMORROW for the UKSG conference. In these straitened times, the UKSG conference still offers excellent value for money and guarantees that you will go away stimulated and in better shape to face ongoing challenges. Don't miss your chance to learn and network with some of the scholarly information community's brightest minds.

The programme (see www.uksg.org/event/conference10) includes a diverse mix of speakers:
* Conrad Wolfram on "the new era of knowledge"
* Carol Tenopir on measuring the return on university investment in libraries
* James Pringle (Thomson) on citation impact and research evaluation

And there are 28 breakout sessions
- beginners' sessions, practical guides, case studies
- technology, licensing, metrics, business models
- e-books, e-journals, e-textbooks
- preservation, digitisation, data visualisation
- publishers, librarians, agents, vendors.......

BOOKING CLOSES TOMORROW!
http://www.uksg.org/event/conference10/book

For further information, please contact Charlie Rapple as below.
___________________

Charlie Rapple
Head of Marketing Development
TBI Communications
62A Church Road
Wheatley, Oxford OX33 1LZ
UK

Tel: +44 1865 875896
Fax: +44 1865 876346

charlie.rapple@tbicommunications.com
www.tbicommunications.com

Anianet seeking feedback on posting call for papers to Chinese researchers

2010-02-10T15:17:00.001Z

ALPSP member Anianet (www.anianet.com) is a free English-language professional network connecting Chinese scholars to their peers in Europe and America. Since launching in late 2009, Anianet has helped connect thousands of Chinese academics, scientists, and researchers to their western counterparts.

Anianet's members are interested in finding out which journals are interested in and/or actively soliciting manuscripts from Chinese scholars. In response to this feedback, they are exploring the notion of a call for papers newsletter that would be distributed to the Anianet community on a regular basis. The idea is that publishers (and meeting/conference organizers soliciting proposals as well) could, for a small fee, efficiently connect with the Chinese authoring community via these Anianet newsletters.

Anianet are soliciting feedback as to whether ALPSP members would see this as a useful tool to grow their visibility among Chinese authors and would appreciate any constructive feedback regarding this idea.

To comment, join the discussion on the ALPSP LinkedIn group.

Ian Russell

ALPSP Seminar: The Future of Academic Book Publishing, 18 March

2010-02-03T11:57:00.004Z

Chair: Sam Bruinsma, Brill Publishing

British Institute of Radiology, London

This ALPSP one-day seminar provides a unique opportunity to consider both the present situation facing academic and scholarly publishers of all shapes and sizes, and the likely direction for the business of academic book publishing in the immediate future.

The keynote will be delivered by Paul DeCillis who is Director of Online Publishing at the American Institute of Physics who considers the present market for eBooks and looks forward to what we can expect in a rapidly changing environment - AIP have recently launched their own eBook platform.

The 'where are we currently?' theme is then picked up by consideration of the soon to be published 'ALPSP Scholarly Book Publishing' survey results. The place of third party suppliers such as the aggregators is considered as is the place for print in today's digital world. An expert overview of the latest eBook technologies follows a discussion of the likely impact of the looming Google Book Settlement. The expert panel of speakers then provide answers to questions from delegates before the Chair sums up.
Who should attend: all those concerned with strategies for developing book content from an Editorial, Sales, or Marketing background. Librarians interested in how scholarly book publishing is changing and developing will also find the seminar of interest.

Speakers:

Paul DeCillis, Director of Online Publishing, American Institute of Physics
Laura Cox, Managing Director, Frontline Global Marketing Services
Linda Bennett, Gold Leaf
Martin Marlow, CEO, Maverick Marketing
Richard Padley, Managing Director, Semantico
Sarah Stamford, Project Manager, eBooks@Cambridge

Further information: www.alpsp.org or events@alpsp.org

MUDL - New working group on management data

2010-02-03T11:18:00.004Z

This week sees the launch of a new group whose aim is to bring together publishers, aggregators and librarians to work for improved management data for academic libraries. The groups’s press release can be found at http://www.libr.port.ac.uk/press_release/

Terms of reference for the Group, perhaps appropriately called Managing and Understanding Data in Libraries (MUDL) are also available, at http://www.libr.port.ac.uk/press_release/terms.html

For more information about MUDL, contact ian.mayfield@port.ac.uk or sarah.weston@port.ac.uk

AIP adopts DataSalon’s MasterVision Service

2010-01-27T09:25:00.002Z

The American Institute of Physics has announced that it has adopted DataSalon's MasterVision service to create a complete profile of all subscribing institutions and new prospects. The system merges data from many different source systems, combining subscriptions, online usage, turnaways, alert signups, single article sales, author submissions, and marketing campaigns. It also incorporates Ringgold’s Identify database that provides reference data for existing subscribers, and lists of potential new institutional prospects classified by location, size, interests, etc. All data is fully de-duplicated to create a clear summary page for each customer listing all known data in a single view.

”DataSalon was great to work with,” said Lori Carlin, AIP’s Director, Fulfillment & Marketing Services. “What they accomplished in joining up our data into a virtual data warehouse in weeks, instead of the years it might have taken us to build a real warehouse, was absolutely invaluable. The ability to now aggregate a set of customer data into a single 360-degree view for data mining and gap analysis has greatly enhanced our ability to build customer relationships and quickly and effectively target our marketing efforts.”

With this implementation of the MasterVision product, AIP’s marketing team is now able to run detailed customer analysis in seconds, identifying targeted segments for several new cutting-edge recruitment and renewal campaigns. Turnaways are identified using IP addresses in order to spot non-subscribing institutions with substantial interest in AIP’s online content. Online usage is tracked in detail in order to identify upward and downward trends, and to spot any ‘at risk’ subscribers whose usage is low. Individuals are automatically linked to affiliated institutions using their email address, creating accurate counts and lists of related authors, single article purchasers, and so on for each institution.

Because MasterVision was designed from the ground up specifically for the needs of academic publishers, it provides sales and marketing teams with direct access to their data through a user-friendly web interface, without the need for expert IT assistance. MasterVision also provides AIP with easy access to a range of visuals, including pie charts, bar charts, cross tabs and maps: all enabling staff to explore and visualise AIP customers. Management dashboards combine charts and tables into a single view to provide one-click access to essential statistics and trends.

”We are very pleased to be working with AIP in using our MasterVision product to integrate and analyse all of their customer data,” said Nick Andrews, Managing Director of DataSalon. “It’s particularly exciting for us to be working with AIP’s marketing team: their innovative work in deriving insight and value by cross-referring subscriber usage, author data, alert signups, and turnaways puts them at the cutting edge of journal marketing.”

SSP's 6th Annual Librarian Focus Group

2010-01-20T11:23:00.000Z

ALPSP members attending the AAP-PSP meeting in Washington next month, or indeed those within easy reach of DC, may be interested in SSP’s 6th Annual Librarian Focus Group which is being held on February 2.

Full details below.

__________________________________________________________

SSP Presents the 6th Annual Librarian Focus Group

The Future Is Now: What Libraries Need in 2010 and Beyond

Join us on February 2, 2010, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm in Washington, DC

In a proven formula, a panel of librarians will take questions from moderators and participants on a range of themes during a full day of discussions, including:

What are librarians looking for from resource providers and publishers in this brave new world?
How are librarians transitioning to digital collections?

Increasingly, libraries are developing robust digital publishing programs, investing in institutional repositories, weeding print, and looking to build e-book collections. Couple this with a decade of open access initiatives, shrinking embargo periods on scientific literature, Google Books, and the rise of virtual services for patrons who never set foot in a physical library, and it looks like the future is now.

What does a 21st century library look like? How are librarians meeting the changing needs of patrons? What are their predictions for the next big thing? Join us as we pepper six seasoned librarians with questions about what keeps them up at night and what they need now.

The panelists have been chosen for their wide-ranging knowledge and there will be informal as well as formal opportunities for discussion.

Register at: https://www.sspnet.org/Events/Meetings_and_Seminars/2010_SSP_Librarian_Focus_Group/spage.aspx

Registration Fee: $299 for SSP members; $349 for non-members.

Survey on social media

2009-12-22T12:07:00.000Z

Michael Collins of i-Publishing Consultants invites ALPSP members to participate in a short social media survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JKTJVSK. The survey takes about 5 mins to complete and everyone who completes it will be sent a free copy of the social media benchmarking report that will subsequently be published by Qube Media. This will be of use to all involved in editorial, marketing, sales and customer service in publishing. Contact Michael on 07779 602 865 or at michael@i-publishingconsultants.com for more info.

French court rules against Google in copyright case

2009-12-22T11:56:00.002Z

Catherine Blache (Senior Counsellor, International Policy at Syndicat National de l'Edition (the French Publishers' Association)) has sent the following English summary of the recent French court decision against Google:

"On December 18, 2009, the Paris Court of First Instance condemned Google for violating copyright of books published by the French publishing group La Martiniere, by forbidding the search engine to continue digitizing books without publishers' authorization. This decision is based on French law, whose application Google had attempted to question, and the acknowlegement by the French court of its competence to deal with such a case.

"The court also acknowledged that the French Publishers Association (SNE) and the Authors Publishers Association (SGDL) were entitled to join the suit. It stated that 'by fully reproducing and making available extracts of books' without the authorization of rights-holders, Google had committed acts of copyright violation to the detriment of Le Seuil and its two subsidiaries, as well as to the SNE and SGDL.

"The court gave Google one month to apply the ruling and halt such acts or face a 10,000 euros per day fine.

"Google will also have to pay EUR 300,000 in damages to the three publishers owned by La Martiniere group and a symbolic sum of one euro to the SNE Publishers' Association and the SGDL Society of Authors , thus recognizing damages caused to the whole publishers and authors community.

"This case law can from now on be referred to by other publishers who may want to sue Google for the scanning and making available of their books."

OSTP Public Access Policy - deadline extended to 21 January 2010

2009-12-22T09:53:00.000Z

We are awaiting confirmation in the Federal Register but a blog post by Rick Weiss (Director of Strategic Communications and a Senior Policy Analyst at OSTP) on 19 December 2009 indicates that the deadline for comments on the OSTP Public Access consultation will be extended by two weeks (presumably to 21 January 2010).

Many comments received so far are calling for a mandate to ensure that all Federally funded research (no matter what subject discipline) is made freely available on the open web in PubMed Central-type government repositories. The value that publishers add is appreciated as most comments suggest that it should be the final, peer reviewed, publisher version (the Version of Record) that is deposited, but since they want the mandate to insist that peer reviewed papers are deposited with a maximum of 6 months embargo (or no embargo at all) they clearly have no understanding of the likely impact that this will have on the publishing industry. Or that no scholarly publishing industry means no peer reviewed journal material.

Whatever your views, ALPSP urges you to respond to this public consultation.

Swets rumours...

2009-12-18T10:43:00.000Z

I've been contacted several times recently regarding rumours that Swets are closing their Singapore office and what this means for Swets as a whole.

I have spoken to Swets and these rumours are unfounded. Their Singapore office is not closing and, while they have taken the opportunity to do some reorganization and rationalization globally, this is all for sound business reasons.

Robert Jacobs (Director of Publisher Relations at Swets) has offered to field any queries that ALPSP members might have but it looks like this is a non-story!

Office of Science and Technology Policy Public Access Forum - comment now!

2009-12-17T11:36:00.000Z

The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), part of the Executive Office of the President in the US government, has opened a Public Access Forum to consult on the issues around access to publicly-funded research results. The underlying suggestion is that peer reviewed journals articles and other material arising from all federally funded research should be made freely available to the public.

ALPSP will be submitting our own response via the ALPSP North American division but we strongly encourage all ALPSP members - whatever your views - to contribute to this debate. We believe the best way to do this is to submit a letter by e-mail to publicaccess@ostp.gov or by mail to Office of Science and Technology Policy, Attn: Open Government Recommendations, 725 17th Street, Washington, DC 20502. Comments must be received by January 7, 2010.

The timing of this consultation is unfortunate given that it spans the Christmas vacation and also because we understand that the report from the Congressional Roundtable set up to also examine these issues will not report until early in the New Year. ALPSP will therefore be joining a number of other organizations in asking for an extension for comments of 30 days so that the Roundtable report can be taken into consideration and we would suggest that you do the same.

The ALPSP view is that, while we are supportive of public access, policies should consider the business and publishing needs of our members and not be mandated by funding agencies.

This is a very important consultation and, as I said earlier, we very strongly encourage you to respond whatever your views.

Publisher Lookup Award for Accessibility

2009-12-16T11:14:00.001Z

JISC TechDis have launched a new award to support accessibility in the scholarly publishing industry. To quote their announcement:

“In order to celebrate the growing awareness of accessibility issues among publishers the Publisher Lookup Award for Accessibility is being sponsored by Dolphin and iansyst (specialists in alternative formats) on behalf of JISC TechDis.

This award gives publishers and aggregators the opportunity to nominate themselves for relevant accessibility related practice. The award will be presented at the London Book Fair on 21 April 2010. To nominate your organisation please fill in the online form.

The award relates to a wide range of issues that contribute towards accessibility (e.g. staff training, workflows, organisational structure changes, etc) – some of which may not yet be visible to users but could be an important part of the wider transformational change we are looking to encourage.”

New Chair for INASP

2009-12-16T10:31:00.004Z

INASP - the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications - has announced that Professor John V. Wood is to be the next Chair of its Board of Trustees.

INASP works with publishers and the developing world to provide affordable, sustainable access to scholarly publications in its partner countries through programmes like PERii. It is important work. INASP currently cooperates with over 50 publishers facilitating access to around 25,000 journals and 11,000 ebooks in over 100 countries - if you are not already involved you really should take a look at what INASP do.

Professor Wood is Principal of the Faculty of Engineering and a former Chief Executive of the Council for the Central Laboratories of the Research Councils. He currently Chairs both the European Research Area Board (ERAB) and the JISC Support of Research committee (JSR).

John succeeds Bob Campbell, Senior Publisher at Wiley-Blackwell, whose committed work with the Board over the last five years helped steer INASP through its transition from ICSU working group to a fully registered international charity. Bob will remain a Board member for a further year to ensure a smooth handover.

Gap analysis tool introduced by Accucoms

2009-11-27T08:59:00.001Z

Accucoms has recently announced the development of a gap analysis tool that will help publishers identify gaps in their market penetration and provide a highly qualified target list of prospective customers to use for direct marketing and sales activities.

The tool is the result of a large-scale research project undertaken by Accucoms and includes comprehensive information on the subject focus of institutions worldwide, as well as market segmentation data such as type of organisation (e.g. academic, corporate, government, hospital). This information is becoming increasingly important as publishers implement much more targeted sales and marketing campaigns.

The tool will help any publisher using Accucoms’ suite of direct marketing and sales representations services gain competitive advantage as it identifies potential subscribers in underrepresented geographic regions. It contains profiles of tens of thousands of institutions around the world and can be cross-referenced with the publisher’s existing subscription list to identify key prospects and help evaluate market share.

Pinar Erzin, Managing Director of Accucoms, says “Our gap analysis tool provides publishers with essential strategic information about possible growth in certain regions and on a tactical level, it offers qualified, relevant and up-to-date lists of prospects. Gathering this information is not a trivial task but it is information that every company needs. We have invested considerable time and effort in developing this tool and we believe it will significantly enhance our client’s sales and marketing activities.”

For more information please contact Egon Menardi, Tel: +31 (0)71 5247630, egon.menardi@accucoms.com

Certificate in Journals Publishing - enrolling now!

2009-11-27T08:47:00.001Z

The Certificate in Journals Publishing is aimed at graduates currently working in entry-level positions in journals publishing and who have, ideally, between 6-12 months experience within that environment. It offers delegates the opportunity to gain a good overall knowledge of the journals industry, and to gain credits towards a Masters degree at Oxford Brookes University.

The Certificate – provided by the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies (OICPS) at Oxford Brookes University in cooperation with the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) – is a two-module postgraduate programme open to holders of a good honours degree. The Certificate consists of taught lectures and group work, which take place one afternoon per week (on Thursdays) for 11 weeks, starting on February 11th, 2010 followed by a period of independent study to be completed in the delegate’s own time.

The course is also open to graduates from other relevant ‘knowledge industry’ sectors, such as academic libraries and learned societies.

More information is available on the Brookes website.

DataSalon and Ringgold launch new service to unlock the value of relationships between organizations

2009-11-25T09:03:00.001Z

Ringgold and DataSalon have announced a new service to aid publishers in visualizing customer hierarchies.

DataSalon’s MasterVision platform has been enhanced with the addition of an interactive hierarchy viewer, providing academic publishers with a highly visual ‘family tree’ view of Ringgold’s entire Identify database and follows a strategic partnership between the two companies announced in March 2009.

Ringgold creates and maintains Identify, a hierarchical reference database of organizations subscribing to
academic journals, including information about location, size, and subject specialties and providing coverage of more than 150,000 academic, healthcare, government and corporate organizations worldwide, including all of the various parent/child relationships between them.

Designed and built specifically for the needs of academic publishers, DataSalon’s MasterVision is a web-based system which provides publishers with ‘complete customer insight’ – it integrates every source of customer information held by a publisher (including subscribers, authors, alert recipients, etc.) into a user-friendly web interface that includes flexible search, segmentation, visualization and reporting tools. MasterVision has been and the new hierarchy viewer is fully integrated into the product.

The relationships between libraries, departments, universities and consortia form a fundamental part of the sales operation for all major academic publishers, with consortia agreements and other ‘big deals’ providing a significant proportion of revenues. However, existing publisher systems provide little support for searching and viewing these complex relationships between different levels of customer. By combining the rich data of Identify with MasterVision’s hierarchy viewer, publishers will be able to understand the relationships between direct sales and ‘big deals’ more clearly than ever before.

More information is available on the DataSalon website.

Academic Publishing in Europe Jan 2010 Conference

2009-11-17T14:03:00.003Z

I thought ALPSP members would be interested to know that they receive a special “Members Conference Registration Rate” of €450 rather than the full €600 for the “APE1010” conference which is being held in Berlin on the 18/19/20th of January.

I attended last year and found it both stimulating and useful. With a strong European focus the contributors and attendees provide a unique take on our scholarly publishing industry.

You can find the programme at: http://www.ape2010.eu/05_19jan_fullconference.htm
And the registration form at: http://www.ape2010.eu/02registration.php
Pre-conference workshops: http://www.ape2010.eu/07_18jan_preconference.htm (these are not included in the standard delegate rate)

Yours,

Nick

Understanding E-Journal Technology

2009-11-10T09:18:00.001Z

I thought ALPSP members would be interested to know that there are still places available on Renew Training’s “Understanding E-Journal Technology” course on 19th November in London. The course is aimed at anyone working in sales, marketing, editorial, customer service, or senior management in need of refreshing their understanding of this ever-changing part of the business.

The course has recently been updated to include information on new web-scale discovery tools and what they mean for publishers. Many libraries are now testing and implementing these types of tools and it is important that publishers stay up to speed with what is happening in this area of library technology. They will also include the latest on industry initiatives such as Shibboleth/Athens and Counter and take a peek into the future of e-journal navigation and use.

Full course information and a booking form can be found at www.renewtraining.com/uejt/uejt.htm

House Science and Technology Committee Roundtable

2009-10-30T14:12:00.003Z

Attendees at the 2009 ALPSP International Conference heard Fred Dylla (American Institute of Physics) reference a Congressional Roundtable group that both he and the Chair of ALPSP North America, Crispin Taylor (American Society of Plant Biologists), have been involved with.

This Scholarly Publishing Roundtable was convened earlier this year by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology under Congressman Gordon and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The Roundtable group was formed to seek "consensus on feasible and effective ways to expand access to and preservation of federally funded research information". The recommendations arising from the Roundtable discussions are expected to be released in the next few weeks.

A status report on the work of the Roundtable group has just been published online along with the details of the members of the Roundtable and their biographies.

Sensible and progressive dialogue between fair-minded representatives of the various stakeholders is hugely welcomed by ALPSP and we eagerly await the recommendations of the group.

ALPSP Seminar: Marketing to Libraries

2009-10-27T15:55:00.004Z

During times when many publishers are waiting to hear how their renewals for 2010 are going, and feeling anxious about what the future holds despite weathering the financial storms of a difficult 2009, one of the key things to get right is how to market effectively to libraries.

Which is why you or one of your colleagues need to book a place at our one-day seminar about Marketing to Libraries on the 20 November in London.

British Institute of Radiology, 36 Portland Place, London, W1B 1AT
Friday 20 November 2009

Chair: Bernie Folan, Head of Journals Marketing, SAGE Publications

A great line up of speakers:
Claire Duddy, HM Treasury

Jane Harvell, Head of Research Services and Special Collections at University of Sussex

Phil Jamieson, Wiley-Blackwell

Melinda Kenneway, TBI Communications Ltd

Nancy Buckley and Helen Cooke, Burgundy Information Systems Limited

Kathryn Spiller, Society for Endocrinology

Colin Meddings, Oxford University Press

Katie Sayers, SAGE Publications

Chris Clarke, TALIS

Followed by a networking reception with wine and nibbles

Book your place online or contact me for further information

Dee French: info@alpsp.or or 01827 709188

Invitation to Participate in an ICSTI Technical Project

2009-10-27T14:03:00.002Z

In association with its forthcoming Workshop on 'Interactive Publications and the Record of Science' (http://www.icsti.org/events.php), the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) is undertaking a technical project to survey and analyse publishers' use of interactive technologies in scholarly publishing.

Prospective participants are invited to complete the online questionnaire hosted on the web site of the project leader or to write to Brian McMahon if they wish to become more closely involved.

Incidentally, ALPSP is an Associate Member of ICSTI and so all ALPSP members are able to attend the Workshop at ICSTI member rates.

OAPEN survey on 'Funding of Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences'

2009-10-22T15:56:00.003+01:00

ALPSP members may be interested in taking part in a survey being conducted by the OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks - www.oapen.org - project). The title of the
survey is “Funding of Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS)”

http://bit.ly/FGH2R

Long link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=GqUMvpUHKQ0zCQAXd5_2fDUg_3d_3d

The aim of OAPEN is to develop and implement an Open Access publication model for peer reviewed academic books in HSS to improve the accessibility, impact and relevance of European research in these fields. To make sure that the model meets the needs of researchers, funders and publishers, they are keen to find out how books are currently funded and how this might be complemented by funding opportunities for the Open Access publishing of books.

They say about the survey:

Publishing monographs (including anthologies in HSS often relies on additional funding on the part of authors/editors as costs can not solely be met by revenues of sales. So far funders have mainly supported the print production and based their funding models on the traditional book market. The combination of a free (open access) electronic version (access, searchability, quick citability etc.) with a convenient pay print version offers new opportunities in visibility and dissemination.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact Stefan Buddenbohm, Göttingen State and University Library, buddenbohm@sub.uni-goettingen.de <mailto:buddenbohm@sub.uni-goettingen.de>

posted by Nick Evans, ALPSP 22 October 2009

ALPSP Chair elect breaks leg

2009-10-17T16:18:00.002+01:00

I'm not 100% sure if Toby Green fell while shouting from the treetops that he had been elected as the next Chair of ALPSP... or if in fact he fell out of a tree while constructing a tree house.

The fact is, fall he did and unfortunately Toby, who will take office as Chair in January 2010, managed to break his leg. He could therefore be seen hobbling around the Messe at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week on crutches.

Determined that some good will come from his misfortune, Toby took the opportunity to raise some money for Della Sar's terrific charity Friends of Della and Don. I'm sure you know, but Della is Global Marketing Director at Nature Publishing Group and the story of how and why the charity was set up is worth reading. The eagle-eyed will have noticed that Toby had a collecting tin gaffa-taped to his crutches and the response at the Fair was great...

...but it could be even better and it's not too late to give an online donation of any size to help support Della's charity.

O’Reilly TOC Frankfurt fails to deliver

2009-10-16T13:32:00.002+01:00

O’Reilly Media’s Tools of Change (TOC) conference came to Frankfurt on 13 October 2009 – the first time the concept had been aired outside of the United States.

It is safe to say that TOC Frankfurt had been eagerly anticipated; I was certainly looking forward to it and if the bustle during registration was anything to go by then so were the majority of the roughly 200 (my guestimate) delegates who had paid the not insignificant Euro 499 +VAT registration fee to attend.

There were a couple of slightly annoying housekeeping issues. Registration was a bit chaotic due to poor signage, the breakout rooms were cramped and generally way too small and problems with the internet connection throughout the day must have been embarrassing to O’Reilly given their cutting-edge internet reputation. These could have easily been forgiven (it’s not easy to put on a conference like this, especially in an unfamiliar venue) had a program that promised “new insights” delivered.

It didn’t.

The opening two keynotes, Sara Lloyd (Pan Macmillan) and Neelan Chokski (Lexcycle), shared a slick delivery style but failed to impart any real insight. The third of the opening trio, Cory Doctorow, gave a passionate – if rather hurried – view of what needs to happen to sustain books into the future.

As we headed for coffee and the parallel sessions that were to follow, I was feeling a little underwhelmed.

Brian O’Leary (Magellan Media) improved my mood as he outlined research – albeit on a small scale – that seemed to suggest a correlation between peer-2-peer piracy and an increase in sales. He was careful in what he said and began and ended by suggesting that more work was needed from a bigger range of titles and publishers (he was just reporting on a subset of titles from the O’Reilly list). I was therefore disappointed, but not surprised, to read the several “Piracy boosts sales” headlines the following day…

Timo Hannay (Nature Publishing Group) gave a typically interesting presentation, though many in the scholarly / academic publishing industry will have heard much of the content before, but while the panel session on Alternative Digital Sales Channels was entertaining enough, it didn’t really work as a Q and A, failed to really address the topic in hand, and consequently stuttered. Simon Waldman (Guardian Media Group) did manage to give an overview of the innovative things that the Guardian are doing that was both interesting and entertaining. The elephant in the room during his talk was that the Guardian, like many newspapers, are struggling financially and have reduced the number of professional journalists working on the paper (in fact the Guardian is sustained by profits from Auto Trader). Opportunities to generate income from the innovations that Simon was talking about appear scarce, but in fairness that wasn’t his brief and nonetheless he reported some neat stuff.

I did enjoy the PECHA KUCHA session. Though some of the presenters struggled with the challenge of this, errr challenging, format they all managed to get through it unscathed. Well more or less. It was fast paced which meant that if you didn’t like a particular speaker then, like the weather in Melbourne, you didn’t have long to wait for a change.

Closing keynote speaker and O’Reilly founder Tim O’Reilly wasn’t able to make it to Frankfurt and this news was kept until the last possible moment which was understandable, I guess. After all, the organizers will have wanted to ensure that everybody stayed to the end. Unfortunately the attempt by Andrew Savikas (VP of Digital Initiatives at O’Reilly Media) to fill the void was a big disappointment. The title of the talk was ‘Reasons to be Excited’ but Savikas did little more than drone on about O’Reilly Media itself. Again I thought there was little of interest or insight and for me TOC Frankfurt ended as it began – with a damp squib.

Some have criticised TOC Frankfurt for its anti-DRM stance. The trouble was that throughout the whole day there was no real debate – about DRM or anything else – and that’s perhaps the biggest lesson that TOC needs to learn. It was also pretty one-dimensional: Publish your content DRM-free and via an iPhone app. Yawn.

So in summary I would not recommend O’Reilly Tools of Change to ALPSP members on the evidence of the first TOC Frankfurt event. Admittedly this is partly due to the high expectations that I had, and indeed the high cost of attending. But the bottom line is that I can spend my time and my organization’s money much more productively, and other familiar faces that I saw at TOC Frankfurt generally agreed.

The Frankfurt Book Fair has announced that an improved TOC conference will be back next year. I am sure it will, but I won’t be there to see it.

Ian Russell
#alpsp #tocfrankfurt #fbf09

To DRM, or not to DRM

2009-10-13T13:14:00.003+01:00

DRM - Digital Rights Management is a hot topic at the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference in Frankfurt (#tocfrankfurt), or at least TPM is (that's technical protection measures).*

Ronald Schild, CEO of MVB, made the point that it is a tough value proposition to charge for the TPM protected version, which by definition is not as easy to use, if you have an illegal, pirated version of a book that gives the user no TPM hassles.

Also, I hear that there is competition among pirates to be the first to post an illegal copy on a bit torrent site and huge kudos among their community goes to the first person to break the TPM. That seems like an incentive to pirate TPM protected content that just isn't there for something that has no TPM. Or is that DRM?

Ian

*It's interesting to me that DRM - which strictly speaking is about managing and communicating rights digitally is often used to mean TPM, which is about stopping users doing things with your content that you don't want them to do...

ALPSP Survey of Librarians - report published

2009-10-09T08:28:00.002+01:00

Against the backdrop of the global economic downturn that began in the second half of 2008, ALPSP undertook a survey of librarians in mid-2009 to inform a panel discussion at the 2009 ALPSP International Conference.

The report arising from that survey is now available and is free to ALPSP members.

Key findings are:

The average number of journals being made available by the libraries surveyed more than doubled between 2000 and 2009. However, librarians are predicting that they will provide access to around the same number of journals in 2010 as they did in 2009, with more journals purchased as part of 'big deals' and fewer as single subscriptions. This will be of concern to smaller publishers who are unable to offer their content as part of a 'big deal' and those that are launching new subscription journals.
A significant proportion of librarians responding to the survey state that they would prefer to purchase content from non-profit publishers, although the profit status of the publisher is not an important factor in any of the purchasing decisions surveyed.
There is a strong demand from library customers to move more journals to electronic only. Three of the four most important barriers are within the control of publishers who may wish to consider what more can be done regarding electronic only offerings, licensing terms and post cancellation access to facilitate this move.
Librarians generally understand and value the role that academic publishers play in the dissemination and communication of scholarship. However, there is room for a better understanding of the inflationary pressures on journal prices and better communication regarding this from the scholarly publishing industry generally.
Librarians look for the most advantageous cost / benefit ratio when making their purchasing decisions. Usage statistics, both overall use and cost per use, are very important tools used in determining whether to renew or cancel journal content. Publishers should therefore continue to make every effort to maximize the usage of their version of the article. Faculty continue to play a very important role in all purchasing decisions relating to single subscriptions and end user marketing will therefore remain a priority for journal publishers who primarily sell their content as single subscriptions.
Librarians responding to the survey are knowledgeable of open access publishing business models. However, more work needs to be done to minimise the burden of administrating open access publishing and to ensure that expenditure is predictable.

2009-09-28T18:05:00.005+01:00

Don't miss this key ALPSP Seminar

Going Green? Sustainable Publishing, 4 November, London

Chair: Ashley Lodge, Publisher, Pearson Education and Chair, Publishers Green Network

Speakers include:
Genny Early, Head of Purchasing and Distribution, Oxford Journals
Mark Gough, Global Environmental Manager, Reed Elsevier
Edward Milford, Chairman, Earthscan
Toby Sawday, Business Development & Sustainability, Alistair Sawday Publishing

Your supply chain is important when considering the environmental impact of your publishing. But there are other key issues - how do you get buy in from your staff, change the way you organise the office and business without escalating costs? Learn how to be an effective publisher in a sustainable way at the ALPSP practical one day seminar on 4 November in Central London. Details

Online Information - 1-3 December 2009

2009-09-28T09:30:00.004+01:00

Just a swift reminder that the Online Information will be held as usual at Olympia in London on the 1-3rd of December, 2009. This year we won't have an ALPSP stand but if you're there why not use the Twitter hashtag #alpsp to keep in touch?

To pre-register for entry to the exhibition go to www.online-information.co.uk. As an ALPSP member you can also claim an association discount if you register for the conference which is being run alongside the exhibition.

Nick

Semantico offer free demo at Frankfurt

2009-09-21T11:14:00.002+01:00

A message just received from Richard Padley of Semantico which you might find of interest . . .

Free data consultancy and rapid online publishing demo on the Semantico stand at Frankfurt: Hall 4.2, Stand K445

If you’re planning to visit the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, why not make a date to talk to us on the Semantico stand right now?

Gareth Bish and I will be conducting one-to-one, hands-on demo sessions of our new rapid online publishing platform SIPP Rapid, and arranging FREE consultancy days to help improve the quality of your data.

You can also hear about a selection of our newest service developments for 2010 to help your organisation position for recovery – see the list below.

To book a time to meet up, just hit reply and suggest a time and we’ll get back to you.
We look forward to welcoming you on the stand!
Best regards,
Richard PadleyManaging Director, Semantico Limited

FEATURED FOR 2010:
Shibboleth: come and talk to us about enabling federated access management for your sites
Book Widget taster: publishers can trial a range of titles for a six-month period without making a major commitment to an entire library or imprint
User-experience review: a 2-day consultancy package offering that helps publishers get more sales effectiveness out of an existing site

What's Next for the Google Settlement - FREE online seminar from CCC

2009-09-18T09:32:00.003+01:00

Colleagues may be interested in a free online seminar which has been organized by fellow ALPSP member the Copyright Clearance Center.

Copyright law specialist Lois F. Wasoff will give the hour-long webinar which will take place on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 12:00 pm EDT (5:00 pm BST in the UK, 6:00 pm CEST in mainland Europe).

To quote the blurb:
"Since its announcement in October 2008, there has been a continuous stream of activity surrounding the Google Settlement. The dates to opt-out and object have passed and thousands of documents have been filed with the court. Renowned copyright law and policy attorney Lois Wasoff returns to help sort out the diverse viewpoints in anticipation of the Fairness Hearing, the next important event in this historic lawsuit. Presented in clear and concise terms, the seminar will examine the complex issues facing Judge Dennis Chin as the hearing date approaches."

The webinar is FREE, but you must register to take part.

Current Communications and public consultations from the European Commission

2009-09-16T20:20:00.002+01:00

The European Commission currently has three 'communications' (EC speak for policy documents) and public consultations open that may be of interest to ALPSP members.

1. Consultation on “Europeana – next steps”
The European Commission adopted the Communication “Europeana – next steps” on 28 August 2009. Europeana is "Europe's online library, museum and archive" and is part of the European Commission's digital libraries initiative which, in their words, aims "to make Europe's cultural and scientific heritage accessible to all on the internet".

The EC has launched a public consultation to discuss the further development of Europeana (deadline for comments: 15 November 2009).

2. Consultation on “Post i2010: priorities for a new strategy for European information society (2010-2015)”
The European Commission has published Europe’s Digital Competitiveness Report and opened a public consultation on what future strategy should be adopted to meet 5 stated goals:

to accelerate the economic recovery and maintain its world leadership in high-tech sectors
to spend research budgets more effectively so that bright ideas are marketed and generate new growth
to kick-start ICT-led productivity to offset GDP stagnation as the labour force starts to shrink when the baby boomers retire
to foster new, smarter, cleaner technologies that can help Europe achieve a factor for growth; and
to use networking tools to rebuild trust in Europe as an open and democratic society.

The Commission has launched an online questionnaire to gather opinion.

3. Communication on “Enhancing the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market”
On 14 September 2009 the European Commission adopted the Communication "Enhancing the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market". There is no consultation open on this Communication but ALPSP members may be interested in the "practical, non-legislative measures to combat counterfeiting and piracy" that are outlined in the Commission's press release.

Toby Green elected next Chair of ALPSP

2009-09-16T09:48:00.003+01:00

Toby Green, Head of Publishing at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), has been elected as the next Chair of ALPSP.

Toby joined OECD in 1998 and became Head of Publishing in 2007. He was instrumental in the launch of SourceOECD in 2000 and since then OECD has continued to carve out a reputation as one of the most innovative and forwarding-thinking publishers in the non-profit sector. He began his publishing career in 1982 and has previously worked for Academic Press, Elsevier and Pergamon Press.

Speaking of his election, Toby said "It is a great honour to be asked to Chair ALPSP. The challenge is to build on the momentum that ALPSP has so that it can deepen and extend its work in serving the international community of not-for-profit scholarly publishers. ALPSP has its roots in the UK but has 140 members outside of the UK and active chapters in North America and Australasia so it is definitely a global association. Appointing a Chair based outside the UK for the first time underlines this global aspiration."

Toby served as a Member of the Council of ALPSP from 2002-2006 and will re-join Council as Chair on 1 January 2010, succeeding Robert Parker (Royal Society of Chemistry) who will continue to serve on Council as Past-Chair.

Fun and fundraising at the ALPSP / Ringgold Golf

2009-09-12T12:26:00.004+01:00

Congratulations to the winners of the 2009 ALPSP / Ringgold Texas Scramble golf competition.

Shown receiving their trophies from Ringgold's Helen Henderson (far left) are from left to right Jevin West, Mary Waltham and Jacquie Thomson.

I am delighted to say that the event raised £200 for the Multiple Sclerosis Society.

My thanks to all those that took part - a good time was definitely had by all!

New report on small businesses' access to research literature

2009-09-04T10:14:00.003+01:00

The Publishing Research Consortium (PRC) - of which ALPSP is a founding partner - has just published a new report by Mark Ware examining UK small businesses' access to research information.

As noted by Bob Campbell, Chair of the Publishing Research Consortium steering group:

"The so-called ‘access gap’ for small businesses has often been cited as a problem in the current scholarly communication system, without much idea of its extent. This study is an important first step in improving our understanding of how staff in small businesses use journals and what can be done to achieve even greater access."

It's a hot topic because small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make up a huge proportion of businesses (over 99% in the UK), account for a significant proportion of private sector employment and turnover and, crucially, drive much of the innovation in the economy. Access to the research literature by SMEs hasn't been studied much and so this report is a very welcome addition to the evidence base.

The report includes primary data from an online survey and qualitative interviews and finds that SME access to research information is good, but could be improved still further. Key findings are:

70% of respondents for whom access to the literature was important described their access as fairly of very easy
SME respondents read circa 112 articles per year on average which implies that there are no major access barriers
Ease of access was lower among SMEs than in larger companies or universities
SMEs are more likely to experience access difficulties than those in larger companies or universities

The research report Access by UK small and medium-sized enterprises to professional and academic information is available from the PRC website along with a companion report containing additional information and analysis.

Mark Ware will give a brief presentation on the survey at an additional session of the ALPSP International Conference at 5:30pm on Thursday 10 September 2009.

UK government gets tough with internet pirates

2009-09-02T18:13:00.002+01:00

The UK government has accepted the huge and growing problem of internet piracy with Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw promising tougher measures to crackdown on illegal file-sharing.

Measures that the UK government is supporting include:

Warning letters to those illegally downloading content
Allowing telecoms watchdog Ofcom to release the identities of serial infringers to facilitate prosecution by rightsholders
Making internet service providers (ISPs) slow down the internet connections of repeat offenders, although the government appears to have backed away from getting ISPs to terminate internet access altogether

Representatives of the content industries - including ALPSP - have been working together to ensure that the government understands the economic and social importance of the creative industries and the negative impact that illegal file-sharing is having and it is great to see that our message seems to have gotten through despite fierce lobbying from the ISPs who oppose these measures.

Social Media Workshops - discount for ALPSP members

2009-09-02T17:06:00.003+01:00

Reed Media are offering a 10% discount to ALPSP members for their workshop Introduction to Social Media Marketing for Publishers which will take place in London on October 27, 2009.

More information is available on the event's webpage.

To claim your discount enter the code alpsp1009 when prompted.

FOCUS ON: The DC Principles Coalition

2009-09-02T15:51:00.002+01:00

The DC Principles Coalition has been an important voice in the on-going debate about changes to scholarly publishing, and an extremely active and influential one.

Marty Frank (American Physiological Society) explains more about the DC Principles Group and why it started:

"The seeds for the DC Principles Coalition for Free Access to Science were planted at the 2003 meeting of publishers working with HighWire. The group had been monitoring the efforts of advocates for changes in scholarly communication, finding themselves frustrated by calls for open access and complaints about the high cost of scholarly publications, especially those published by commercial companies. As not-for-profit publishers, the group considers themselves responsible partners with the academy, producing reasonably priced scholarly journals. As a result, a group of not-for-profit scholarly publishers, led by representatives from the American Physiological Society, the Endocrine Society, the American Association of Pediatrics and the American Association for Cancer Research, created the DC Principles Coalition in 2004 providing a voice for not-for-profit publishers (www.dcprinciples.org).

Coalition members believe it appropriate to make the full-text of their journals freely available to everyone worldwide either immediately or within months of publication, depending on each publisher’s business & publishing requirements. Unfortunately, funding agencies do not agree with that philosophy, mandating free access without demonstrating any concern about the viability of the journals that the scientific community relies upon. As a group, representatives of the DC Principles Coalition have written to our elected representatives, met with administration leadership, and testified before Congress on legislation and policies that impact upon our ability to publish scholarly works. The Coalition is comprised of 73 publishers with nearly 400 journals ranging from top-tier medical and research to small niche publications. The societies that make up the Coalition represent over 700,000 individual members. They publish over 100,000 articles annually with approximately 20% of them based on research funded by the National Institutes of Health. The Coalition represents a diverse group of not-for-profit publishers believing in free access with some making their content available after 2 years, while others immediately or after 2 months because one policy does not fit the needs of all publishers."

ALPSP is supportive of the DC Principles Coalition; if your organization believes in the free access as defined by your organization’s business and publishing requirements, consider joining the DC Principles Coalition by completing the form available at http://www.dcprinciples.org/join.htm.

ALPSP meal at Frankfurt - Tuesday 13 October 2009

2009-09-02T10:19:00.002+01:00

I'm pleased to be able to confirm that we will be holding our now famous ALPSP informal Pre-Frankfurt Book Fair dinner on Tuesday 13th of October 2009 for all ALPSP members the evening before the Fair opens.

We will be holding it at the same restaurant as last year: The Bangkok, Sandweg 17, 60316, Frankfurt, Germany (www.bangkok-restaurant.com).

Those of you who came last time will remember that this is not far from the city centre and all the main hotels. The start time will be 7.30pm.

We will arrange a selection of Thai dishes to suit all tastes (including vegetarians) and will arrange for some wine to be served with the meal. However other drinks either before, during or after the meal will need to be ordered at the restaurant and paid for separately.

This is a chance for members to mix and chat in an informal setting, the only rule being that if you come with a colleague you cannot sit with him/her during the meal.

I hope as many of you as possible will be able to make it for 2009. It was exceptionally popular last year, and we hope it will be so again. The cost will be 40 Euros. You should expect to pay me cash on the evening and it would also be helpful if you are able to give me a business card. Receipts will be emailed to you after the Fair (this will save me having to handwrite 80 receipts as everyone is leaving!).

Please email me as soon as possible if you would like to attend. We'll be taking over the whole restaurant but places are limited by their capacity!

Please pass this message to your colleagues if you are not attending the Fair yourself as everyone working for a member of ALPSP is welcome.

Ian Russell and I look forward to seeing you there. If not, then remember to drop by the ALPSP stand in Hall 4.2, during the Fair.

Nick

ALPSP @ the Frankfurt Book Fair

2009-09-02T10:16:00.003+01:00

ALPSP will have its usual strong presence at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year.

Ian Russell and Nick Evans are currently booking meeting appointments so if you would like to get together please contact us.

Places still available for ALPSP golf event

2009-09-02T09:43:00.003+01:00

These are the trophies on offer for the winners of the 2009 ALPSP / Ringgold Charity Texas Scramble team competition at Hinksey Heights Golf Course (see http://www.oxford-golf.co.uk/) on the western outskirts of Oxford.

We still have a couple of places available!

The intention is to provide a fun golf event with a little networking which raises money for charity. All of the proceeds will therefore go to the MS Society (http://www.mssociety.org.uk/).

The event will take place on Friday 11 September 2009 with the first team teeing off at 3pm. As publishing folk we are used to challenging conditions and we will therefore play no matter what the weather!

Hinksey Heights is easily accessed from the A34 Oxford ring-road.

The organizers (Helen Henderson and myself) will be placing each of the players into teams to try to ensure that there is a relatively even distribution of experience. The teams will be announced on the day and Team Captains will be determined by lot.

The golf will be followed by a barbeque (which is included in the price) and cash bar during which the winners will be announced and presented with their trophies. We expect the barbeque to start around 6:30 and the event will formally end at around 7:30 – 8:00 (though players will be welcome to stay beyond that!)

Participation in the event costs £30 which includes green fees, barbeque and a donation to the MS Society of £10 (any additional surplus, should it arise for any reason, will also be donated to the MS Society).

In order to keep the administration simple we are asking players to pay on the day but places MUST BE BOOKED AND CONFIRMED IN ADVANCE!

We are assuming that players will bring there own clubs, otherwise clubs will need to be hired from Hinksey Heights – please contact me for details.

We will make our best efforts to try to arrange car-shares from the venue of the ALPSP International Conference (the Oxford Belfry). Otherwise players will have to make their own way to Hinksey Heights.

Ian

FOCUS ON: Anianet

2009-08-14T12:44:00.004+01:00

ALPSP members may be interested in a new service which seeks to connect Chinese scholars with their western counterparts.

Fellow ALPSP member Anianet (http://www.anianet.com/) is a professional network for Chinese researchers, professors, and other academic professionals interested in forging better connections with the west by creating free professional profiles on the Anianet network. These English-language profiles outline a member's research interests, institutional affiliation, publishing history, teaching experience, awards, collaboration histories, and other details of his/her professional accomplishments. The profiles are enhanced by including pictures, CVs, links to presentations, and so forth. In this manner, Chinese scholars can make themselves better known to western editors, reviewers, meeting organizers, and others who are beginning to use the network as a means to better understand who is doing what in the Chinese academic space.

The service provides a unique way to connect the Chinese scholars to the international research community, serving tailored feeds of western content from thousands of sources – news, announcements, abstracts, grant opportunities, etc. – tied to a member's specific subject area. In this manner, a Chinese organic chemist, behavioral ecologist, or macroeconomist can effectively keep abreast of international developments in his or her field. It looks like it could become an important tool in developing long-term relationships with Chinese researchers and research institutions and assist in the recruiting of Chinese Editors, Editorial Board members and authors.

Anianet officially launched in late July and already more than 1,600 Chinese scholars - in fields ranging from architectural design to zoology - have created Anianet profiles.

ALPSP Annual General Meeting

2009-08-14T12:12:00.004+01:00

The ALPSP Annual General Meeting will be held on Thursday 10th of September 2009 at 12pm at The Oxford Belfry, Milton Common, Thame, Oxfordshire OX9 2JW, UK (online map).

This will coincide with the ALPSP International Conference which is being held at that venue from the 9th–11th of September. Attendance at the AGM is open to all ALPSP members, both Full and Associate, and does not require you to attend the conference as a delegate However, if you are not registered for the conference we would be grateful if you could let Lesley Ogg know you are coming so that she can advise the Conference Centre and they can provide an entry badge.

Content Nation - prize draw at the ALPSP International Conference

2009-08-05T12:37:00.002+01:00

Further to the blog entry on John Blossom, you can win a copy of John's excellent book, Content Nation, at the 2009 ALPSP International Conference.

We'll be giving five copies of the book away at the Conference dinner courtesy of the publisher of Content Nation, John Wiley and Sons.

If you're not fortunate enough to win a copy, the book will also be available to order at a special discounted rate at the Conference.

Draw entry rules apply.

ALPSP Council - nominations

2009-08-03T13:46:00.000+01:00

Primary contacts at member organizations should now have received notification from Nick Evans of this year’s vacancies to ALPSP Council. If you wish to nominate someone (with their permission and agreement of course!) then please contact Nick Evans.

FOCUS ON: John Blossom

2009-07-30T12:07:00.003+01:00

"Surviving and Thriving as Social Media Technology Changes Our Lives and Our Future"

John Blossom, founder, President and Senior Analyst of Shore Communications, is a smart and interesting guy. He is one of the most influential and widely recognized content industry analysts and his book Content Nation, published in January 2009, uses analysis and case studies to examine the dynamics and impact of social media. It proved an immediate hit and gets straight 5 star reviews on Amazon.com.

As you might expect from someone so savvy in marketing and social media he maximises the use of social networking technologies and the web: Content Nation, though published by a mainstream publisher (John Wiley and Sons), was developed through a collaborative wiki; he's very active on Twitter with close-on 1500 followers; has his own YouTube channel; and has active profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn and a host of other social and professional networking services. But most impressively John consistently appears at the top of search engine results lists in a way that is simply stunning! Seriously, check it out - for me 9 of the first 10 hits on Google and 8 of the first 10 on Bing are to him. Not bad for someone with a name that's not that uncommon.

Not surprisingly John is in demand which is why it's so terrific that he's one of the keynote speakers at the 2009 ALPSP International Conference which will take place from 9-11 September 2009 at the Oxford Belfry Hotel and Conference Centre.

I honestly believe that John's keynote will be worth the conference registration fee alone. Places are still available and you can find out more and register on-line at the Conference website.

ALPSP Chairty Golf Event - confirmation

2009-07-15T09:16:00.003+01:00

I am pleased to confirm details of the inaugural ALPSP Charity Golf Event!

We will hold a 'Texas Scramble' team competition starting at 3:00 pm on Friday 11 September 2009 at Hinksey Heights Golf Club, Oxfordshire.

We have decided to run a Texas Scramble competition as this is primarily intended as fun event and an opportunity to raise money for charity. Golfers of both sexes and all abilities are welcome!

Places are strictly limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis with a reserve list in operation should there be any late withdraws. Allocation of individuals to teams will be done by the organizers to try to ensure a mix of experience and ability.

The event will finish with a barbeque and prize giving ceremony for the winning team and runners-up.

Our chosen charity is the Multiple Sclerosis Society; you don't have to play in the competition to make a donation which you can do online.

The cost for taking part will be £30 including green fees, barbeque and a donation to charity.

If you wish to register then please contact me.

July industry announcements

2009-07-07T08:05:00.004+01:00

SAGE partners with the American Sociological Association to publish 8 of its journals
The Charlesworth Group Helps Nature Publishing Group Semantically Enrich PDFs [press release]

ALPSP Charity Golf event

2009-07-06T13:36:00.001+01:00

Attention golfers of all standards!

I am pleased to say that, thanks to Helen Henderson of Ringgold, ALPSP will be holding a charity ‘Texas Scramble‘ golf event on the afternoon of Friday 11 September 2009 (immediately after the ALPSP International Conference) most likely at Hinksey Heights gold course in Oxfordshire.

More details will be announced very shortly but in the meantime you can register your interest by e-mailing me. (You don’t need to be attending the Conference to take part; players will be assigned teams to try to ensure a mix of ability.)

Copyright Infringement Portal

2009-07-06T13:29:00.002+01:00

Illegal distribution of in-copyright material via websites and peer-to-peer file sharing is becoming an ever greater concern to scholarly and professional publishers as we have highlighted previously (see the Advice Note on the topic).

As also previously reported, the UK Publishers Association (PA) has developed an online Copyright Infringement Portal to streamline the process of serving take-down notices and to give an overview of where infringement is taking place. I am delighted to say that, thanks mostly to Alicia Wise, ALPSP is now working with the PA who have launched an ALPSP version of the portal. The service is available at a very substantial discount to ALPSP members with prices starting at just £247.50 – that’s about the price of an hour’s worth of legal advice. The service is completely free if you are a member of the PA.

Full details of the pricing structure are available on the website where you can also register and pay online.

Beyond Books and Journals Conference - UCL 25/26 June

2009-06-11T11:21:00.002+01:00

There is still time to sign up for the third Bloomsbury Conference on e-publishing and e-publications at UCL on 25/26 June. The theme is the nature of formal scholarly communication (our business). The journal article in particular has not changed even though the way scholars communicate in their presentations to one another is very different in the digital environment.

Anthony Wattkinson who is the conference organiser says the difference between this conference and most others is that the speakers are researchers and publishers who have done the research or who have the experience and the value added by publishers is a given not something that has to be argued for.

For further information including a complete programme and registration see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/e-publishing/. The cost is modest and there is a day rate.

Nick

Rowecom - the cheque's in the post!

2009-06-05T19:36:00.000+01:00

I am pleased to say that I understand cheques for the final distribution from the Rowecom settlement are in the mail and should be arriving very shortly.

I suspect many of you will have written off this money some time ago and so this will be some welcome extra cash!

Ian

Government advisers: online piracy costing the UK GBP 12 billion a year

2009-05-29T12:53:00.003+01:00

Research commissioned by the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP) - a body that offers advice on IPR issues to the UK government - has reported that around 7 million people in Britain are involved in illegal file-sharing and are downloading material worth £12 billion each year.

As many ALPSP members will know, illegal file sharing is not restricted to Hollywood movies and the music industry; increasing amounts of scholarly material are being found on both general file-sharing websites and sites aimed specifically at our industry.

Ian

Science Blogs Connect

2009-05-28T15:18:00.003+01:00

Quick posting from the SSP Annual Meeting in Baltimore:

Science Blogs Connect announced as new free service for publishers to connect the peer-review research literature with research blogs...

ALPSP members PLoS and The Royal Society are the first publishers to participate...

More on this later!

Ian

Should Rightslink introduce a new service for ALPSP members?

2009-05-21T19:44:00.001+01:00

Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) and ALPSP have been discussing the possibility of introducing a new service tailored specifically for use by small and medium sized scholarly publishers based on their popular Rightslink service. It is expected that if a new service is developed that members will be able to receive it in late 2009.

CCC’s Rightslink service automates the entire content licensing and delivery process. Today, Rightslink is used by several publishers such as Elsevier, Oxford University Press, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and many more. This online survey is being conducted to establish whether such a service will offer particular value to ALPSP members, and we hope therefore that you will be able to participate. Thank you very much for your help in completing this study.
To access the survey go to: http://www.tidewatchsurveys.com/STS/3323/cgi-bin/ciwweb.pl?studyname=3323&scr1=1&src=2

This online survey takes about 12 minutes to complete. In the survey they will be asking you about how your business grants licenses and permissions to customers who want to reuse content that your organization manages.

Please be assured that the information you provide will be used solely for this survey and will not be sold, shared, or used for any other purpose.

Nick Evans

WolframAlpha - set to topple Google?

2009-05-19T15:47:00.003+01:00

Wolfram Research - the outfit behind Mathematica - have launched a new service that they call 'a computational knowledge engine'. WolframAlpha aims to 'collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything'.

Golly! Quite a mission statement and every bit as ambitious as that of a certain Mountain View-based search engine, i.e. 'to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful'.

According to their website: 'WolframAlpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. You enter your question or calculation, and WolframAlpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer.'

So what has this got to do with a challenge to Google? Well the 'new kind of knowledge-based computing' that WolframAlpha uses could be the next step to a semantic web search engine that might - just might - topple Google's supremacy in search in the way that Google's own pagerank algorithm blew everything else out of the water in the late 1990's.

At the very least it looks like it will be of huge interest to the STM publishers out there - especially those in mathematics, physics and engineering...

Online Communities - learn from the best of the rest

2009-05-19T13:57:00.003+01:00

I suppose it's pretty appropriate that I'm using our Blog and other social network groups to send you news about an interesting ALPSP one-day seminar which is being held on the 7th of July in London entitled Online Communities: what can scholarly publishing learn from other industries?'

I hope that the meeting will appeal for a number of different reasons:

1) the speakers are all experts not from scholarly publishing but from related industries who use communities as part of their mainstream business (magazines, mobile devices, computer games, specialist newspapers, general books);
2) we're flying in an expert from the States who has published a major report on social networking;
3) you won't have heard of any of the speakers before as none of them are the "usual suspects" from scholarly publishing;
4) the "back it or bin it" format adds spice to the day by letting you choose who has made the biggest impression by allowing you to spend your specially printed "ALPSP pounds" on who you personally favour. So it'll be fun as well as educational.
5) Pam Sutherland from OUP will be Chairing the meeting, and that's a reason to come all on its own.

But most important of all it has a serious purpose: to lift the lid on how online communities need to be part of your core business.

See you there.

Yours,

Nick

Charlesworth Group tie up $1 million worth of deals in China

2009-05-18T17:52:00.002+01:00

ALPSP member The Charlesworth Group has announced that they have successfully negotiated contracts between fourteen publishers and the National Science and Technology Library (NSTL) nationwide consortia in China. The press release states that the deals represent additional gross annual revenue worth over US$1 million.

Charlesworth's China-based composition and pre-press services are well known and have given the organization a sizable footprint in the country; they employ 200 staff in Beijing and Langfang. It seems that they are increasingly focussing on brokering rights and licensing deals in China.

Ian

ALPSP Conference - early-bird discount ends June 14!!!

2009-05-18T14:35:00.000+01:00

A quick reminder that the 2009 ALPSP International Conference early-bird discount ends on June 14 2009 and will not be extended!

The full Conference program is now available at the conference website along with a list of speakers. In fact we have speakers from five continents and we're sure you'll agree that it is a fantastic line up!

We've kept the registration fees at last year's level even though the program is longer.

Also don't forget that this year we will be holding parallel pre-conference workshops which are completely free for anyone attending the full Conference - another ALPSP credit crunch busting move!

Don't delay - register for your place today!

New URL for ALPSP blog

2009-05-18T14:33:00.000+01:00

The ALPSP blog has a new URL - blog.alpsp.org

The blog has proved to be more popular than we thought and so we decided it was high time that it moved to an ALPSP web address.

The blog is still hosted by blogger and so the old address will still work (it just redirects to blog.alpsp.org)

ALPSP workshops all over the world!

2009-05-13T18:35:00.000+01:00

May 12 was something of a red-letter day for ALPSP.

We held professional development workshops in Philadelphia (Introduction to Journals Publishing), Washington DC (Effective Journals Marketing), London (Effective Journal Editorial Management ) and Geneva (Creating High Impact Marketing)!

We've held courses in these places before, of course, but never in four cities across three countries on the same day!

The DC and Philly courses are part of our North American workshop program - we have seven more planned for Fall, 2009 - and I am delighted to say that both of the May 12 workshops were sold out! It's still early days for our US program, but what a start!

Ian

NISO start work to standardize single sign-on

2009-05-12T15:03:00.000+01:00

NISO are setting up a new working group under the auspices of their Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee to create one or more recommended practices that will explore practical solutions for improving the success of single sign-on (SSO) authentication technologies.

NISO's current Chair, Oliver Pesch (Chief Strategist, EBSCO Information Services) is quoted as saying: "By developing recommended practices that will help make the SSO environment work better libraries and information providers will improve the ability for users to successfully and seamlessly access the content to which they are entitled."

In addition to forming the working group, NISO will be establishing an "interest group" e-mail list. If anyone would like to be a part of this new working group or to join the affiliated interest group, contact the NISO office at www.niso.org/contact.

Ian

Google Book Settlement delayed

2009-05-11T18:15:00.000+01:00

As you may have heard already, the District Judge hearing the Google Settlement has ordered an extension to the opt-out deadline and the date of the Final Fairness Hearing.

The deadline for opt-opts is now set at September 4, 2009 with the Final Fairness Hearing scheduled for October 7, 2009.

Ian

New suite of tools to enhance search capabilities

2009-04-29T07:53:00.000+01:00

I thought this announcement from Califronian based 'DeepDyve' would be of particular interest given the growing use of semantic web techniques.

Nick

DeepDyve Unveils Suite of Tools for Publishers

New Tools Enable Advanced Search and Discovery

APRIL 28, 2009 – Sunnyvale, CALIF — DeepDyve, the research engine for the Deep Web, today unveiled a suite of tools for publishers and scientific societies of all sizes that want to enhance the search capabilities on their websites. The suite of tools leverages DeepDyveâ€™s KeyPhraseTM algorithm, which allows users to input whole sentences, paragraphs or entire articles as their query to find related results.
"Our vision is that search is becoming more sophisticated and more decentralized. Increasingly, users are initiating their research online and they want to have search integrated seamlessly with their reading and browsing behavior — in other words, they want their content to be their query for finding comprehensive answers to difficult questions. These tools give our partners the ability to make their content more findable and to demonstrate the breadth and depth of their collection," said William Park, CEO of DeepDyve. "We're making available some of our most frequently used search capabilities to publishers that want to give their visitors a more compelling search experience."

The products being announced today are designed to first make the publisher's content more discoverable in search engines which is where, according to a report from Outsell, more than 70% of users begin their research. From there, other tools are available to increase the engagement at the publisher's site by allowing users to quickly find related articles based on what they are viewing.

Publisher Landing Pages
Publisher Landing Pages use DeepDyve's technology to enhance the findability of publisher content by Google and other search engines. These co-branded or private label pages present the Web searcher with not just one article at a time, but with a whole page full of closely related articles from the same publisher, with links pointing them to the publisher site. One Landing Page can be set up for each article, yet they are easy to deploy, totally automated and hosted by DeepDyve.

Custom Search API
DeepDyve's next-generation search technology is available to publishers via a web services API (Application Programming Interface). The API can be set up to search only a publisher's own content, or to help users discover other highly relevant documents in the DeepDyve index. Searches can be launched with a few keywords, or by allowing users to use a paragraph or an entire document as a query to find articles that match the concepts described. Results are returned via an XML feed or as a hosted, co-branded web page.

More Like This Document API

The DeepDyve More Like This Document API enables websites to directly interface with the DeepDyve database to search for articles that are similar to a designated document within the DeepDyve index. It is designed for use by publishers whose content has been indexed by DeepDyve and who would like to include a 'related articles' functionality on their site without the painful implementation. The user may select any document to use as a query, and the title and body are compared to other documents in the DeepDyve index. The resulting documents can be limited to a publisher's own content, or may include other content in the DeepDyve index. Results are returned via an XML feed or as a hosted, co-branded web page.

Content Highlight Widget
The Highlight Widget enables users at the publisher site to simply highlight any block of text up to 5,000 characters, then run that selection as a query. DeepDyve returns only the Publisher's articles in the search results via an XML feed or as a hosted, co-branded page of results.
DeepDyve is a search engine that was developed to scour the depths of the so-called Deep Web, the vast collection of information-rich content that is largely overlooked by today's traditional search engines. Since the company's launch in September 2008, DeepDyve has worked closely with major publishers, building an index with hundreds of millions of pages that showcases content from the industry's most respected research organizations, academic institutions and professional associations. The API tools that are being announced today are the next step in DeepDyve's vision for enabling publishers to better utilize the Internet to reach as large an audience as possible.

Early Customer Adoption
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is one of the first organizations to implement DeepDyve's search technology.
"We are looking forward to DeepDyve powering the search on PLoS.org," said Peter Jerram, CEO of The Public Library of Science. "DeepDyve's cutting-edge technology and ability to use entire sentences as a query will make it much easier for our users to find and discover new original research in science and medicine."

Pricing and Availability
Each of these tools is available for free with advertising revenue sharing, or for a fee which varies depending on volume.

About DeepDyve
DeepDyve, formerly known as Infovell, is the research engine for the Deep Web. DeepDyve unlocks the vast and rich collection of information that is out on the web, but is hidden from today's search engines. Using DeepDyve, people find the in-depth, high-quality information they need to answer tough research questions. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, with offices in Shanghai, China. To learn more about DeepDyve, go to www.DeepDyve.com or call 1-408-773-0110.

RCUK publishes new open access report

2009-04-23T13:46:00.000+01:00

RCUK has published its long awaited open access report:

http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/news/090422.htm

The language used in the release is moderate. Ian Diamond, Chair of RCUK, is quoted as saying “The Research Councils look forward to working with their partners across the research community to consider the options” which seems like a responsible attitude to me.

The headlines are:
That over time (my emphasis) the UK Research Councils will support increased open access, by:
* building on their mandates on grant-holders to deposit research papers in suitable repositories within an agreed time period, and;
* extending their support for publishing in open access journals, including through the pay-to-publish model.

I haven’t read the full report yet and will post further comments in due course...

Ian

ACT NOW TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS! - important deadline: May 5

2009-04-21T21:06:00.000+01:00

Published or sold a book in the United States before January 5 2009? Then you need to pay attention!

As you probably know, May 5 2009 is a very important deadline in the Google Books Settlement. This is the date by which rightsholders need to opt-out of the class action settlement. You don’t need to have been involved in the instigation of the class action to be affected; everyone who has published or sold a book in the United States at any time before January 5 2009 may be involved.

You are strongly urged to decide whether to opt-out or not. Do not to let this deadline pass without actively making a decision!

ALPSP has not adopted a position on the Google Books Settlement and individual rightsholders will obviously need to come to their own decision on whether the terms of the settlement are right for them.

I won’t go into the detail here, but here are a few things about the settlement that will hopefully help you determine whether you need to find out more:

It is about books (and some inserts to books) only. Some journals have been included in Google’s digitization program but these are not included in this settlement.

Google has apparently digitized around 7 million books. Of these about one million are out of copyright and are therefore not subject to the settlement. Around a further one million are still in-print and have been digitized with the agreement of publishers under the partner program; these are also not part of the settlement. The remaining 5 million books are in copyright but out-of-print and are the subject of this settlement (and, as I understand it, are any in copyright, out-of-print books not yet digitized).

As far as I can tell, Google has made no attempt to identify the rightsholders of the ~ 5 million books that are the subject of this settlement. In fact they may use the ‘opt-out’ procedure of the class action as justification for their actions if the rightsholders have not come forward. Google terms these ‘orphan works’ (i.e. works where the rightsholder cannot be identified) but as I say I believe that no due process to identify rightsholders has actually been carried out.

The settlement does not cover most of the images in the books which have been (or will be) blanked out.

Access to the digitized versions of these books will only be from the USA (those involved more closely appear confident that this can be achieved but it seems an enormously difficult task to me…)

You need to have the US copyright interest in the book (so if you have retained worldwide rights you are included).

If you choose to opt-out of the settlement you are retaining the right to sue Google for copyright infringement with respect to their digitizing activity of these books. However, it strikes me that even if you have no intention of suing Google you will be sending a message that you do not feel that the settlement is in your interests and be objecting to Google’s activities in this area.

If you choose to opt-out of the settlement you will not benefit from the payments from Google for the digitization of these works nor from any income generated in the future by the books included in the service. In addition you will not be able to formally comment on the terms of the settlement.

The Publishers Licensing Society have provided some additional information and, in case you've not seen it, a copy of the legal notice summary and full notice.

More information:
The settlement - http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/
FAQs - http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/help/bin/answer.py?answer=118704&hl=en
To opt out - http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/r/enter_opt_out

You can also email the Settlement Administrator at booksettlement_en@rustconsulting.com.

Please note that ALPSP is unable to give legal advice regarding this settlement. If you are in any doubt you should consult a lawyer.

Founders of The Pirate Bay jailed for copyright infringement

2009-04-18T13:34:00.000+01:00

On the same day as the Digital Britain Summit, the four founders of BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay were handed prison sentences and ordered to pay USD 3.6m in damages for assisting copyright infringement of 'about 30 works'.

The Pirate Bay displays utter contempt for copyright as demonstrated by the legal disputes section of their website and have steadfastly refused to remove links to infringing content. It's great to see the Swedish courts taking the matter seriously and dishing out sentences that will hopefully serve as a deterrent for others.