ALPSP's Top Ten Blog Posts from 2012

And here's to the next 40...

Every blog needs a count down to new year, so in the spirit of ushering out the old and bringing in the new, here's a round-up of our most viewed posts of 2012.

1. Open Access eBooks: the next big thing? 
At the Beyond the Rhetoric: new opportunities in open access seminar in November, Eelco Ferwerda, Director at Open Access Publishing in Europe Network, provided an overview of the latest developments. He included a list of some of the high profile open access book projects, updates on their research, and a cautionary word about the less scrupulous OA publishers out there.

2. Bill Matthews discusses data analytics on 15 November 
Bill is Director of Business Development at HighWire Press. He wrote about the importance of data analytics to content creation, editorial, marketing and sales as a trailer for the Analyzing Customer Data to Create Competitive Advantage webinar.

3. Fourth International M-Libraries Conference 24-26 September 
This post outlined the programme of the M-Libraries conference, hosted by The Open University, which was developed around the theme of 'From margin to mainstream: mobile technologies transforming lives and libraries.'

4. ALPSP Conference Day 2: The Scholarly Article in 140 Characters. Are you a denial-o-saur? 
Day two of the ALPSP conference in September saw a panel chaired by Leon Heward-Mills from the Society for Endocrinology discuss the impact of digital technology on the way we access and read information.

5. ALPSP Conference Day 2: Discovering the Needle in a Haystack 
Another ALPSP conference session from day two was chaired by Ann Lawson from EBSCO. The session was designed to help publishers understand how they can help academics and professionals to navigate quickly and seamlessly to the trustworthy content they need.

6. How to launch an open access journal 
Kathryn Spiller from BioScientifica outlined how they approached launching an open access journal during November's Beyond the Rhetoric: new opportunities in open access seminar.

7. ALPSP Conference Day 3: Giving away the farm 
Highlights from the penultimate session on day two of ALPSP conference. Chaired by Catherine Candea from OECD, the panel reflected on the pressure scholarly publishers are under to give away content. 

8. ALPSP Conference Day 1: Forty years in scholarly publishing 
Mary Waltham opened September's ALPSP international conference with an overview of 'Forty Years in Scholarly Publishing.' It was, she claimed, an eclectic view of what has gone on in the period that corresponds with ALPSP's own existence. 

9. IET and Minesoft launch Minesoft Inspec Platform 
Information on the announcement of this new initiative of a platform that links IET Inspec’s science and engineering research database with Minesoft’s patent information services to enable patent and intellectual property professionals to benefit from intuitive search function.

10. ALPSP Conference Day 1: News of the world - science journalism demystified 

Day one of the ALPSP conference in September and we were joined by Siân Harris, Editor of Research Information, who provided insight and guidance to the world of science journalism. She included some great tips on how to identify, pitch and position newsworthy items, plus advice on how to approach journalists.

ALPSP is nothing without its members and those who work with them. This blog provides a taster of some of the discussions the network had in ALPSP's 40th anniversary year. We look forward to continuing those conversations in 2013 and for the next 40 years.

Happy new year to you all!

Bill Matthews discusses data analytics on 15 November

HighWire is excited about contributing to the ALPSP webinar this month entitled "Analyzing Customer Data to Create Competitive Advantage".   I have been a 'numbers guy' since early in my career at A.C. Nielsen, so I understand how powerful data can be if transformed into actionable information. There are mountains of data which can be analyzed, but In order to find unique insights, you need to not only access to the information, but also the tools which allow you to manipulate, store, and create custom data sets in real time.  

Analytics touches many aspects of scholarly publishing; content creation, editorial, marketing and sales, product packaging/pricing, and audience development.  Typical business questions can include most read articles, turnaway reports, usage for a specific event such as an annual conference, or simply tracking your content's overall performance. For my section of the webinar, I plan on examining a few of these potential questions and how to extract "valuable nuggets" from data analysis which can provide powerful editorial and marketing insights.

I hope many of you can make it on November 15th!

Bill

For more details on the webinar and to sign up, visit the ALPSP website.  If you can't make the 15th, make sure you sign up to get access to the webinar later.

Bill Matthews
Director of Business Development
HighWire Press | Stanford University

(o) 650-725-9279
(m) 650-208-4643
bmatthews@highwire.stanford.edu

HighWire:  Pathfinders in Scholarly Publishing