In this ALPSP guest blog, Craig Griffin, Solutions Engineer at Silverchair Information Systems discusses a two-prong strategy to help scholarly publishers optimize the use and functionality of their content.
We in scholarly publishing have visions of a
future powered by Artificial Intelligence. Self-learning applications. Powerful
discovery techniques. Machine-based learning tools. Change is a constant in any
industry, but the rate of change within
scholarly publishing is increasing rapidly on all fronts. Journals and books, long the bread and butter
of publishers, have now been joined by an explosion of additional content types
such as video, data sets, grey literature, and learning formats. Optimizing the use and functionality of this
content in light of researchers’ needs to author, publish, and discover highly
varied content sets alone presents a challenge.
A second challenge is found in the sheer
volume of content being pushed through ever greater numbers of channels. Discovery of content, regardless of channel,
occurs off-platform on the servers of Google, PubMed, Crossref, or any number
of social media platforms that no publisher, society, or author controls. With
content in myriad formats and fractured delivery channels, it’s challenging for
even the most capable power-user to be sure that their research is exhaustive
or to stay on top of the latest developments.
A solution to this problem involves a two-prong
strategy.
First,
publishers need to Standardize the entire content set. Of course, content formats have
evolved over the years, sometimes in a prescribed, documented evolution, and
other times completely organically. Since
the software to display this content needs to handle all these variations, the
content itself then becomes monolithic—it works in this one specific way, with
this software layer above it, but does not function correctly outside of the
content structure/software pair. It’s completely locked in its database.
Standardized formats allow content to
reside in a more efficient database. With a clearly defined data and database
structure, the software layer above can extract and display information across content
eras and handle associations easily. Standardization also allows content types to be related in a far more
efficient and flexible manner. A video
and a journal article, for example, with separate but standard structures can
be related via metadata, content elements, or any other association desired by
the publisher. Additionally,
Standardized content becomes much more accessible to machines, which as of now are
the primary consumer of content. This can be via discovery bots, search engine
crawlers, or Text and Data Mining apparatuses.
The rate and volume of these automated tools is the only true match to
the explosion of content.
Once
Standardized, publishers can then deploy the second strategy: Breaking Down Silos. This is achieved by bringing
all the Standardized content—of any type—into a single platform. Once the
unification of content has occurred, with discovery, display, relational
associations, and third-party linkages all coming from one technology stack,
content can then become substantially more functional for the end-user. Content can then be organized by editorial
concepts rather than simply by types or titles. By improving the organizational options of
standardized content, publishers can then tailor (and sell) collections
targeted at infinitely narrower user groups.
This achieves the direct benefit of presenting specific content to a user
at the exact moment of need.
It’s
important for publishers to think of the user’s journey to their content (via any number of discovery methods): think of the user’s purpose
in accessing the content. Although AI tools have begun the work of meeting the
user at the right moment on their path, publishers can accelerate this process
to the benefit of both their audience and their bottom line. By following the
strategies of Standardization and Breaking Down Silos, users will be rewarded
with an experience that works for them, rather than solely for the content.
About Silverchair: Silverchair integrates and delivers scholarly and professional content from a single platform – journals, books, video, custom formats, and more. The Silverchair Platform delivers advanced semantic technologies and publishing platforms to STM and humanities publishers, professional societies, and the federal government. We collaborate with publishers to propel their content to greater reach and impact.
Website: www.silverchair.com
Twitter: @silverchairnews
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SilverchairNews/
Silverchair is a proud Silver Sponsor of
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on his takeaways from the ALPSP conference in this insightful video blog.
