Understanding how to get your journal article in front of the reader

Understanding how to get your journal article in front of the reader and working out how to navigate the multitude of discovery resources and authentication barriers is essential to the success of a publishing organisation. It is also the topic of one of our most popular training courses. Here, we spoke to Online Journal Discovery and Delivery: Working with Libraries and industry intermediaries to maximise readership co-tutor, Tracy Gardner, about the challenges of keeping up-to-date in this area.

"One of the biggest challenges publishers face is making sure their content can be easily found in the various discovery resources readers use to find journal articles, and then to ensure the steps between the reader finding the content and reading it are seamless and without barrier. There are so many potential pitfalls along the way, and this issue therefore concerns people working in production, IT, editorial, sales, marketing and customer service.

The pace of change is fast, technology is evolving all of the time and the driver for much of it has come from the libraries. Libraries are keen to ensure their patrons find and access content they have selected and purchased and by keeping them in a library intermediated environment they feel they can improve their research experience overall. Ultimately the library would like the user to start at the library website, find content they can read and not be challenged along the way.

Simon Inger and I have been running the Online Journal Discovery and Delivery course two or three times a year for twelve years now and we have never run the same course twice - it constantly needs to be updated.

Those working in customer facing roles such as sales, marketing and customer service may not fully appreciate how much library technology impacts on the way researchers find and access their content. Many people are surprised to learn that poor usage within an institution is often because something has gone wrong with the way the content is indexed within the library discovery layer, how it is set up in the library link resolver, or issues with authentication.

For those in operational or technology roles, the business technology side of journals can seem unnecessarily complex and, especially for those new to the industry, the way the information community works can seem counter to the way many other business sectors operate. What makes sense in classic B2B or B2C environments will not make sense within the academic research community.

By helping people who work in publishing houses understand how the technology supporting journal delivery works, and how they can most effectively work with libraries to maximise discovery and use of their content. Many people who have attended our course have not been aware of the impact some of their decisions have had and our course has helped them understand why they need to work in certain ways."

Tracy Gardner will tutor on the upcoming Online Journal Discovery and Delivery course on 20 March. Full course details can be found here

Keeping pace with changes in eJournal technology

Tracy Gardner: keeping pace with eJournal technology

eJournal technology is an essential part of the scholarly publishing industry. It is also the topic of one of our most popular training courses. Here, we spoke to Understanding eJournal Technology co-tutor, Tracy Gardner, about the challenges of keeping up-to-date in this area.

SK: What is the main challenge that publishers face in the field?
TG: The pace of change within eJournals technology is fast. This technology has removed the barriers between production, editorial, marketing, sales, customer services and most importantly – the customers. Renew Training started running business technology courses specifically for publishers around 7 years ago and during all that time the same course has never been delivered twice!

SK: What is driving the pace of change?
TG: Changes in how libraries authenticate their patrons, how they manage reader navigation and the implementation of new search and discovery tools has changed the eJournal landscape dramatically.

SK: Who does this affect?
TG: For those in sales, marketing and customer service it can be hard to understand the business ramifications of how eJournal technology affects the way librarians and researchers find and access content. How does the fact a library uses a proxy, or only has one IP address for their entire institution, or indeed if their IP addresses are a state secret impact how researchers read your content? Does Shibboleth or Athens solves these issues, or does it create news ones? What about OpenURLs and working with link resolvers – and what are resource discovery services and tools and why should you worry about them?

For those in operational or technology roles, the business technology side of eJournals can seem daunting and especially for those new to the industry, the way the information community works can seems counter to the way many other business sectors operate.

SK: How can you keep pace of these changes?
TG: Educate those in sales, marketing, customer services, product development, editorial, project management and IT in the technologies. These roles are all vital to the delivery of eJournals. You need to clearly position these technologies in the context of the industry issues they aim to solve so your teams understand how they are used throughout the supply chain internally and by librarians through to end users. Understand a) your customers' technical and business requirements, and b) how technology plays a role in discoverability and deploying eJournals.

Tracy Gardner has over 17 years’ experience in marketing and communications and has worked for CatchWord, Ingenta, CABI Publishing and Scholarly Information Strategies. Her career has focussed on improving communication channels between publishers, intermediaries and librarians and she understands the business of scholarly publishing from many different perspectives.

Tracy is co-tutor with Simon Inger on Understanding eJournal Technology course run by ALPSP in association with Renew Training. If you are flummoxed by any of the above terminology, or if you would like to understand more about how your customers are using business technology to serve their patrons, then come along to the next course on 13 November 2013 in Oxford.