ALPSP Awards: Where are they now? BMJ Case Reports

With the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing now open for submissions, we spoke to Janet O'Flaherty, Publisher at BMJ, to find out how BMJ Case Reports has faired since winning in 2010.

1. You won the ALPSP Award for Best New Journal. What was that like?

It was a super evening and we were all thrilled to win. The trophy sits proudly in our boardroom. I enjoyed the submission process, even doing the presentation to the panel. It was particularly gratifying that one of the reasons we won was the business model - only people with a personal or institutional Fellowship (subscription) can submit case reports - but there are no additional publication fees if the case is accepted.

2. How have you developed BMJ Case Reports since then?

We have grown immensely with nearly 13,000 cases live. The developments have been editorial rather than technical - we now have some subject specialist editors and a Global Health section with an accompanying Student Elective competition new for 2016. We have a group of medical student editors that blog for us. We've expanded into dentistry and have plans for a pharmacy section. The Editors do a lot of outreach and workshops on writing cases and getting them published which are always very well received. We have also copied the model for one of our societies with Veterinary Record Case Reports.

3. What have been the highlights?

The rapid growth and acceptance by medical schools that this is an important resource for students and trainees - and truly international as we have case reports from more than 70 countries. Adding the student board and having a workshop on getting published at the BMJ Careers fair in 2015 were personal highlights. Publishing our 5,000th and then 10,000th case reports were great milestones and we did some print mini-journals to celebrate. The journal has outperformed it's original business plan which is also gratifying.

4. What are the challenges you’ve faced?

The sheer volume of submissions and keeping turnaround times down is probably the most difficult. We also don't have an automatic way of checking that authors have the rights to submit (ie, that they or their institution has a Fellowship) so that's done manually (we do outsource that bit).
The journal is on a standard journal platform and so perhaps not optimal for discovery of the content. Also the publishing model means we don't currently have a mobile optimised site.

5. How did winning the Award help with BMJ Case Reports' development? 

It was great for marketing - in fact it's still used on our website and in our user guides/training materials.

6. What are your plans for the future?

We're exploring some technical enhancements - making the content more discoverable, e.g. if you are interested in this case then here are others that you should read. Hopefully some integration with other BMJ products that are used by medical students and junior doctors. We do hope to have a new user interface and design by 2017. As mentioned before - expansion outside medicine. We're looking at adding some interactive questions - starting with pathology and pharmacology cases. As we now have so much content - and there's no sign of it slowing down - we may offer a "read only" subscription once we have enhanced the journal's website.

Janet O'Flaherty is Publisher at BMJ. Information about BMJ Case Reports is available on their website.

Submissions for the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing are being accepted until Thursday 9 June. Full details available on the ALPSP website.

BMJ's acquisition of the British Veterinary Association Journals

Janet O'Flaherty from the BMJ

In a session designed to consider divestment as a strategy, Janet O'Flaherty, Publisher at BMJ, outlined how the British Veterinary Society chose to work with BMJ as their preferred partner and how the journals have fared in the past six years.

The BVA has been publishing in house since 1888. they were very traditional and conservative, had seen spiralling costs with declining revenues and lost contract publishing business over several years. There was a technology deficit and were struggling to keep up to date. They chose the BMJ due to a good natural fit: both are the 'go-to' Associations for their professions.

BMJ inherited a weekly magazine, large backlog of content and lots of historical legacy systems. First of all, they moved the staff across to the BMJ, built a new jobs site, reviewed roles and processes, integrated workflows and upgraded hardware. It was important to reassure the staff that they were investing for the future.

They moved print production to BMJ suppliers and renegotiated supplier contract for hosting. They introduced right-priced subscriptions and tweaked the business model. They didn't have any vets working on the editorial board so they advertised for a Veterinary Editor-in-Chief. They also set up customer focus groups. They refreshed cover and page layout, bearing in mind the conservative nature of the audience.

Other editorial developments included:

• Appointed veterinary research editor and clinical editor
• Refreshed international advisory board to improve reach
• Improved workflows and author services - online first
• Research published as one page summary in print for practitioners
• Editorial to accompany original articles
• OA hybrid option
• Boosted social media.

There is a successful and ongoing relationship with the BVA which is profitable for both parties. Online usage has increased 60% from 2011 to 2014. They have had positive feedback from readership surveys. They've looked at new revenue streams such as supplements, round tables, webinars. The jobs site has changed and even more successful with revenue growing. Editorial turnaround times now 12 days from receipt to acceptance. They have a stable editorial team and have launched two new journals.

And the lessons learned? These include:

• Timing to avoid disrupting weekly schedule
• Poor inherited data especially for subscribers (importance of TRANSFER)
• Staff getting used to BMJ (letting go of some responsibilities)
• Transition to new systems and processes
• Online hosting transfer slow
• Recruiting first Veterinary Editor-in-Chief
• Communications are key

Janet O'Flaherty spoke at the ALPSP seminar Disruption, development and divestment held in London on Tuesday 17 March 2015.

The publisher as technology company

Phill Jones from Digital Science

Phill Jones, Head of Publisher Outreach at Digital Science, asked the audience to consider whether publishers need to become technology companies to succeed in today's market?

Information technology has changed everything. A crucial point in time was when telephones and computers collided.  Another key point is when television and the internet collided (think NetFlix). Marc Andreessen, Co-Founder of Netscape and Andreeson Horowitz, came up with the phrase "software eats the world." This is when software is developed into something that heavily disrupts an industry. That is what is happening to our industry. Publishing is changing because it is colliding with information technology.

Who are the most powerful players in publishing? Google, Amazon, Apple. One is an advertising company, one is an online retailer, one is an device manufacturer. What they all have in common is IT.

With science, what is happening now is a transformation from a cottage industry approach to industrial size. Things are on a much larger scale with a range of researchers tackling one part of the research project each. The technologies of choice in the lab lag behind. Post-It notes still prevail.

Another key driver is the change in policy (e.g. Neelie Kroes in the EU through to the NIH compliance where they moved to remove grants from researchers who didn't comply with OA requirements).

There is an evaluation gap. Traditional measures of impact don't take into account funders; requirements to measure impact including societal impact, public engagement and legislative impact. As publishers, we need to be aware of this.

Where does this leave us? The publisher as technology company? When content and technology collide you basically get Open Science. The different stages of research include: getting the idea, doing the research, documenting findings, output and dissemination, maximising return on researcher investment.

There are opportunities to use technology to help with each one of these stages. That is the space that publishers should inhabit. How do you go about this to add value? Digital Science focuses on investment in young companies that have solutions to problems in the science space. To understand what the problems are, they have a consultancy division who undertake research.

Phill Jones chaired the ALPSP seminar Disruption, development and divestment held in London on Tuesday 17 March 2015.

Where does publishing go from here? Tom Clark reflects...

Tom Clark from Emerald

Tom Clark is Chief Officer for Business and Product Innovation at Emerald. In the closing session at the ALPSP seminar Disruption, Development and Divestment, he reflect on the future for publishing.

We are all learning organisations now. In what can be called "The dawn of digital abundance" everyone is a contributor, discovered and data source. Connectivity is at the heart of internet commerce, but how sustainable is content aggregation? Business models are diverse and fluid while usefulness and discoverability are playing a stronger hand.

He believes we are in an internet business and while he isn't interested in articles, he is interested in author problems and needs. The internet is simply too complex to not innovate and orientate to customer needs. What is a publisher? What does that student think of you? What will they be doing in five years? Digital, lean, agile approach allows publishers to develop better products for markets.

We face digital abundance. How do we see change? Who are our competitors these days? What is an author? Does marketing work anymore? Where will revenues come from? (Clark thinks they will come from varied and many new different sources). How do I develop new business models? Does everyone else understand what's going on? Business faculty have conflicting issues on their time (teaching, admin, research). Emerald feel they have a range of products and services that can help.

You need to learn to develop and blink: what happens on the internet in a minute is huge. There are new rules and new competitors. The ability to harness and connect more things is key. It is worth considering joint ventures, especially if you can't afford to buy or invest.

Mobile will be key. It's not only researchers using it, students are too. What problem can you solve with mobile? Are mobile apps dead and the humble browser reborn? The FT famously ditched its hub app in favour of HTML5 because it was cheaper, searchable and more responsive. Hardware and connectivity improvements are delivering great experiences via 'm' websites. There will be less phone 'litter' and more responsive/intuitive layers.

We are all learning organisations, including Emerald. When a researcher submits and publishes a paper they are enriching their understanding and furthering their knowledge and career. Helping them to ensure their research makes an impact is key.

Clark asked how well we know and understand the data we can get from our own websites. Not very well, he suspects. You need to understand that online attention is decreasing. Divesting the legacy approach is expensive. Are you creating packages of content, delivering through micro-sites, listening, designing the experience? That's where publishers need to be.

What matters? innovation, risk, customer data. Investment, connectivity, new markets. Usefulness, discoverability, openness. Existing markets, print versus digital, direct marketing. Organic growth, social media, market share. Librarians, discovery services, open access.

It was a big cultural shift for Emerald to do things quickly. You need a mixed team and make quick decisions: be agile and decisive. Clark closed by observing that no one has all the answers. You have to experiment.

Tom Clark spoke at the ALPSP seminar Disruption, development and divestment held in London on Tuesday 17 March 2015.

New advertising models in medical publishing - transforming HCP Clinical Content Engagement

Avia Potashnik, Wolters Kluwer Health

Avia Potashnik, Advertising and Sponsorship Manager and Andrew Richardson, Vice President, Business Development at Wolters Kluwer Health, provided a case study of a disruptive model applied to their advertising for HCP Clinical Content.

Andrew Richardson started by observing that three device ownership is the new norm. We all use them and for different things. We have the content for them and we need to ensure we have good content engagement and interaction, but never forget the peer reviewed article needs to be at the heart of it. They have developed and disrupted their advertising model to enhance the core content.

Avia Potashnik explained that in order to transfer their advertising objectives they focused on brand recognition (corporate, product, indications, competitive blocking, frequency, ubiquity). They want to drive customer interaction through product websites, content pages, video pages, conversion page, social media, customer service email. They do this through content engagement with videos, original reporting, details, case studies, geo-targeting, etc. Embedding video raises engagement rate. Educational games help build customer interaction.

A lot of their advertising customers come to them wanting to recreate what they do in print. They know that doesn't work and try to encourage them to build interactive multi-media content to engage. In some cases they have increased engagement rates 450% by including adverts with video. They maximise their content marketing investment by using multi-channel approach to use of clinical journal content. They integrate approved marketing content to increase engagement. They visibly hyperlink to content for increased customer engagement.
Avia Potashnik and Andrew Richardson spoke at the ALPSP seminar Disruption, development and divestment held in London on Tuesday 17 March 2015.

Integrating user feedback into development of the 'anywhere article'

Marlo Harris from Wiley on The Anywhere Article

Marlo Harris, Director of Project Management at Wiley, focused on the rise - and importance - of end-user research in digital product development.

The focus and value of end-user research has risen significantly in recent years, particularly as we move closer and closer towards online-only delivery of academic research. As a scholarly service community, we all want to meet our users' needs. Unfortunately, it's far too easy to lose focus on the user once we get into the weeds of technical development and managing other stakeholder interests. With the development of The Anywhere Article they showed what can happen when you listen to users all the way from initial research, through development, and as an ongoing activity to add value to online content.

As humans, why don't we listen? We are preoccupied with our own thoughts. We're tired, distracted or lack interest. Often, it's because we are preparing to speak ourselves. We might be in flunked by personal feelings or opinion or there may be too many speakers.

As publishers, why don't we listen to users of our products? We think we already know what they want/need. We don't ask the right questions. User needs aren't well articulated or there are louder voices. Possibly the most common is that we don't have time.

They subscribe to Nielsen's approach - you learn most of the issues by talking to five or six people. With The Anywhere Article, their research came about following a Quora social media Q&A on why researchers prefer PDF to HTML. Most answers said HTML is too cluttered. They used that as a starting point to try and design HTML to provide seamless experience.

The Anywhere Article had a new team approach to development. The UX architect is a member of the development team. Agile and user engagement practices go hand-in-hand. Feature details evolve and are tested along the way. They brought in new UX researchers as they needed it.

This resulted in The Anywhere Article, directly tackling the criticisms and frustrations around traditional HTML research papers.



They are continuing to get feedback and are using that to feed future developments. They get good, bad and grounding feedback, for example, where is the PDF download button? They realised they needed to change the button to red instead of blue.

Challenges and lessons they have learned along the way include the importance of research and listening. It takes a lot of time and money. In terms of development, incorporating user feedback into development against deadlines is a challenge. The wide and varied landscape of browsers and devices has an impact. Hard to accommodate all and they are constantly changing.

Harris wishes they'd undertaken more ad hoc guerrilla usability along the way. That would have helped them to tweak some features more quickly. You also need to bear in mind that when you ask for feedback you get a lot. You have to manage that. And they have learned that researchers still want the PDF.

Why does the The Anywhere Article matter? Users aren't generally paying for the content. Publishers need to add value to the record as they are competing with other versions on the web. Adding value = usage = revenue.

User-driven innovation: learning faster with flash builds

Alex Humphreys, head of JSTOR Labs at ITHAKA, provided an overview of how JSTOR's launch of a new Labs team who have been charged with partnering with the community to seek out new opportunities and refine and validate them through experimentation.

The team has been using Flash Builds - high-intensity, short-burst, user-driven development efforts - in order to prototype new ideas and get to a user saying "Wow" in as little as a week. he described how they've done this using two case studies, JSTOR Snap and Understanding Shakespeare, highlighting the skills, tools and content that help us to learn (and therefore get to innovation) faster.

Based on the methodology, they worked in a coffee shop for one week talking to users, coming up with concepts, designing, tweaking, user testing, through to prototype.

http://labs.jstor.org/blog/2015/02/20/labs-week-building-jstor-snap/

With the Folger Shakespeare Library, they worked with the digital editions of the plays and visited the Library itself. By iterative consultation with users during the week while at the Library itself, they managed to reduce the number of enhancements through the week - not needed as they got constant feedback.


The ingredients for Flash Builds are:

1. Small diverse team with technical, design and business skills
2. Ability to show work to users early and often with the whole team present
3. Space to innovate: flexible technology that allows for componentization and contours deployment - a safe-space to fail with time to focus.

Prior to the Flash Build they conducted interviews with scholars, then created the data and infrastructure. During the Flash Build they had a design jam, paper prototypes, low-fi prototypes and a working site. After the Flash Build, there was a polish and clean up, release and measurement through key KPIs.

Alex Humphreys spoke at the ALPSP seminar Disruption, development and divestment held in London on Tuesday 17 March 2015.

Disruption, development and divestment: what's the current 'state of the nation'?

Mark Ware: state of nation speech

Mark Ware, consultant to the STM publishing and information sectors, provided an overview of where scholarly publishing is at the Disruption, development and divestment seminar.

The industry is being reshaped by a range of factors: the continuing digital transition and rapidly evolving technology, convergence of content and services, funder policies, growing pressures for openness, the growth of R&D outputs, and the changing attitudes and behaviours of researchers, to name just a few.

Economies of scale are more important than ever, but at the same time lower barriers to entry have increased competition from start-ups and technology companies. And yet examples of disruptive innovations are very hard to find.

Classic examples of disruption to established business include newspapers and music. It's interesting to note how stable STM communications is compared to other sectors. Disruption doesn't mean a whole industry is destroyed. It is easier to find disruption to B2C markets (e.g. Blockbuster hit when NetFlix came along, Blackberry affected by the iPhone). It is hard to find any incumbents in our world that look like Blackberry or Blockbuster.

Ware cites a model developed by Bob Campbell from Wiley on the journal industry. There are four stages: discovery, exploitation, management, reinvention (with the web). The question is what comes next? Is there a second or third wave or are we going off the cliff into disruption? However, he believes that the death of scholarly publishing is often reported, but we're still here.

The four key forces for change in STM publishing are:

1. Digital transition
2. funder policies
3. Momentum for increase openness
4. changing research behaviours and needs

The key political forces are funder policies as well as government policies and copyright reform. There is a big drive not only to open access, but to more openness.

Political, economic, social and technological forces lead to an evolution, not revolution or disruption. Open access is the norm, but in a mixed economy. OA combined with pressure from funders will increase competition. The economies of scale and logic of that will lead to further consolidation in the market. There are also likely to be other structural changes.

Ware reflected on what this means for publishers. Open access continues, but growth is slowing down. There are differences in disciplines and the bureaucracy around OA funding is a nightmare. There's a clear need for better systems. All the things we're good at: standards, data, compliance, will help, but there's still a way to go.

The move for Open Science (as championed by the Force 11 group and beyond the PDF) situates data alongside collaborative tools and practices, behaviours and social media. Recent research by Nature outlined attitudes, behaviours and tools that scientists use/adopt. They are using social networks such as Research Gate and Google to raise their profile, share and collaborate. Economies of scale on the web become yet more important and are enhanced with social elements of digital.  It's not just about companies, journal platforms benefit from scale.

The changing industry structure results in several new dimensions:

• New entrants such as PeerJ, Google Scholar and ResearchGate
• Company diversification e.g. Elsevier, Digital Science, JBJS
• Product complexity including journal platform inc. mobile, SciVal, Converis
• Industry concentration as seen with the Springer/Mamcillan merger
• Geography such as Wolters Kluwer/Medknow, Scielo and Spanish/Chinese output
• Vertical integration in production, distribution, OMTS, etc
• Value network complexity e.g. Mendeley etc.

Ware closed by describing the STM scorecard. We are surviving, are not disrupted yet, still profitable, managing the digital transition so far, with wider access, and usage increased. However, user experience and understanding/responding to changing user requirements, plus changing user requirements, workflow, setting the agenda, are not so good. Opportunities and directions include consultation (firms and journals) diversification, efficiencies, open innovation and platforms, and moving from product centric to service centric.  Challenges and threats include managing the transition to open science, more competition leading to lower profits, and new entrants including tech companies and services providers.

Mark Ware spoke at the ALPSP seminar Disruption, development and divestment held in London on Tuesday 17 March 2015.

Disruption, development and divestment: lessons to learn from the B2C market

Richard Padley, CEO, Semantico

Richard Padley, Chairman and CEO of Semantico kicked off the Disruption, Development and Divestment seminar with a session reflecting on what publishers can learn about providing services to the end-user. How are the 'new' users actually buying and consuming content and services?

There has been a shift for publishers from Intellectual Property landlord to IP traders. (This model is drawn from an MIT study on business models).

Search exerts incredibly powerful forces on all our business. There is a whole industry of search engine optimisation. But we don't seem to spend a lot of time thinking of that. Some businesses have a focus on it, some don't. We don't have nearly enough emphasis or ownership on SEO in the industry.

When Semantico implemented SEO strategy on one product they saw 3000% increase in unique users - new and repeat. But then it flatlined - clearly Google changed the rules. What they essentially had was a freemium model, but Google decided that this could only apply to newspapers. In the end they had to change the strategy for that product to respond. Google have a thing for free content - politically as well as from search point of view.  A couple of years ago they stopped indexing content behind paywalls, except for journal articles. There is a whole range of virtuous properties of doing search right. Search is incredibly powerful and incredibly important because of that.

User experience is the manifestation through products and services of business needs and the expression of customers needs. UX runs entirely through a business. You can liken it to an iceberg: there are the elements above the water you can see (MS submission, etc). But what about those underneath? In some cases, we have incredibly byzantine routes to content (number of clicks for a Shibboleth login). We still force our users to use logins, passwords and other protocols in a way that would never happen in the B2C world.

With mobile there's a bit of 'build it and they will come' mentality. But if you are seeing low levels of usage, that will probably be because your site is not responsive and users can't use it effectively. Responsive design makes your site fluid and flexible so you can retain, branding, user experience and flow of site. Think about the proportion of users that will instantly benefit. On PDFs: are we going to build faster horses? PDFs are incredibly difficult to read on mobile. ePub3 is far superior. Again, build it and they will come.

Richard finished by considering big data asking: how scientific are we being in deterring growth areas for programme development? Exactly who are we turning away? Are we looking at analytics in a way B2C businesses do? Are we considering conversions? It's not just about sales, but also downloads - how well are you converting user journeys from Google through into actual downloads? Some of this is about being proactive rather than reactive. Also about looking at the net effect on consumers.

Richard Padley spoke at the ALPSP seminar Disruption, development and divestment held in London on Tuesday 17 March 2015.

Don’t let disruption scare you, it’s just another word for opportunity

Don't be scared, it's only disruption

Phill Jones is Head of Publisher Outreach at Digital Science. Here, in a guest post, he argues that disruption isn't scary...

"For publishers, societies and other stakeholders in scholarly communication, innovation and its scarier sibling, disruption can be seen either as a threat, a challenge, or as an opportunity. Particularly for smaller players, it can be very tough to look at the innovation landscape with it’s plethora of technologies, start-up companies and initiatives and decide just where to invest valuable time and effort, not to mention development budget.

The problem doesn't begin and end with technology either. Business models are evolving and the nature of sales channels is beginning to change. At the recent Association of Subscription Agents conference in London, Derk Haank, CEO of Springer, pointed out that in the past 4 years, the journal market share for subscription agents has fallen from 54% to 40%. That’s a massive shift in such a short time. Particularly in light of the recent SWETS bankruptcy, it’s important to go beyond thinking about revenue sources and try to figure out what the sales and revenue channels of the future may be.

On the 17th of March, I'm going to be chairing a seminar for ALPSP at SCI in London titled Disruption, Development and Divestment where we’re going to try to get at some of these complex questions. In the mean-time, here are some of my own thoughts about the state of innovation and what’s next. These may or may not reflect the opinions of the other speakers, you’ll have to come along to find out.

There’s more to platform innovation than user experience

Platform innovation can get a bit of a bad name. The traditional view of web design, focusing on stickiness and design layout can often be dismissed as mere bells and whistles. The persistence of the PDF as the dominant container for academic articles supports this view but is this finally beginning to change? Platform innovation that makes a difference adds real value in the form of new functionality and information. Data sharing, altmetrics, and multi-media all represent new but very real needs of today's authors and readers.

If you want to know what authors will need next, follow the money

Academic researchers are pressed for time and like it or not, they’d actually far prefer to be in the lab, the field, or the library doing research than sat at a computer figuring out how to upload a data set or even write an article (at least that’s true for most of them). So why do researchers communicate at all? Because funders insist that they do so. For some reason, they feel that they’re entitled to proof that their money is being spent wisely. Emboldened by the growth of open access publishing, that has in part been driven by mandates, funders are increasingly asking authors and institutions to communicate in new and diverse ways. In short, funder mandates and funding preferences dictate author needs.

Open access won’t be the last new business model to make an impact

With the role of the subscription agent under threat due to falling margins and market share, the question of what the intermediary of the future will look like is becoming pressing. The major players in the space are already pivoting to become more like technology providers and technology providers are creating connections throughout the industry that organically lead to new distribution channels. What will these new revenue sources and channels look like? Well that remains to be seen, but some people have been arguing for some time that publishers can identify sources of revenue outside of selling licensed content.

My three predictions above pose more questions than they answer. Innovation is a complex subject and there are many questions still to be addressed when it comes to open access, open science, data publication, business models and sustainability. On March 17th, myself and a number of wiser speakers than I will try to get to the bottom of some of it. We’ll try to put some of this into perspective and hopefully, there will be some take-home lessons that will help put all this scary talk of disruption into perspective.

See you in London."

Book online for Disruption, Development and Divestment.

Follow coverage on the day via Twitter #alpspdisruption

The Future of Reference Publishing

David Hughes from Wiley

Reference publishing has undergone a truly profound change in the last decade, from an almost exclusively print-based business to one where online delivery has become the norm, with regular updating, live integrated cross-references, multiple concurrent users, intelligent use of colour and increasing functionality.

David Hughes, Editorial Director for Major Works at John Wiley and Sons, outlined the challenges publishers face to ensure reference is to retain its place as an important gateway to knowledge and learning. The Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry was first printed in 1914 in the German edition. The first English language print edition was in 1985. It was first online in 2000 and the seventh print edition was published in 2011 (40 print volumes, 30,000 pages).

Online is now the driving force behind the project. It is updated six times a year and they introduce new initiatives (for example the 'smart article', shorter versions to entice people in). Online is the new norm for reference publishing now. They publish high quality, fantastic reference content, and do exciting and clever things they couldn't do in print. But is that enough for their librarian and end user customers? No. The main challenge for reference today is to ensure the use of reference mains relevant and important to a new generation of librarians, educators, students and researchers.

One challenge is that of free content, specifically, Wikipedia. It's not going away, everyone uses it. For many purposes it is good enough for what is needed. They need to articulate what makes their content better and more relevant.

Usage is a deciding factor for librarians. If they don't see products being used, they won't buy it. As a result, more thought has to be given about the pain points for end users to encourage usage. They need to articulate and enhance its value. Reference doesn't exist in a vacuum, and is not an end in itself. It is used more widely with other resources. End users need to see improved outcomes in their daily work whether finding information quickly or improved references in an end of term paper or research project. They need confidence in the content. Where does it come from, who from, is it up to date?

They have analysed and researched the student workflow for the Blackwell's Encyclopedia of Sociology. The key parts where reference came into play was when they get background information and narrow the topic down and then when they move on to research via the university library database. In the former, they want to make sense of the topic, play with keywords, feel confident in the subject. It has provided insight into how to improve the reference product: fitting into the workflows of end users is critical.

Wiley StatsRef: Statistics Reference Online was developed to be an dynamic online reference resource for the global statistics community, covering fundamentals and applications areas. They used Wiley's rich statistics reference portfolio as a starting point, carefully editorially curate and enhance the content to develop a product much greater than the sum of its parts. It was launched in 2014 with more than 6,000 articles with a bespoke taxonomy to help users have a logical and straightforward way to browsing through the content. They plan to grown and enhance by regularly adding new and updated articles, add whole new topic areas and develop new functionalities e.g. to enable users to interact with charts and data.

For the future, they will develop a bespoke new platform for reference publishing to host all major reference works to make it easier and more intuitive to use, more discoverable and to enhance the collections. These elements go hand in hand with user needs and individual collection development.

Hughes feels confident about the future of reference content. High quality is crucial, but not enough. We need to address end user workflow requirements and to be differentiated from freely available content.

Books. Pah! It's all just stuff

Toby Green from OECD. And sheep.

Digital puts the user in the driving seat, and from a user's perspective, the content in books is no different from the content in journals, grey literature or even databases. It's all just stuff that answers a question the user has or gives them tuition or the tools to do their work. But why do publishers still insist on presenting their stuff online in containers that replicate those determined by analogue processes?

Toby Green, Head of Publishing at OECD explained how after user research, they created a new portal for datasets that allows users to discover all of OECD's data-driven content, and especially the content found in its books. http://data.oecd.org

The OECD has lots of stuff that they produce. It might be a journal article, a dataset, a working paper, book or not-really-sure-what-it-is. Generally, the books they produce are written and produced in two weeks. The Secretary General of the OECD needs to turn things around very quickly to make available for national governments. People don't want a product, they just want the relevant stuff on a topic. So they went out to talk to users to see what their tasks were.

User profiles were generated with typical tasks. What they also said is that they don't want a data portal, they just want to find the answer to their query. They knew it was there, but didn't know how to find it. It was a big change to the project as they had to change the scope. They ended up with a data rebuttal engine. Within a few minutes you can get answers to so many questions or assertions.

The OECD iLibrary enables people to download, embed and share data. If they want premium content to print and download they can pay. Green calls it premium open access, which he believes is a much better model than other existing ones. They offer web, spreadsheet, book, chapter and document. By allowing embedding, they aren't giving away content, they are gaining usage statistics on traffic as well as promotion. The idea of letting go of content which is a vital part of their mission, but also of their business model so they can be sustainable and pay the bills.

They have a technical term for their programme: Russian Doll publishing. It has had an extraordinary impact on their readership. They have seen growth in chapter downloading, but they still see strong demand for books.

Transforming the RMM: A case study in health sciences

Antonia Seymour from Wiley

There has been significant investment in digital transformation of book content in the health sciences. Antonia Seymour, VP and Publishing Director for Professional Practice and Learning at John Wiley and Sons, explained how they had developed the Royal Marsden Manual of Clinical Nursing Procedures (RMM) for the nursing community.

With the RMM, they are simultaneously publishing in 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. The book is published against a background where the NHS is in a challenging environment. Hospital admissions are growing every day, there's an ageing population, patents have complex conditions, more people are waiting (and queuing) in A&E departments. Important to understand nursing requirements within that.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council states that nurses have the knowledge and skills for safe and effective practice without direct supervision. Nurses also have to keep knowledge and skills up to date throughout their working life. The RMM is designed to address these needs and pain points.

The Royal Marsden Trust is a Centre for Excellence for cancer. Wiley have a publishing partnership with them. RMM started out as an in-house manual of best practices. An astute editor suggested this could be useful more widely and that it should be published. It is now the nursing bible for clinical skills. Evolved over 30 years to be the market leader.

In 2004 after extensive research, they went into four different editions, in colour, in a pocket book to take round the ward, in a ring binder with laminated procedure cards. These may seem parochial now, but were all about portability on the ward. They now have the professional edition, student edition (full of pedagogical features), and a truly online edition which is increasingly favoured by the market, which includes a workflow tool. The success has been based on continuous refinement in response to research with nurses.

Market research is conducted with newly qualified nurses, experienced staff, mentors/preceptors of students and newly qualified nurses, ward managers and clinical governance nurses. It is a multi-million dollar product so they invest a lot. The market wants quick and easy answers to their question.

There are over 200 procedures (including hand washing) which has been tabulated online so you can get to equipment, procedure or medication part of it. All content is graded by level of evidence. They've made an incredibly google-like search on the home page. Customisable content is included so Trusts can clarify local policy, annotate procedures guidelines and support information to reflect local practice. The online edition is now contributing just over 60% of revenues. For hospitals and trusts is sold on a three year licence based on number of beds. In academic institutions, it's based on number of students.

Institutional sales team, roadshows, webinars, case study in journal, corporate marketing and telemarketing all tools used to sell and market the product. In the future they will continue with market research, look to expand the franchise, develop the online edition, continually update and hopefully include broader Wiley content.

Books and scholarly communities: retrospect and prospect

Richard Fisher, formerly CUP

Academic books are a rather more complex and variegated subset of scholarly communication than is often articulated. Publishing has often remained fragmented and sometimes defiantly artisanal in approach, particularly in the arts and social sciences. Have book publishers drawn the right inferences from the digital transition, and have they forgotten some of the most important early impacts of that transition which nonetheless retain significance today?

Richard Fisher, formerly Managing Director of the CUP's Academic Division considered these issues while looking ahead, to the myriad of disciplinary, institutional, financial and access issues with which academic book publishing is confronted.

He noted that we have a curiously unchanged publisher landscape. There hasn't been a PLOS or BioMed Central in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Why is this? High entry costs relative to publishing opportunities. Long term gestation, scholarly conservatism and the complex interaction of career tenure and the continued rise of American University Presses might be other factors.

Is there a crisis in scholarly book publishing? Monograph outputs have doubled in the past decade. It is impossible to read all of them. So what is the crisis if there is still plenty to publish and read? So far, e-publishing has not yet disturbed the continuum of publishing formats in these disciplines. What has happened to the course-book used for graduate and undergraduate teaching. Small scale adoption is possible with short print runs. The retail presence is chipped away by Amazon. Is this type of research book facing extinction or will it carry on? (He suspects that latter). What caused the shift of focus even more onto the backlist? How much emphasis is placed on the backlist with marketing and sales efforts?

Are these factors indicative of a blip or part of a more fundamental shift and evolution of the research book market? Why do we discuss non-institutional customers so little? The majority of sales come from institutions, and yet we don't engage with the readers/users of monographs.

Is there a transatlantic divide in open access? The role of UK governmental agencies in OA and other initiatives within EU/ESF, HEFCE and RCUK/Wellcome research funding is counter to the international structure of publishers. Academic book publication in the UK is fundamentally an export activity, and potentially only viable in that context. It is often undercapitalised and under digitised. International markets and translations are also at risk with the uptake of Creative Commons.

Fisher cites how emphatically scholarly books can be cross-over trade books. Serious historical research, for example, can have a popular appeal unmatched by any other subject. If you look at the conclusions of the agent Andrew Wylie and HEFCE/RCUK (who both want the widest possible dissemination) they draw vastly different conclusions.

Much of the most powerful and polemical OA advocacy come from those outside the formal academy, or the marginalised within: for those inside, different motivations need to apply. Fisher believes there still needs to be a step change in consumption of and enthusiasm for long form e-outputs among humanities and social sciences scholars. Yet the rate of transition is very slow.

Intellectual Property is a growing arena of contest. It is a huge issue for humanists and social scientists. Arguments are fierce around licensing (including Creative Commons). It's sets authority against collaborative working. You also need to bear in mind that law does not necessarily mean US or California law. US and UK law are very different. This needs to be taken account of.

Fisher is a great advocate for campus calling and going to see people in the institution. We need to look afresh at what we do and ensure that we ask the right questions. In a world of scarcity (above all of time) we must ask ourselves, is it any good?

What next for social science books?

Daniel Pollock from Jordan Publishing

Legal practitioners have different needs to scholars, so where does a book fit into a world of online services and workflow support? Daniel Pollock, Publishing Director at Jordan Publishing considered the opportunities in the post digital world.

Based on his experience working in an agency environment in the past, Pollock learnt many lessons that apply to publishing. First, you need to articulate your core proposition. If you're aiming for a forward looking market, products and services, make sure you reflect that in what you do.

Pollock cites Practical Law Company as one of the most successful legal publishers who focused on a customer focused strategy driven by need. Grew from £6 million in 2003 to £60 million in 2013. They were lawyers, not publishers. By talking about the future of the scholarly book, you're at risk of putting the cart before the horse. You may or may not need it.

Alison Shaw, Publishing Director at Policy Press provided a refreshing view of how scholarly publishers have to provide new solutions for their readers' changing needs.

They used to disseminate research and were embedded in a department so understood the needs of researchers. Since then, priorities have changed. Researchers want ownership of their work, they want to share it, they want career development. They want a publisher with high esteem who can publish in a timely way and disseminate it. But they also want impact and in a sense, to change the world - or our understanding of it.

Alison Shaw from Policy Press

For many people in the social policy world, books are still very important. The book may have changed, but the need to have a long form argument is still important. There is a current trend for consolidation into massive companies. As a tiny publisher they have had to compete and add value in innovative ways. One approach has been to launch a trade list. Getting By by Lisa McKenzie is a title from an early career academic who approached them with her PhD. They encourage her to combine her passion for campaigning for social equality with her research specialism. Massive media coverage has resulted. Using trade and media as well ebook format giveaways on other titles help research have a wider impact.

With Revisiting Moral Panics, they have 18 different versions for whole, part, chapters and so on. it's an experiment to see what will happen. Policy Press are experimenting with short and mid form publications with a 12 week turnaround. Shaw sees a work as not just a book, but a core piece of content with related content all around it. It could be free policy briefings, practice guides, reports, social media content, data sets. It's about dissemination in the round. Some parts are static, some are interactive. They are thinking about supporting an author to maximise their reach and impact. Discoverability is key with tagging, data, analytics tools. they're providing free shareable content marketing, but everything links back to the book.

Shaw noted that often the journal world is often ahead of book publishing. They are monitoring and seeing what can be adopted to enhance what they want to do. There are many issues to iron out with monographs when it comes to open access. In social science, there will be many who won't have access to funds. Patron Driven Acquisition presents a challenge with low usage. Looking at models for different ways of selling, bundling print and e, freemium/premium, portals, subscription and so on.

Tim Williams from Edward Elgar Publishing

Tim Williams, Managing Director of Edward Elgar Publishing asked whether is it inevitable that technology and business models for ebooks seem to be converging with journals. Trends include long term decline in print runs, the growth in ebook aggregators and new business models, pressures on publishers to justify value they add and disseminate widely. There is a shift in customers and authors from West to East and the looming question on what will happen with Open Access. However, the convergence of book and journal content is key for Edward Elgar.

Digital migration is happening - 30% of the book revenue is now digital. Books are now included alongside journals in the same discovery technology. Citations are increasingly being counted and used for books. There is a move away from one book one price to lots of books with variable pricing. Books are longer than journals, are more diverse in purpose and audience, more of a relationship between the reader and author, and the author/publisher act is more of a partnership.

The potential benefits from convergence are huge including discovery and use, citation recognition and greater access. But there are things to think about and learn from. The journal business model plays an advantage to scale publishers who are 'unavoidable' to libraries. There are higher barriers to entry and potentially less diversity in innovation (in sense of content). If books no longer succeed on individual merit. Will they just become agglomerated into large collections? Will they stand out and will authors still want to write them? It's a huge undertaking. Will it also become too easy to publish as publisher hoover up content to feed collection sales? What about the impact of the Impact Factor? How will books be measured and incentivised? By applying one measure for journals to a book, will it affect schools of thought, relationships between author and publisher? And what strategies can smaller publishers adopt to compete? Food for thought...

What next for science and engineering books?

Liz Martin, Head of Production at IOP Publishing

IOP Publishing launched their born-digital ebook programme in 2013 (and won the Silver ALPSP Award for Innovation in Publishing in 2014). Liz Martin, Head of Production at Institute of Physics Publishing outlined how by not being constrained by the need to digitise an existing print programme, they were able start from scratch thinking about what readers, librarians and authors in the STM community wanted from books.

IOP Publishing sold their whole programme to Taylor & Francis in 2005. They got out of books, so why launch books again in 2013? It came from their mission. They wanted to engage with their community in a different way, with different content, levels and media to reach out to a wider audience. Unlike journals, authors can express views, which is a subtly different way of engaging the community. It allowed their communities to buy what they want, where they want, how they want. It also provided a financial channel.

IOPscience is their delivery platform. It has good usability and discoverability. They also had their platform in place. They have two collections: Expanding Physics (highly developed texts from leading names in the field) and Concise Physics (short, concise 'first' books in a subject that are written and published quickly). They adopted a born digital programme. They offer PDF, HTML and ePub 3 of absolutely everything. It is device independent and fully functional. Equations are used to make it readable and accessible. They provide a seamless reader experience with click through to exercises and embedded colour media. They have a no-DRM model so librarians can share content freely. There is a fee based model for authors so no legacy issues. They have a collections based purchasing model. They use their existing experience and contacts for production and workflow, quality and SLAs. They have an XML workflow to enable all formats. The biggest challenge is around author education. The opportunity is to use their journals.

Roheena Anand, Publisher at Royal Society of Chemistry

The Royal Society of Chemistry's main objective is to advance excellence in the chemical sciences. Roheena Anand, Publisher for Books, talked through how their publishing strategy meets the needs of the global chemical science community, where digital fits in, and their focus for the next five years.

Why do they still publish books? Because their community tells them they still want them. They find them trustworthy and knowledgeable. Books are the best way to learn a new topic and go beyond a review article to present coherent body of knowledge. They also cover different levels of knowledge. As chemical science research output is browning, it provides ways to disseminate.

One of their key offers to the community as a Society is that all surplus from their programme is reinvested in science. The RSC is a specialist in chemical sciences and they cover different levels of knowledge from popular science to engage the public, through student materials to post-grad specialist researchers. There are synergies with their journal programme, they have an ePlatform, eBook Collections and high quality titles with recognised authors and editors. It helps time poor researchers with a fast track to relevant, quality materials.

They have achieved 50% growth in output and a concomitant increase in revenue. More titles are originated themselves with new book series and editorial boards. They have nearly 1500 ebooks in their eBook Collection. They have also reduced publication times by 10 weeks (around 20 weeks). They've diversified formats so ePUB and HTML and they have diversified revenue streams including pay-per-view, pick and choose eBooks and eBook aggregators.

Their focus in the future is on quality and has to be relevant for the international community as their membership is global. Subjects need to be in line with organisational priorities for the wider Society. They will extend formats and try to improve existing (e.g. print/POD? E-textbooks?). They will explore access routes to content and consider open access (which has not been a focus to date, but signs are this is changing).

Ian Stoneham from The IET

There has been a relatively recent resurgence in book commissioning activity, perhaps driven by institutional purchase of ebook collections or in some part as a reaction to rebalancing income from traditional society journal publishing revenues. The IET's Ian Stoneham questioned how secure the future of the book is as a discrete entity?

The IET publish a range of book products including monographs, professional reference, Standards (regulations), major reference works, conference proceedings and commissioned content. They have made a strategic decision to invest in programme expansion with a focus on core areas of IET activity and proposition as a learned society. They focus on quality, relevance and authority with established series and focus on edited multi-contributor monographs. They are looking for sustainable offering with depth and breadth, with a focus on digital that works for their community. Their standards publishing is now digital first with print 'squirted out at the end'.

Commissioned content is key to their knowledge offering. It can be an access to point to all other areas of their knowledge products or services. It can be repurposed and repackaged for CPD programmes and other activity. In engineering journal articles are important for career and funding,  but there is a different imperative to write books. Books can bridge the gap between primary research and practical application. Engineers are very pragmatic and having a book to wave in front of a client is a good thing for business.

In the future, they plan to open up their content for semantic enrichment e.g. auto detection of proper nouns, key terms in the text, linking to internal/external sources, etc. They also hope to improve community engagement (which isn't traditionally great in their field). Challenges included automated search, Patron-Driven Acquisition and protecting IP from third parties innovating around their content. However,  if you don't have the content, you can't meet the challenge of disruptive technologies.

Jon Walmsley on the changing face of academic and professional books

The term 'book' has always applied to a large variety of business models. But as an increasing proportion of sales are of digital versions, there is an even wider variety of models that have a small and volatile sales evidence-base.

Jon Walmsley, Senior Vice-President and Managing Director of Professional Practice and Learning at John Wiley and Sons outlined an approach for dealing with this situation at The Scholarly Book of the Future seminar.

Why do people buy books? To do a job, to research, to extend knowledge. At Wiley they developed a framework for describing books. Books 1.0 = print Books 2.0 = flat digital versions of print books with little or no functionality. Books 3.0 = things that do the same jobs for the same markets that 1.0 and 2.0 do, but better. It seems strange to call them 'books'. The challenge is to find a middle ground. It's not practical to develop a bespoke 3.0 solution based on every 1.0 or 2.0 title or brand. Equally, you can't expect to find one solution to do all these jobs. To make it work commercially, you need a small number of scaleable solutions.

Even if you could afford to develop multiple technology solutions, you won't be able to sell them without expensive specialists sales team. it makes it too expensive. How do you develop new business models for new products and prices where you have no experience at all? The existing book business has 300 years of experience behind it.

The books market is more fragmented than ever. They do all the jobs they ever did, but now co-exist with all the different versions up to pure digital. However, with fragmentation typically comes opportunity if you know your market and the opportunity.

What are your assets? Top brands, copyrights and authors are key. Deep community expertise, whether commissioners or marketers and existing sales market knowledge. Critical mass and quality of content combined with market reach is powerful. Partners, potential partners and technology expertise are all key.

So what is the answer? There isn't one definitive one. Any organisation needs a number of small scaleable 2.x or 3.0 solutions, focused on a small number of well-defined markets. This requires a high degree of discipline and is contrary to some notions of 'innovation'.

There are a number of technology considerations. The PDF is still desired, but digging into why can results in a better experience. Publisher platforms are not always optimal. Is it better to partner? Business model trends include the shift from ownership to access, the growth in rental and short-term loads, as well as evidence based models such as Usage Based Collection Management. It is crucial to work with your core customers to find sustainability. it is the only way to ensure scholarly communication will survive.

Users want easy access to all the good stuff that's relevant to them. Individual titles are valuable as parts of aggregations. Publishers need to be selective and can augment critical mass with partnerships. Bear in mind that librarians do not often buy books and journals together and this doesn't just apply to subject areas. Also understand that 'non-university' customers are fundamentally different.

There are also regional macro differences. Print books are most stable in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Asia and especially China is a major flat digital (2.0) market if you can reach it. The USA is the most volatile, but growing market for 2.0 aggregations.

Walmsley closed by urging publishers to consider how they select target markets based on assets and capabilities. Explore proven, scaleable business models for clear channel and partnering strategy. It's one thing to change, but developing new viable, scalable business models is crucial. Fewer business models and more partners will help. Have real clarity about existing assets and capabilities. Try to develop solutions that are cheap, fast, personalised and mobile.

What is the Scholarly Book of the Future? Julia Mortimer from Policy Press reflects

We caught up with Julia Mortimer, member of ALPSP's Professional Development Committee and co-organiser of the The Scholarly Book of the Future seminar next month, to ask her what she thinks the scholarly book of the future will look like.

1. What have you seen happening to the scholarly book in the last few years?

The most significant change for the scholarly book has been the move to digital, with completely different and varying purchase models available leading to wide disruption in the marketplace.

Probably the most significant shift within this is the move from guaranteed sales of single copies via approval plans to patron or demand driven access (PDA/DDA) where books are only bought when users trigger a purchase or are loaned for short periods of time and minimal amounts of money. Usage has moved to centre stage, as it has been for journals for some time.

All this is happening as a response to shrinking and stagnating library budgets and some of the purchase models which were introduced at the outset into library aggregators' licensing agreements have been made use of in ways which weren't originally envisaged.

To date the content of digital monographs hasn't changed significantly, although some are getting shorter, they are essentially text-based versions of the print book. However they are being presented and sold in different ways via platforms which bring together a publishers' scholarly books in full or subject-based collections and can be sold via a range of models (more similarly to journal sales). Collaborations between publishers are also emerging in response to library feedback e.g. OUP's University Presses Scholarship Online which Policy Press is involved in and which provides a one-stop shop for University Press scholarly publications.

The rise of blogs and social media has had a considerable effect on academic research, as has the Impact agenda introduced in the Research Excellence Framework in the UK. At Policy Press we have introduced three strands of new fast-track short-form publications: research-based books providing the latest cutting-edge research findings, social commentary pieces and insights on topical issues or policy and practice guides enabling research to quickly have an influence. Academics have welcomed this flexibility which meets their changing needs and other publishers are also starting to offer a range of short formats.

Finally, open access is having a bearing but not to the extent that it has for journals so far. There are experiments and pilots taking place and publishers offer gold open access monograph options but funding is often an issue and other options need to be explored.

2. What has this meant for the financial side of publishing? 

The changes in digital monograph sales models have had a particularly detrimental effect over the past year on many academic publishers. Much lower revenue is generated as a result of the move in the US towards PDA and short term loans (STLs). In the past a certain number of monograph sales were pretty much guaranteed for high quality research outputs which ensured they were viable. Not any more. As Michael Zeoli of YBP Library Services said at a recent IPG seminar, now it is publishers taking all the risks without being able to get a return on their investment. (See The Bookseller article).

This is the case for not-for-profit University Presses and commercial publishers alike, as print sales continue to decline they are not being replaced by digital sales.

Gold open access payments for monographs are still very few and far between so it is early days in terms of a potential transition there.

3. Why is it important now to reflect on this, should we just let nature take its course? 

This disruption is having a fundamental impact on whether the scholarly book in its current form can continue. This is affecting publishers to such an extent that if we don't reflect now and take action some publishers may go out of business and the preservation of scholarly work will be under threat. 

Publishers need to be able make their case to academics and librarians about the value of what they do and the economics behind it. We also need to keep on top of the technology as it changes so that we can continue to innovate to meet the research community’s needs.

4. So, the book is dead, long live the book, right? Tell me what’s in your crystal ball… 

I think the monograph in long and short form will survive, certainly in the humanities and in the social sciences where a longer treatment of certain research findings is absolutely necessary. There is a strong case for embracing the evolution of scholarly publishing but it is not a case of one size fits all any more.

There will be a lot more convergence of formats, with chapters having their own DOIs and being increasingly included in joint databases and platforms with journal content. Similarly when searching for content researchers want to find everything relevant to their search in one place so discovery tools need to better integrate book and journal content, until the content itself is fully integrated. A greater use of XML and semantic web technology will allow researchers to use material in different ways eg integrated data, enhanced books with much more embedded multi-media.

Policy Press short format monograph

There will be a greater focus on what researchers need and studies are already under way to establish that. Innovative forms of dissemination will continue to develop: more short-form work, more use of social media and blogs, online communities and vehicles to allow interaction, engagement and collaboration with the work.

Sales-wise subscription and rental models will grow but there is likely to be a demarcation of premium new content and backlist archive in terms of what is offered via these models. For other types of content archives may be the premium product. Repurposing content and custom publishing options will continue to develop as digital formats and systems make this easier.

I expect to see more collaboration between university presses and their libraries as well - especially around OA models in the future - and other sources of revenue being sought to fund OA such as sponsorship or advertising.

So books are here to stay in my humble opinion, but they may look rather different!

Julia Mortimer is Assistant Director at Policy Press at the University of Bristol, a not-for-profit social science publisher committed to making a difference.

The Scholarly Book of the Future seminar, co-organised by Anthony Watkinson and Julia Mortimer will be held in London on Thursday 12 February. Follow #alpspbook for coverage.

Take control of your digital future (part 2)

In the final of a two part guest post (read part 1 here), Jan Zuchowski, a Digital Performance Specialist who has worked with commercial and not-for-profit organizations to improve and develop their strategy, provides practical steps for taking control of your digital future.

"Digital innovation is simply the process of pulling together the ideas and tools to create something new. For many publishers this can be a challenging prospect because their organisational culture (that has often been built up over many years) inhibits thinking that challenges conventional beliefs.

Image: Roman Okopny

Yet innovation cannot happen without stepping out of the well-worn grooves that have served the industry well in the past. It takes courage; it takes vision; and it takes a passion for what might be, for the unexplored, for what yet isn't but could be.

The biggest barrier is, of course, the fear of getting it wrong and making expensive mistakes. Happily, the real threat is not nearly as big as is often imagined because other sectors are facing the same challenges as publishers, and are tackling them in different ways, and so there are opportunities to learn. We can see what works in other contexts and then can explore how to push the boundaries and develop new technical insights in our own field.

Senior executives at Google, Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg define technical insight as “a new way of applying technology or design that either drives down the cost or increases the functions and usability of the product by a significant factor. The result is something that is better than the competition in a fundamental way. The improvement is obvious; it doesn't take a lot of marketing for customers to figure out that this product is different from everything else.” (How Google Works, John Murray, 2014).

Here, then, are four questions you may like to discuss within your organisation to set the ball rolling.

1. What more do we need to understand about how the market place is evolving in order to take our concepts of product to the next level?
2. What are the ‘adjacent’ needs of our market - related needs that are not met by our current activities?
3. How could we start making connections between our consumers’ adjacent needs, the new ways of thinking in other sectors, and our current resources?
4. Who could we pull in to help us with our innovative thinking?

Image: Ags Andrew

And after you have taken time to explore these ideas, take action! Ask yourselves - What is the single highest impact next step we could take to accelerate our progress in digital innovation?

We live in incredibly exciting times. Engaging ideas are appearing, sometimes from the most unexpected quarters. New companies are springing up with disruptive ideas and making rapid and significant inroads into the market place.  Unexpected models for partnerships and collaborations are evolving to develop innovative product experiences for the customer. As singer, Bono says, “This is our moment. This is our time.” It’s time to capitalise on the new possibilities open to us!"

Jan is the facilitator for the Digital Strategy Think Tank, an ALPSP workshop produced in collaboration with Librios to be held in London on Tuesday 2 December 2014. Book your place now.

Sticky Content's Amy Nicholson on 5 irritating clichés to help you plan your content marketing

Amy Nicholson: the clichés do work

When you work across different sectors, you see how common the issues are and the mistakes made. Amy Nicholson provided 5 irritating clichés that can actually help you plan your content marketing.

1. Rome wasn't built in a day

Content is a long game. You can have Harry Potter content in your pocket, but if you don't have the people, resources and time to back it up, you might as well not bother.

Know your limits, be realistic about what you can achieve, and get going where you can. As publishers you already appreciate content, editorial, publishing systems and workflow. You are in a stronger position. You really need a managing editor for content marketing, someone who is a master of your entire universe. Practical steps you can take include:

1. Maintain an editorial calendar
2. Create content departments and give them owners
3. Cultivate subject matter experts and other content sources
4. Brainstorm ideas regularly
5. Develop guidelines: style guide, tone of voice, format guidelines
6. Put in place an editorial board to review content effectiveness

2. Don't reinvent the wheel

Old habits die hard. Follow the inverted pyramid format that news rooms have used for years. Get to the point clearly for a 'stop the press' story. You should be able to edit paragraphs from bottom to the top of the story without losing understanding. Front load your content, use plain language, use style guides, consistent use of what you say and how you say it.

3. Waste not, want not

Look at your calendar and re-purpose or redistribute again and again. Think about whether or not you can write once and publish everywhere. Find a way to write for all those different channels in one go so you only have to get sign-off once: can a headline can be used for an email subject line as well?

4. All that glitters isn't gold

Ever been asked if you're on Pinterest? Ever been told you need an app (but without a good reason why)? It has to be about content first and foremost. (And content comes from what your community need or want).

5. The longest journey starts with a single step

Don't become paralysed by trying to perfect something before you get started. Try doing something and see how it goes. Your customers are an ever changing group. Digital is not a degradation of good copy. It enables you to edit live so you can feed back and optimise over and over again.

Your content toolbox should include...

• Briefing forms
• Writers' guidelines
• Content inventory
• Editorial calendar
• Copy formats
• A persuasive manner

Amy Nicholson is Managing Editor for Sticky Content. She spoke at the ALPSP seminar Content Marketing - using your publishing assets?