IOP Publishing announces the launch of its ebook programme and a new partnership

IOP Publishing (IOP) has today announced its entrance into the book market as part of a long-term strategy to expand its support to the research community by offering the broadest range of publishing services to authors and readers.

The IOP ebook programme will provide an additional content channel for authors looking to publish with a society publisher. The programme has been designed to meet the demands of today’s research community by delivering authoritative, high-quality books in physics.

The new portfolio will cover topics across the physical sciences and will support the needs of physicists as well as researchers from other disciplines who are working in interdisciplinary areas of research.

IOP has had a long history in books publishing and was one of the first publishers to experiment with ebooks. The company sold the books division in 2005 to focus on its journals portfolio; however, since then the landscape and demand for ebooks has changed dramatically. IOP is now excellently positioned to serve the needs of the community.
 
This innovative e-first book programme is built with the future in mind. As born-digital content, free of legacy issues, it is designed to meet the needs of the research community in a changing publishing environment.

IOP is also delighted to announce a strategic partnership with Morgan and Claypool Publishers (M&C) to build a dedicated collection as part of the overall ebook program. M&C have combined an innovative editorial approach with an e-first model which has made them one of the leading innovators in high-quality book publishing.

M&C’s publishing model – which already serves the engineering and computer science communities with its Synthesis Digital Library, and the life sciences community with its Colloquium Digital Library – will be adopted to create a new physics collection.

M&C’s unique publishing model emphasizes the rapid digital publication of short books on key research topics that can be incrementally revised and expanded over time.  The model makes it possible to publish tutorial works on active research areas much earlier than with traditional print book models.  Its books provide access to advanced research that is much more accessible than the original research literature and provides extensive linked bibliographies for readers who wish to go further.

Olaf Ernst, Commercial Director of IOP Publishing said: “It is a natural fit for IOP, through its close relationship with the physics community, to launch a high-quality ebook programme that will complement its existing journals portfolio. We have a shared vision with M&C to serve the research community by delivering high-quality content through an innovative publishing approach. This will form the basis of a strong partnership and I very much look forward to working together on this.”

Michael Morgan, President and CEO of Morgan and Claypool, said: “We are very enthusiastic to collaborate with IOP and to benefit from its deep knowledge and commitment to the physics discipline in jointly developing a resource that we both believe will be of significant value.”

Commissioning content will begin immediately.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

For further information, contact Karen Watts, Public Relations Manager at IOP Publishing on +44 (0)117 930 1110 or e-mail karen.watts@iop.org.

ALPSP Conference Day 1: News of the World

Adrian Stanley, CEO of The Charlesworth Group chaired the last session of day one of the ALPSP International Conference titled ‘News of the World’.

It was billed as ‘a satirical and informative overview of important and dramatic global, technological and social news impacting the future of professional and scholarly publishing’. Adrian was joined by Sian Harris, Editor of Research Information, Mark Ware from Outsell and Thomas N Taylor from Dragonfly Sales and Marketing Consultancy. 

The session was jam packed with statistics, facts, advice and recommendations. Highlights from Mark Ware's session are below.

Mark Ware presented data from Outsell on the sector:

• Information industry $462 billion 2011 roughly  same GDP of Malaysia
• STM is nearly $30billion  total STM information
• STM much less cyclical so affected much less than rest of information industry by economic slowdown
• Core library market very flat but some bright spots including emerging markets, mobile, ebooks, databases and tools
• World’s biggest market still the US, but not for much longer
• Largest growing market is Asia
• Transition to fully digital revenues

10 trends that are shaping the information industry:

1. mobile social and rise of GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple)  - 25% spent on mobile devices
2. big data and extreme analytics
3. focused scale – companies that are dominant and compete on scale but do so with deep emphasis on a topical area of areas (e.g. McGraw Hill, Pearson, Gartner, Thomson Reuters, etc) – bump up against their own clients and suppliers. More competition is becoming the norm.
4. M&A, value chains and convergence
5. Aggregation’s persistent call
6. Fun, gamification, philanthropy
7. Human assistance – service and culture – the more digital our world will become, the more important human experience matters.
8. Sales 2.0
9. Open vs closed
10. New interfaces

We are moving from a product-centric to service-focused approach.  Publishers will become more like platform providers. Publisher strategies should include:

• An in-depth understanding of user workflows (critical to adding value)
• Building a mobile strategy
• Simplifying users’ lives
• Getting closer to end-users
• Re-aligning the sales and marketing organization
• Avoid disrupting their own markets

Mark's final insights for the future in 2020 include:

• All services are digital, mobile, customizable, 
• High in-built intelligence factors
• Relevant at point of reference/care/decision
• Multiple revenue sources
• Interoperable