overview
studies
delivery
formats
academic
editing
business
government
e-books
libraries
digitisation
on demand
|
Studies
This page provides an introduction to
books, reports and journals concerned with electronic
publishing. Other parts highlight particular studies, eg
on digital libraries and the pricing of electronic
publications accessed over the web. (Separate guides cover
questions of authentication, digital rights management,
payment systems and other matters.)
overviews
Starting points
for understanding electronic publishing include:
Internet
Publishing & Beyond: The Economics of Digital
Information & Intellectual Property (Cambridge,
MIT Press 00) edited by Brian Kahin & Hal Varian -
proceedings from a Harvard Information Infrastructure
conference
Scholarly
Publishing: The Electronic Frontier (Cambridge, MIT
Press 96) edited by Robin Peek - diverse essays on
readership, authorship, publishing and libraries
Technology &
Scholarly Communication (Berkeley, Uni of
California Press 99) edited by Richard Ekman &
Richard Quandt - hardcopy of the major 1997 conference
described later this guide
Impact of Electronic
Publishing: The Future for Libraries & Publishers (London,
Saur 00) by David Brown - an updated version of his 1996
analysis of major print/electronic publishers in the
sciences
The Advance of Electronic
Publishing, a 1998 UK
Department of Trade & Industry report (PDF)
of interest because it draws on a survey of around 3,000
publishers
Getting Started in Electronic
Publishing is an essay
for the International Network for the Availability of
Scientific Publications (INASP) by Sally Morris of the
Association of Learned & Professional Society
Publishers
the 1998 report
for the UK Online Library Network about The
Publishing Of Electronic Scholarly Monographs &
Textbooks and Electronic publishing & the
Future of the Book, a paper
by Tom Wilson
The 1996 OECD report
on Content As A New Growth Industry explores
markets, concentration and technologies for audio-visual
and multimedia products. It's a starting point for
understanding an evolving industry.
For another perspective turn to How Much Information,
a fascinating report
by leading economists Hal Varian & Peter Lyman on the
dimensions of the 'information universe': quantifying
what's produced, transmitted, consumed and archived.
bibliographies
Unfortunately a comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography
of electronic publishing is not available online.
Charles
Bailey's online
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography -
recently updated - provides a useful introduction to North
American research into academic EP. We've highlighted
other sources in later parts of this guide.
reader perspectives
Sadly, much of the
writing about electronic publications considers the
technology rather than how (or indeed whether) it's used.
While there was much media hype about Stephen King's
self-published 'e-novels' as a first nail in the coffin of
traditional publishing, there's considerable support for
the joke that the novels were downloaded by millions but
read by a handful. And, like vampires, the publishers
refuse to stay in the box.
Our design and
accessibility guides consider usability issues and point
to resources for studying what works online, and why (eg
Jakob Nielsen's succinct essay
on How Users Read On The Web).
For a broader
view we refer you to Augusto Preta's 1998 report
(for the EU Electronic Publishing, Books &
Archives project) on Heavy readers: their practices and
reaction to multimedia and to Columbia University's Online
Books Evaluation Project.
Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the five year study
involved academic publishers and explored models for
assessing costs, user preferences and 'packaging' of
monographs in online formats. The final report
of that project is online, along with a report
on The Potential of Online Books in the Scholarly World.
Part
four of this guide highlights some of the perils
and promises of academic e-publishing, including those
identified in Ann Bishop's paper
on Logins & Bailouts: Measuring Access, Use &
Success in Digital Libraries. The UK SuperJournal
project explored use of electronic journals, analysing
expectations and actual behaviour. Although it's been
criticised as too limited and artificial to produce
genuine results, the reports
make interesting reading.
next page (delivery)
|
