Re: Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Ease of use is an aspect of product marketing.  The head of 
product marketing is the individual who studies user behavior and 
competition and submits the product requirements document to the 
engineering group.  In most software companies the head of 
products reports to the VP for Marketing.

Many people in the academic community have too narrow a view of 
marketing. It is not simply advertisements and sales brochures. 
It includes the design of a product (as distinct from the 
underlying technology that drives the design), competitive 
analysis, identifying trends, pricing, and much more. For 
companies operating on the Internet it includes such things as 
developing ideas for getting users to recommend sites to others 
(known as FOAF--friend of a friend).

For an outstanding piece of academic marketing, consider MIT's 
Open CourseWare.  MIT chose to give away (with funding from 
philanthropies) online course material, but with the important 
qualification that the MIT name be attached to the package. 
Thus, at no or little cost to MIT, the MIT brand has been 
aggressively promoted throughout the world.  MIT, of course, has 
one of the great schools of business.  The many institutions that 
are copying MIT in the open courseware area are not likely to get 
the same brand lift that MIT got as the "first mover."

The more sophisticated technology platforms drive up usage by 
developing mechanisms to have other sites link to their own, to 
encourage "pass along," to store certain links so that users 
return to them, etc., etc.  In the Cloud Computing model (where 
we increasingly live now, with Google as the extreme example), 
the cost of doing this is simply enormous, as so much of the 
Internet is free, lowering barriers for people to publish, but 
making it harder and harder to distinguish one information object 
from another, which is what marketing is all about:  creating 
attention.

The low cost model will soon be gone forever.  There is simply 
too much information to take in.  People need ways to filter 
information, and tech companies will find various methods to 
direct people's attention to certain products and services. 
These services, having attracted more viewers, will then attract 
better content, creating a virtuous cycle.  This is one of the 
many network effects that drives the Internet economy.

I repeat what I said in an earlier post:  this has nothing to do 
with whether something is open access or toll access.  The 
advantage that toll access publications have is that they have a 
more reliable means of raising the capital to fund the 
investments that must be made.  A shrewd marketing organization 
like the Public Library of Science, which is entirely open 
access, can also play this game.  It is simply an expensive game 
to play.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hamaker, Charles" <cahamake@uncc.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 3:10 PM
Subject: RE: Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and
Scholarship

> Ease of use I would argue is at least as important as quality 
> of publication.
>
> I suspect we've seen this in some of our databases--where we 
> know quality has been problematic for particular publishers 
> still we are seeing important levels of usage. I'm not sure 
> marketing has much to do with it either.
>
> Some publishers with negative public information concerning 
> their products are doing quite well in the usage arena. And if 
> their platforms go down, we get plenty of complaints. I'm sure 
> librarians on the list can mention title and verse of this 
> phenomena.
>
> If it's not quality of publication or marketing, what drives 
> usage? I suspect its ease of use. Those sites that have put 
> money into easily navigable access get more use per article 
> available than other sites is my guess. Content is important 
> too, but quality, I'm no longer sure of. I used to believe that 
> all we needed in order to be successful as librarians was 
> quality decision making about content.
>
> I think faculty are susceptible to ease of use as a catalyst 
> for use. We know students take that route, I think faculty do 
> too.
>
> I'm not so sure anymore that quality will out.
>
> Chuck Hamaker
> UNC Charlotte, Atkins Library
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Joseph J.
> Esposito
> Sent: Monday, July 21, 2008 8:26 PM
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and
> Scholarship
>
> People will have different views of this study, but mine is, Why
> is this news?  The Long Tail of mythology cannot hope to compete
> with the Short Head of the marketplace.
>
> Thus the critical point:  To raise the impact factors for
> research *and any other media* is not a matter of online vs.
> print or open access vs. toll-access, but about marketing vs.
> marketing:  a competition for the attention of the targeted user
> base.  In such competition, there are winners and losers, as
> attention is not distibuted equally across all members of a set.
>
> One implication of this is that anyone involved with the
> dissemination of scholarly information is going to have to make
> bigger and bigger investments in the technologies that enable
> Internet marketing.  We have seen champions of low-cost
> technological solutions argure their case on this list.  I don't
> think they will be with us very long.
>
> Authors publish with the services that give them broadest
> distribution. Currently that primarily means the most prestigious
> toll-access journals, but if open access journals can demonstrate
> that they do a better job, toll-access publications will decline
> in importantce.
>
> The best strategy for any publisher, traditional or open access,
> is deep *and ongoing* investments in technology designed to
> increase the discoverability and usability (which leads to
> further discoverability) of published materials.  Simply putting
> an article up on a Web site and praying that Google will find it
> isn't going to cut it.
>
> Joe Esposito
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Hamaker, Charles" <cahamake@uncc.edu>
> To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
> Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 7:29 PM
> Subject: Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and
> Scholarship
>
>> Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship
>> James A. Evans
>> Science 18 July 2008:
>> Vol. 321. no. 5887, pp. 395 - 399
>> DOI: 10.1126/science.1150473
>>
>> "Online journals promise to serve more information to more
>> dispersed audiences and are more efficiently searched and
>> recalled. But because they are used differently than
>> print-scientists and scholars tend to search electronically and
>> follow hyperlinks rather than browse or peruse-electronically
>> available journals may portend an ironic change for science.
>> Using a database of 34 million articles, their citations (1945 to
>> 2005), and online availability (1998 to 2005), I show that as
>> more journal issues came online, the articles referenced tended
>> to be more recent, fewer journals and articles were cited, and
>> more of those citations were to fewer journals and articles. The
>> forced browsing of print archives may have stretched scientists
>> and scholars to anchor findings deeply into past and present
>> scholarship. Searching online is more efficient and following
>> hyperlinks quickly puts researchers in touch with prevailing
>> opinion, but this may accelerate consensus and narrow the range
>> of findings and ideas built upon."
>>
>> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;321/5887/395