RE: Olivia Judson

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

I agree: any objective analysis of changes in the publishing 
industry would have to conclude that the pace of change and 
innovation over the past two decades has been the greatest since 
the time of Gutenberg.  For university presses, I would mention 
that the use of digital printing technology to solve the #1 
problem in the industry--slow-moving inventory that results in 
problems for cash flow--has been nothing less than what John 
Thompson, in his "Books in the Digital Age," called a "hidden 
revolution." Those outside the industry can perhaps be excused 
for not understanding just how much has been going on. I've been 
in publishing for 40 years, and the last 20 have seen a great 
deal more innovation and change than the previous 20 did by far.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


>I get pretty disheartened when I read about the lack of
>innovation in scholarly publishing.
>
>I really, truly, believe that this is a complete fallacy.
>
>In little more than a decade, the vast majority of journals
>(according to the latest ALPSP Scholarly Publishing Practice
>survey 96.1% of STM journals and 86.5% of HSS journals) are
>available online; many publishers have completely digitized their
>backfiles; we have seen the emergence of new business models,
>both for author-side payment and evolution of the subscription
>model; we have seen the implementation of online submission and
>peer review processes and systems; we are now publishing audio,
>video and supplementary data sets alongside research articles;
>publishers are linking primary research to underlying data;
>publication times have decreased dramatically; cost per page and
>per article are also generally decreasing; publishers have made
>great use of outsourcing and other business strategies to
>minimize costs and maximise service; we are seeing the emergence
>of data and text mining; access to scholarly material has never
>been greater or more convenient; we have seen any number of
>experiments linking scholarly communication with 'web 2.0'
>technologies; we are seeing experimentation and even early
>implementation of semantic web technology... the list goes on and
>on and on!
>
>At the same time, the scholarly communication system is serving
>ever greater numbers of researchers publishing more and more
>material.
>
>I do not believe for one moment that publishers are disconnected
>from their readers and authors.  Reality could not be further
>from the truth.
>
>Of course, some authors, readers, librarians and other
>stakeholders will also innovate and there is nothing new in that;
>it goes back at least to 1665 and to Oldenburg.
>
>What possible justification can there be for the assertion that
>innovation in scholarly publishing is slow and what on Earth more
>could the publishing industry be doing?
>
>Ian Russell, ALPSP
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Armbruster, Chris
>Sent: 07 January 2009 03:41
>To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>Subject: RE: Olivia Judson
>
>Staying with the metaphor of the car: It would seem that
>scientists have been busy designing new engines (e.g. interactive
>peer review) if not new cars (e.g. new types of publishing and
>overlay services related to metrics, mining etc.). Maybe the
>defining feature of our current era is that researchers are doing
>these new designs for themselves and that established publishers
>are very much *disconnected*...meaning that researchers are doing
>this by themselves...?
>
>I say *maybe* because I would like to read the observations of
>others on this issue and also on the subsequent conjecture that
>this *disconnect* pretty much explains why innovation in
>scholarly publishing/communication is lagging/slow.
>
>Chris Armbruster