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Re: Olivia Judson

While the Internet certainly has prompted more innovation in the industry, it has not in the short term been the innovation that has changed the business the most, at least in scholarly book publishing. Leslie Chan really ought to read John Thompson's book; Thompson knows whereof he speaks because he is both an academic sociologist specializing in media studies but also the co-owner/co-manager of an academic publishing house, Polity Press, and thus is aware of the effects of digital printing on publishing finances at the ground level. Google created the possibility of "the long tail," but it would not exist without "print on demand" technology.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


Another perspective is that most, if not all, the innovations
identified by Ian Russell took place outside of the publishing
industry first.  Some of the innovations were then adopted by the
publishers and their adoption were mostly driven by users demand.
The key driver behind most publishing innovations is of course
the Web and the true "hidden revolution" is Open Access. If it
were up to commercial publishers, the web would never have been
built, and we would not be talking about Google, Wikipedia and
2.0...

Leslie Chan
University of Toronto Scarborough

________________________________
From: Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Thursday, January 8, 2009 5:02:54 PM
Subject: RE: Olivia Judson

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