Market‐oriented reform in Chinese scholarly publishing

The Chinese government initiated a policy of 'corporatization of cultural entities' in 2003. Most Chinese book publishing houses were required to complete this transformation by 2006 and journal publishers by 2012. Chinese academic publishers, who no longer receive any general subsidies and allowances from government, have struggled to survive since then. During the reform process, many Chinese journals charged their authors page fees, and academic book publishers raised the prices of their publications. The continuing existence of other subsidies, however, means that there is still a degree of dependency in the Chinese system, and it will take time for its academic publishers to grow into real market players and to enhance their competitiveness.     

Crowdsourcing: A Platform for Crowd Engagement in the Publishing Industry

Publishers will usually make decisions based on their experience and knowledge in book publishing. However, there are risks of losses as markets can be unpredictable. Now, with the availability of various online social platforms, “crowdsourcing” is being used by publishers and authors to gather new ideas and innovations. This article will analyze how the crowdsourcing platform is used by industry players to attract active participation from the public, especially in the title development process. Publishers or authors also need to understand which platform is appropriate and how to use the platforms as a marketing communication tool. The netnography approach will be used to gather and analyze the data related to the specific subject area of the study, including literature review and online observation. Based on our observations, platforms such Wattpad and Ilham Karangkraf are popular among Malaysian authors and publishers, and had been used to get crowd engagement as well as to communicate with readers. With it, sometimes a work that has many readers or followers will be published.     

The Future of Academic Journals

Academic journals have traditionally provided disciplinary forums for scholarly communication (i.e., vetting, legitimating, and disseminating new ideas). Digitization is affecting scholarly communication and academic journals. Two effects are the bundling of journals by publishers and the growing variety of formats that open up new avenues of dissemination. Both effects have disrupted the traditional roles and relationships of scholars and their institutions, publishers and libraries in the processes of scholarly communication, including the significance of academic journals as a format.     

Promoting the Purchase of Textbooks in the Vietnamese Higher Education Sector

Higher education textbooks sales account for a significant portion of the overall book market. This study makes an important contribution to the extant literature by examining students’ purchase of original textbooks in a developing market, Vietnam. Notably, it seeks to investigate why students do not purchase original textbooks as well as the difference in purchase behavior between different groups of students. The findings reveal that some key obstacles to students’ purchase behavior include high prices, insufficient availability, low perceived value, and the emergence of pirated textbooks. Another notable finding is that senior students who are female tend to purchase more textbooks. In light of these findings, marketing strategies are suggested for publishers, bookstores and universities who aim to promote the sales and consumption of original textbooks.     

ONIX: Is there a return on investment for all publishers?

Summary What will be the future of ONIX? Some argue that wider industry acceptance will lead to increased efficiencies in the transfer of book data, which will ultimately benefit book sales. ONIX still has to overcome many challenges: its implementation cost is high, whole-salers and aggregators are still using different spreadsheets and information sources. Furthermore, MS Excel as an alternative solution is widely available and accepted by the industry. Small publishers need more education and a straightforward demonstration of ONIX’s return on investment. An outreaching of the helping hand of professional organizations is strongly suggested to foster the adoption process among small players. It is the role of the AAP and BISG to get their memberships to think about what is good for all members as a whole throughout the industry. As an organization BISG can recommend, educate, and promote the standard. It cannot, however, bring pressure or demand organizations use it. Publishers, retailers, and wholesalers make those decisions for themselves and quite apparently the majority do not yet see the rewards. Market players need to determine the cost versus benefit and as long as distributors and retailers agree on receiving other formats, ONIX will never take a strong hold in the marketplace. After all, publishers should compete against each other with good books and not with multiple computer codes.     

The new social studies,textbooks, and reform in social studies

The New Social Studies curriculum development movement was short-lived, in part because project staff were not sensitive to the realities of the educational context within which their materials and methods would be used. Although textbook-based recitation persists in social studies classrooms, textbooks are not a ready mechanism for reform. Among the reasons are the institutional constraints on publishers and the difficulty in effecting curricular change without appropriate teacher preparation and modifications in the educational environment. James P. Shaver id professor of secondary education, associate dean for research, College of Education, and acting dean of the School of Graduate Studies, Utah State University, Logan. He has been president of the National Council for the Social Studies and has received NCSS’s Citation for Exemplary Research. His numerous books and articles include materials for students, research reports, and discussion of educational rationale-building, rationales for social studies education, and research philosophy.     

Impact of censorship cases on basal reader selection and reading curriculum

Censorship cases in Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee received international media attention. The events surrounding these cases at times became very violent and involved many methods of personal and professional intimidation. Informal survey techniques were used to assess the extent to which these cases would affect the local selection of basal reading textbooks. The results are reported here, along with recommendations for teachers publishers, and others interested in intellectual freedom. Patricia P. Fritchie is associate professor of education and director of the Reading Center at Troy State University-Dothan. She serves as state coordinator, Alabama Reading Association, for the International Reading Association. Dr. Fritchie is very active in textbook reviews and has served on the State of Alabama's Textbook adoption Committee.     

Identifying legitimate open access journals: some suggestions from a publisher

• New publishing models lead to new players – not all of them good.
• No commonly accepted criteria aid scholars to select ‘good’ journals.
• Journals (and publishers) need to assert their good practice.
• How do publishers serve their different customers – readers, authors, reviewers, and the public?

     

Preprint policies among 14 academic publishers

The objective of this study was to assess how 14 large and established scientific publishers have adopted the use of preprints and how their policies changed in a one-year period between June 2017 and June 2018, if any. The core search was performed using the Sherpa/RoMEO database. Of all publishers (2516, now 2553) listed in the RoMEO database, 80.3% of the publishers examined allow self-archiving, but only half of the publishers (47.3%) allow the archiving of preprints in February of 2018, while this percentage increased to 48% in June 2018. These data were practically constant over a one-year period even as the number of preprint servers has increased. Several exceptions exist among journals within each of the tested Sherpa/RoMEO-indexed publishers, and in some cases, a reversal in policy was observed, i.e., from allowing to no longer allowing the archival of preprints.     

Social studies textbooks in the 1990s

Despite continuing criticism, textbooks remain essential to the teaching of social studies in elementary and high schools. The problems laid at their doorstep are, in fact, reflections of the nation’s educational difficulties. As the number of publishers in the textbook market decreases, the market itself becomes less uniform, and the arguments surrounding content become louder, quality may decline In addition, the use of trade and supplementary materials may increase, niche textbooks may multiply, and CD-ROM may drive even the best textbooks into extinction.     

学术电子书出版商对高校图书馆的影响及策略研究

[目的/意义]以学术电子书出版商和高校图书馆为研究对象,梳理学术电子书出版商对高校图书馆资源建设和服务的影响,提出高校图书馆的应对之策。[方法/过程]通过网络调查,了解学术电子书出版商在图书馆市场的发展现状、电子书平台功能和销售模式,分析其对高校图书馆的影响,提出高校图书馆的应对策略。[结果/结论]研究发现学术电子书出版商一方面可以丰富馆藏资源的数量、提高馆藏资源质量、提高图书馆的服务水平和增加图书馆的资源利用率,另一方面也增加了图书馆资源整合的难度和资源采购支出。提出以下建议：调整馆藏政策,适时加大电子书馆藏比重;建立采购联盟,按需选择采购策略;加强与出版商合作,提高服务质量;积极开展用户培训,加强电子书的阅读推广活动。     

Internationalization of Chinese STM Journal Publishing

Over the past two decades, China has witnessed a market-oriented reform that created real market players and removed institutional hurdles for its scientific, technological and medical (STM) journals’ international development; it has kept enhancing the journals’ editorial forces, which not only upgraded editorial staff’s international communication skills but also facilitated the journals’ international collaboration with their foreign counterparts; it has also adjusted the journals’ publishing workflows and established a quality-control mechanism centered around peer reviews; and it has tried to internationalize both the journal publishers’ productions and services. Under the above-mentioned endeavors, Chinese STM journal publishing has achieved its initial internationalization progress.     

The Problems of Tertiary Publishing in Africa and Implications for Training and Education of Library and Information Professionals

Trainees in the library and information profession in Africa depend on textbooks that are written for an environment other than Africa because of the dearth of textbooks suited to the local environment. There are very few books that attempt to focus on Africa and none of these books can really be used as a basic text for teaching. This has greatly affected the training of library and information professionals in Africa as the trainees are exposed to the situations in Europe, America and Asia which are generally not relevant to the African environment. Several factors have been identified as responsible for the lack of African library and information science textbooks, including the relatively young age of the profession resulting in a low number of professionals in Africa that have the required expertise to write textbooks. The attitude of publishers to tertiary textbooks is another limiting factor, as they are not likely to make a profit given the small number of trainees in the continent. In short, publishers regard such a venture as non-profitable because of the limited market. Another problem is the lack of interest on the part of professional associations in the continent to promote the writing of textbooks. In order to ameliorate these problems, it is recommended that professionals in the continent should participate in team authorship, by drawing from a pool of expertise, with a view to writing relevant textbooks. Also, there is a need for professional associations and the relevant international agencies to promote the publishing of textbooks. Finally, there is a need for retired information professionals in the continent to form a consortium of marketing outfits for the purpose of marketing and distributing textbooks on the African library and information profession throughout Africa.     

The e-book management framework: The management of e-books in academic libraries and its challenges

E-book management in academic libraries is examined, and a framework of the stages in the e-book management process is generated; the framework summarizes the key activities and associated issues and challenges for each stage. Academic libraries are one of the main markets for textbooks and other e-books. As such, the relationships that they forge with e-book vendors (publishers and aggregators), and the resolution of some of the challenges that they currently face in managing their collections of e-books, will have significant consequences for the adoption of e-books in learning. An interview-based study with a purposive sample of interviewees working as managers, subject librarians, metadata officers, and e-resources coordinators from seven academic libraries in the UK was conducted to investigate the libraries' experiences and perceptions of e-book management. The resultant e-book management framework identifies the processes associated with the management of e-books, and also offers insights into the challenges and issues associated with each stage. The stages in the framework are: collection development policy, budget, discovery, evaluation and selection, license negotiations, cataloging and delivery, marketing/promotion, user education, monitoring and reviewing, and renewals and cancellation.     

The Rise of the Small: The Effects of Industry Consolidation on Small Legal Publishers

Summary

The legal publishing industry has experienced waves of acquisition and consolidation, with almost all of the established players becoming affiliated with either Thomson or Reed Elsevier. A widespread assumption is that this consolidation is driving out the smaller participants in the market, especially in conjunction with the expansion of free Web sites for primary source material. It is presumed that the entrepreneurs who have smaller, profit-based companies are becoming less interested in the market due to financial pressures, increased difficulty of capturing market share, and threat of acquisition (friendly or hostile).

In order to confirm or refute this assumption, the author reviews the industry consolidations, describes the delineation of representative small legal publishers, and analyzes their responses to questions about how the recent industry changes have affected their strategies, markets and product lines. The resulting picture is of an environment much different than that painted by current media pundits. Contrary to the presumption of a disappearing landscape of small players, there is a positive perception of “ripe opportunity” pushing companies into this marketplace-companies armed with new technology tools and strong convictions that they can reach customers ready and willing to do old business in new ways. The small publishers seem to be weathering the climactic industry changes, and have expectations of growth and expansion.     

Reducing Native Advertising Deception: Revisiting the Antecedents and Consequences of Persuasion Knowledge in Digital News Contexts

Building on the persuasion knowledge model, this study examines how audience characteristics and native advertising recognition influence the covert persuasion process. Among a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 738), we examined digital news readers’ recognition of a sponsored news article as advertising. Although fewer than 1 in 10 readers recognized the article as advertising, recognition was most likely among younger, more educated consumers who engaged with news media for informational purposes. Recognition led to greater counterarguing, and higher levels of informational motivation also led to less favorable evaluations of the content among recognizers. News consumers were most receptive to native advertising in a digital news context when publishers were more transparent about its commercial nature. Beyond theoretical insights into the covert persuasion process, this study offers practical utility to the advertisers, publishers, and policymakers who wish to better understand who is more likely to be confused by this type of advertising so that they can take steps to minimize deception.     

A New Method and Metric to Evaluate the Peer Review Process of Scholarly Journals

This paper will propose a new system that produces a metric that is an indicator of the level of peer review conducted prior to the publication of scholarly material. A mathematical algorithm which incorporates weighted values of the roles within the peer review process is created. The h-index, which is a value that “measures the productivity and impact of a scientist or scholar,” is also incorporated. Each round of review is weighted using the square root as later rounds of peer review are often less rigorous than earlier rounds. Once a paper is accepted the calculation is conducted and a “peer review evaluation” metric, or “Peer Review Evaluation Score” (pre-SCORE) is available. It is clear that such a metric would prove beneficial to all engaged parties (authors, publishers, readers, libraries). Authors will know that their work is being evaluated by a trustworthy publication and by experts in their field. Legitimate, ethical publishers will be recognized as such. Readers would have the ability to filter out material which was not properly vetted, and libraries/consortia would have further assurance that their limited funds are spent wisely. Future studies to see if there is a correlation between the pre-SCORE and Impact Factor or highly cited material is possible. The proposed metric would be one more tool available to aid in the discovery of quality published research.     

The Proliferation of Piracy in the Publishing Supply Chains of Emerging Countries: A Study in Vietnam

Book piracy is a significant problem throughout the world and particularly in emerging countries. Such a phenomenon is costly to all participants in the publishing supply chain. This paper aims to investigate factors that influence Vietnamese students’ purchases of photocopied textbooks. The findings reveal that students’ purchases are motivated by their perceived value, subjective norms representing social influence and the lack of regulation enforcement. Using these findings, this paper suggests interventions for policymakers, publishers, distributors and universities to limit the purchase of pirated textbooks as well as to improve the value of original textbooks.     

Ibero‐American journals in Scopus and Web of Science

In this paper we map the scientific journals from Ibero‐American countries indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus. Data were collected from the journals' websites. Of 879 journals in the two databases, Spain accounted for 35.6% of the titles, Brazil 28.5%, and the remaining 11 countries together 35.9%. Medicine had the most titles in almost all countries, with 28.9% of the total, followed by agricultural and biological sciences (particularly in Brazil) with 14.9%, and social sciences with 11.5%. A digital format was used by 95% of the journals and 82% were open access, with an even higher level of open access in Latin America. The publishers were mainly universities (37.7%) and associations (31.1%). Ibero‐American countries, with the exception of Spain, do not have a long tradition as scientific journal publishers, but in the last few years they have gained in importance as players in scientific communication with the use of new business models for journals.