Ebooks
to create ebooks and 50 per cent provided PDFs with some imbedded functionality. Only a quarter of the publishers were creating full-text in XML and only 15 per cent were using ePub. ‘PDF is the dominant format for us in terms
of demand and sales but ePub is required for some channels such as iBookstore,’ observed OECD’s Green, who added that the ePub format has problems handling the charts, tables and graphs present in the organisation’s books. What’s more, each different channel can have slightly different file-format requirements, which add to the production costs. Metadata management is another challenge, especially managing identifiers like ISBNs, he added. ‘The need to ensure that we have a standard format of ebook file, which will be compatible with the ever increasing amount of devices in the market, is also something to be aware of, commented Eloise Rigby, E-sales executive, Woodhead Publishing. The issue of device compatibility goes
beyond simply operating with the range of ebook readers available. As the North American student survey illustrated, PCs and laptops are still the main devices for reading ebooks. And that study also showed that the percentage using e-readers (19 per cent) was matched by those accessing ebooks on smartphones. A recent Outsell survey revealed that smartphone owners increasingly turn to their handheld devices for access to factual information, particularly reference, documentation and educational interests. In addition, ebooks are also becoming available on handheld games consoles like the Nintendo DS. There are plenty of developments ahead
to entice users. Recent developments in the display technology promise that soon, in addition to their long battery life and readability in sunlight, e-readers will have colour displays and be able to refresh fast enough to enable ebooks to show video. The range of devices used to access
ebooks presents many challenges for content providers as they strive to meet different standards and ensure that pages display well on different-sized screens. However, the range of devices also provide more ways to drive sales of ebooks. ‘We hope that the usage of ebooks continues to increase and believe that it will. We need to make sure that we are constantly adding value to
pre-existing content and enhancing the platform to make sure it is utilising the latest technologies and developments,’ said Rigby of Woodhead Publishing. As a spokesperson for Elsevier summed
up: ‘Ebooks will become a critical element in the evolving research landscape. It will be up to publishers to work together with the end users and librarians to find the best ways
Ebook roundup
Here are just some of the ebooks on offer from scholarly publishers. Keep an eye on
www.researchinformation.info for more
information about ebook products. l American Chemical Society publishes ebooks of over 900 titles from the ACS Symposium Series and more than 250 from its Advances in Chemistry
book series. l Cambridge University Press publishes thousands of front and backlist titles as ebooks across
the publisher’s subject areas. l Cengage Learning offers seven e-textbook collections, as well as the option to select either 10 or 20 textbooks from the company’s complete list of
over 100 titles. l Elsevier’s SciVerse ScienceDirect platform has more than 13,000 monographs, reference works and volumes of series in science, technology and health sciences. These are available in collections or on a pick and choose basis. The collections are available to purchase per year of publication and there are a range of different purchasing models for libraries to
choose from. l Emerald has two eBook Series Collections. Emerald Business, Management and Economics eBook Series Collection currently offers online access to more than 550 volumes from more than 70 book series titles. Emerald Social Sciences eBook Series Collection gives online access to more than 240
volumes from more than 35 book series titles. l IEEE publishes its books jointly with John Wiley & Sons. The books are published in many different formats such as ebooks, online books, Amazon Kindle and are available through IEEE Xplore, John Wiley’s
web site and Amazon and other online retail outlets. l All OECD books, as well as those published by IEA (International Energy Agency), NEA (Nuclear Energy Agency), and International Transport Forum are available as ebooks. The organisation releases about 250 new titles a year, and has a 12-year backfile
available online. l Ovid’s OvidSP platform includes more than 3,000 ebooks from many publishers, including 60 book collections.
24 Research Information December 2010/January 2011
l Oxford University Press produces online editions of many of its scholarly and reference works including dictionaries, encyclopedias, general reference material and monographs in a wide range of subject
areas. l Palgrave Macmillan publishes more than 4,000 scholarly and reference ebooks in subject collections or individually via Palgrave Connect and as part of
packages from the company’s sales partners. l Project MUSE will offer ebook collections alongside its e-journal collections from 2011. The ebooks programme, called Project MUSE Editions, has signed contracts with at least 18 university press publishers to include books from their upcoming
scholarly monograph frontlists. l The Royal Society of Chemistry’s RSC eBook Collection contains more than 800 chemical science books published by the RSC. In addition, the RSC Virtual Library is a collection of full text ebooks, journals and databases from various publishers and sources including Knovel, Springer, NetLibrary and
Elsevier. l SPIE Press will have 135 ebooks at the end of 2010. In 2011, 15-20 new SPIE Press books and editions will be published first as SPIE eBooks. Integrated searching with SPIE Proceedings and SPIE
Journals is possible. l Springer publishes more than 6,500 new books a year in a broad array of subjects. It currently has more than 40,000 ebooks online and available; including textbooks, monographs, reference works and book
series. l Taylor & Francis’s CRCnetBASE platform has over 6,000 online books that span over 40 disciplines. In addition to ebooks published under the imprint CRC Press, CRCnetBASE also includes online
references from Auerbach and Chapman & Hall. l Wiley has over 9,000 ebooks in a broad range of
topics on its integrated Wiley Online Library platform. l Woodhead Publishing has digitised almost all of the books in its print catalogue and is making them available as ebooks on the Woodhead Publishing Online platform. The company also plans to launch an ebook platform for Chandos Publishing in 2011.
www.researchinformation.info
in which we can present that information to best fit within research workflows.’
Research Information editor Siân Harris will be speaking about some of the trends and latest developments in ebooks at the forthcoming Online Information show in London. Please email sian.
harris@europascience.com to tell us about your experiences of ebooks or ebook products you sell
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