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SAGE Research Methods Online


www.srmo.sagepub.com


The essential tool for


researchers… …from the world’s leading


research methods publisher


Explore the


Methods Map to discover links between methods


“I have never really


seen anything like this product before and I think it is really valuable.”


John Creswell, University of


Nebraska-Lincoln Support methods


queries from your patrons, and use our admin tool to upload your library logo


and retrieve MARC records and COUNTER reports


format and are now widely used in research and education. Along the way, there have been many challenges for publishers and for their technology partners besides format and devices. ‘To a certain extent the big challenges are actually very similar to those faced by print, namely investment and gauging the potential extra sales that will be achieved versus the amount of investment required in sourcing / creating the enhanced content,’ commented Fawzia Nazir, product manager, advance for Publishing Technology. Wouter van der Velde, eProduct manager of eBooks and eProduct marketing for Springer, agreed on the challenge of investment: ‘Springer publishes about 7,000 e-books every year so, when we started with e-books, the conversion was a major investment. Production and fulfi lment systems had to be setup and / or be reprogrammed in order to handle the amount of titles, and to produce titles to the standards that our authors and customers require,’ he explained.


*Winner of the 2011 Magnum Opus Gold Award for Best Navigation for Electronic Publication or Website and the 2011 Apex Award for One-of-a-Kind Electronic and Web Publications.


Discovery and access However, he went on to say that the upload and maintenance have not been the largest challenges from Springer. Instead, the challenge with such a rapidly growing body of information has been to make these titles fi ndable and discoverable for customers. ‘As SpringerLink usage studies show that more than half of our e-book usage originates from library catalogues, Springer takes most care of keeping the metadata


to the highest possible standard. Initially the production of MARC records was a ‘bumpy ride’, but shortly after the launch of the Springer eBook programme, we partnered with organisations such as OCLC to serve our customers with OCLC MARC records, next to in-house created MARC records, which are now of good quality,’ he added. A related challenge to consider in


the early stage of e-book production is that many researchers want to cite information by including the page numbers of a specifi c chapter or article. ‘If the “original” (as they were in the printed material) page numbers are not included, it could be hard for users to cite,’ van der Velde explained, adding that chapters in Springer eBooks come with DOIs. Chris Kenneally, director


of business development for Copyright Clearance Center, also sees discoverability as a challenge: ‘There is a diffi culty in differentiating all this material,’ he noted. He anticipates that more will be made of author branding, rather than particular titles, in the future. He highlighted the approach of JK Rowling with the Pottermore website in the fi ction space as a good example to watch. Such changes in the way content


is used also have repercussions for the traditional approach to copyright. ‘What I think is going to be very interesting is the challenge of the container. By setting a price for a single music track, iTunes effectively evaporated the container that was the CD. Music


www.researchinformation.info WINNER* AWARD


‘Most publishers still have print as


fi rst in their minds and consider the e-book at the end


of the process’ Alex Schrijver, MPS


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