FEATURE
E-books
The state of scholarly e-books today and tomorrow
E-books play an increasingly important role in research libraries. We ask people from across the industry for their perspective on scholarly e-books today
Katrin Siems, vice president marketing sales, De Gruyter A
ll our publications are available as e-books and we have over 10,000 e-books
live on our platform.
Our entire backlist (more than 40,000 books) is also available through our e-dition programme. The thought behind e-dition is simple: any backlist title that is not yet published as an e-book can be ordered, and we will produce an e-book. E-books have become much more common; in 2012 we doubled our sales. We also see a strong usage in our backlist e-books. Even though STM started going digital much earlier than the humanities, there are some surprises. For example, we get the feedback from libraries that mathematicians are still asking very much for print books,
whereas there is an increasing demand for e-books in philosophy. It is still the reality that most scholarly publishers offer simple PDF e-books that are the exact equivalent of the printed version. However, we are now beginning to work with XML data that is being used for interlinking of references and for highlighting
related documents. We are also investing
in technologies like semantic enrichment in order to offer better and more relevant search results for our electronic content. We use only soft DRM (digital rights management), namely watermarks. A user can download, print and forward our e-book chapters as he or she likes. We feel it is important not to restrict usage, and this is
also what our library customers request from us. But of course we do not accept our books being hosted on illegal file sharing platforms. We take legal actions in those cases. We started doing open-access (OA) e-books in 2009 and have been working with academics and societies on various projects
‘We only use soft DRM, namely watermarks’
ever since. Recently we signed a framework agreement with the Max Planck Society on OA publications. We now also offer a business model for libraries in which a librarian can buy a package of article processing fees for OA book chapter and journal articles. There is no reason to assume that OA does not work with books.
Marie Turek, product manager, e-books and Mendeley at Swets T
here can be quite a bit of variety between publishers, and restrictions in functionality vary enormously. Some suppliers have no DRM but some really restrict it. For some aggregators, DRM is almost on a title-by-title basis. While they’d like to give the illusion of one DRM for all, they are separate contracts and this might not be totally obvious to the end user.
The choice of going directly to publishers versus aggregators depends on the type of institution and the institution’s needs. If you are
‘We like open-source material. It helps get people’s feet wet’
16 Research Information APR/MAY 2013
looking for something very specific you can get more information direct from publishers. We have customers who do both. Some purchase through aggregators on a weekly basis, while some just use aggregators once or twice a year for bigger amounts.
Interest in patron-driven acquisition (PDA) is still regional. There is more interest in the Americas and less in Europe, for example. It’s about the demands from inside the institution; if there is no drive to change from the inside there will be is resistance to change.
In the beginning of e-books people tried
to mimic the journal model but people now realise that e-books are not used in the same way. I see differences in the ways people search e-books. It’s about finding information, changing
metadata
and being interconnected with other tools. Discovery is very important. We are also talking about open- source materials and how to incorporate them into the SwetsWise platform. We like open- source material. It helps get people’s feet wet. We work with some suppliers who recognise that open courseware is important and we also see its importance through Mendeley. Students would benefit from something like this as well.
@researchinfo
www.researchinformation.info
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36