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A fresh approach to academic book publishing
It’s been a little over five years since the Institute of Physics (IOP) Publishing launched its ‘born-digital’ vision for book publishing with its programme IOP ebooks. But with a competitive market and no
back catalogue, was it really the right decision? David McDade, Associate Director for eBooks and Conference Proceedings at IOP explains. “Yes, absolutely. The difference was our
approach. Our books programme was digital from the beginning and, by having no print legacy, we were able to offer a fresh and streamlined approach to publishing – a fully digital vision for authors and readers that excited our librarian customers. “From a standing start, and with no back
catalogue to rely on for new editions, we have already published more than 350 books across a wide range of physical sciences and biomedical topics, from classical mechanics and climate change, to extragalactic astrophysics and quantum computing. “In 2019, we will maintain that growth
trajectory by publishing another 150 books. We have created strong partnerships with publishers Morgan & Claypool to curate our Concise Physics programme, and three scholarly societies: the American Astronomical Society, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine and the Biophysical Society to help steer our longer- form Expanding Physics collection of titles. “As the name of our programme suggests,
we are very-much digital-first but we know that many people still value the physical book so we have retained a print component to offer choice for readers and authors. However, our digital focus has allowed us to take advantage of innovations in publishing, enabling our authors to include interactive quizzes, animations, videos and other multimedia elements in their books. “These multimedia enhancements offer
great benefits, especially interactive or animated figures that can bring the science to life and greatly facilitate understanding. Features like this mean that our ebooks can provide a valuable bridge between fast-paced YouTube-style information
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communities and are in high demand with libraries. We already have more than 1,000 institutional customers in 45 countries around the world and usage from students and researchers at these institutions have, on average, doubled every year since 2014, with chapter downloads now totalling almost three million. “The feedback we get from customers
David McDade, associate director, eBooks and Conference Proceedings, IOP Publishing
“IOP ebooks has created a brand- new reading experience for ebooks”
consumption and the much more in-depth and nuanced style of knowledge acquisition still required by students and researchers. We are proud to be offering this as a standard option for all our authors. “Our digital focus also offers the flexibility
to publish different kinds of books. For example, in a fast-moving environment that places ever greater demands on time, our authors have the option to publish shorter books that may not have been financially viable in a print-centric world. We also publish quickly: a three-month production schedule is standard: much faster than industry norms and something our authors really value. “Our approach has been commended by the publishing industry. In 2014, we were awarded silver in the ALPSP Award for Innovation in Digital Technology. The judges said that ‘the boldness of IOP’s reinvention of a core business …sets digital and the user at the heart of its strategy.’ “The books we publish are aimed principally at the graduate and research
around the world is that our support for use on any device and our no-DRM policy is a real advantage for libraries. It means their users can easily research in real-time without concurrent user limits, and across multiple reading devices. Our MyPrint feature also allows users of libraries who purchase our collections the option to purchase a personal print copy of the books, at a heavily discounted price. “The feedback we received from Wang Li-Mei, a librarian at Beijing University of Science and Technology, China, puts it very succinctly: “IOP ebooks has created a brand-new
reading experience for ebooks.” We are delighted with the way the IOP
ebooks programme has grown over the past five years and how valued it is by our customers and readers. It has taken a lot of hard work on the part of our authors, partners and colleagues to get here, and we are excited about what we can achieve with this programme in the coming years.
l To find out more about purchasing, writing or reading IOP ebooks, please visit
ioppublishing.org/books
April/May 2019 Research Information
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