Category: Publishing

Do Journals still need issues, pages, volumes and impact factors?

A lot of people may hate me for saying this. But I think the time for having a periodical journal has passed. Journal: Created for a reason Scholars and scientists needed a way to publish the result of their research. Originally they published their research as ‘letters’ to peers and colleagues. Then people thought that these papers needed to be...

Scholarly journals and their future

Modern day professional and learned societies were formed a few centuries ago to promote scientific discoveries and discourse as a whole. They were to represent and promote specific scientific and scholarly disciplines or professions and to champion advanced education of practitioners in those disciplines. It was immediately evident that deciding on a universal mean to keep a record and disseminate...

Digital First: Publishing for multiple outputs

Publishers have adopted a Digital First strategy for more than 20 years now. When they started receiving MS Word files from authors and used those files as a starting point for the editorial and production process, they virtually adapted a Digital First strategy. However, until now the aim of the publishers has been to reach the best quality and standard...

What is an ebook? What is a book? What does reading mean anymore?

We hear about mobi files, ePubs, various platforms, Amazon Kindle, Google Play, iTunes, B&N’s Nook, Kobo… Ebook library aggregators such as MyiLibrary, ebrary or Netlibrary, each demanding different sets of data, each distributing on their own terms and conditions and dictating their own business models and producing reports in whatever way they want. How many formats and platforms the poor...