First Amazon, then Google and now a number of other players have launched initiatives to digitise print publications for web indexing (and in some cases, potential future sales models). What are the implications for the scholarly and broader publishing industries?

Report by Deirdre Molloy

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This ALPSP event held on 25 January addressed the higher visibility brought to print and scholarly publications by search engine indexing and other innovations (eg Google Scholar), but also put the digital superchannels in the hot seat regarding rights-holders permissions and the implications of third-party sales of all or part of their works…

Introduction – Geoffrey Bilder, Scholarly Information Strategies

Kicking-off the afternoon event, held by the ALPSP on 23 January 2006, chair Geoffrey Bilder of Scholarly Information Strategies floated a potential future for this system of scholarly publishing using the example of an iTunes-style homepage to represent a possible interface. The iTunes story embodies how an outsider can come along and turn an industry upside down.

He drew the analogy – but not a direct comparison – between record labels & scholarly publishers, noting that with the former it took someone to come from the outside and provide the fantasy user interface for accessing the content. And in terms of the scholarly publishing landscape today – Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft are already far bigger players than traditional publishers in terms of market capitalization, with even the smallest digital entrant – Amazon – similar in value to Reed Elseiver. If this does happen, Bilder speculated, will it be bad for the industry, or more specifically, bad for what parts of the industry?

JL Needham – Strategic Content Partner Manager, Europe, Google

Google and Yahoo!’s business aren’t linear in that they compete head to head but also partner in other projects with each other and smaller businesses. He looked at Google Books Partner program, dubbing it “an online marketing opportunity for books publishers”.

The program exists for publishers to exploit an idea and the logic is to make the full text of books searchable, including every book ever published. These book results will also be integrated into Google’s main web search function. The results are based on relevance to the search. Google already drives traffic to book sales though referrals and background information. He further noted the impact these searches have on offline sales. Up to 60% of consumers who buy a book in Barnes & Noble have discovered or researched it on the web. Extending the “long tail” of content through digitisation makes millions of products discoverable and accessible. Most ALPSP members are already exploiting the Google Books Partner program, he added.

Launched in the US in November 2004, the program was extended to Europe over 2005. Security for the books is provided for in the interface – there are no less than 10 separate “redundant access” limitations, protected by the same security mechanisms as Google’s own data. It is purely a discovery and promotional tool, not a sharing or downloading service but this too is changing. Take the vision of Google Video – that model could be applied to books. It’s currently free to add books. Just give a hard copy to Google and they do the rest.

In terms of the results is has produced, at Penn State University Press visits to their site have gone up 124%. In the Google UK Books Search there are also links on the results page to offline and local bookshops (via Google Maps).

Bringing the “long tail” of books to life?

Google Books Search Library Project is termed as “an enhanced card catalogue of the world’s books” demonstrating the increased importance of metadata. The more information a user has access to, he explained, the more likely they are to find something they weren’t expecting or didn’t think they had access to.

Less than 20% of books in copyright are currently in print, and he noted Tim O’Reilly’s calculation that less than 4% of published books are still commercially exploited, so 96% of recorded human knowledge is not accessible. In the US, books published since 1923 are covered by copyright and there are multiple issues surrounding getting copyright holder access, not least that the copyright may have reverted to the author and it’s impossible to get hold of most of them to see if they want to be included.

Google’s response is to offer Sample Pages views, and Snippet views for books since 1923 and UK books published since 1894. What if you don’t want your books scanned? Tell Google and they will remove books that have already been entered and not add others still undigitised.

Rob Jonas – European Director of New Business, Yahoo!

Jonas first defined Yahoo! Search as a service designed to “enable people to find, use and share, and expand all human knowledge (FUSE)”. Then he outlined the structure and membership of the Open Content Alliance stressing its open nature.

He described four areas that come within the OCA’s parameters: free online content (eg blogs, eBay, CNN, Digital Photography Review); subscription services, the OCA itself (including Yahoo!, MSN, Xerox, Adobe, O’Reilly Media, Internet Archive and a growing list of academic and public libraries); and surrounding all of these the wider sphere of social search – the opinion-led area of recommendation.

The OCA represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, non-profit and government organisations from around the world based around text and multimedia content (they are also building a permanent multilingual archive).

The OCA encourages the greatest possible degree of access to use and re-use the collections of the archive while respecting the rights of content owners and distributors. They welcome efforts to create and offer tools that will enhance and extend the usefulness and accessibility of content. And third parties are encouraged to build services on top of content in the collection.

Their focus in 2006 is to include previously digitised collections and archives and to strive for historical and regional diversity.

A delegate asked how OCA operates controls on content and Jonas explained that you have to work out the license in advance – once content is on the OCA there’s little or no control over it. Another delegate asked if journals are categorised as part of the free content, as much of it is digitised already and are stats on views and usage fed back to the contributors. Jonas replied that this was being built in. There has also been a working group convened to address long-term archiving.

Geoff Hughes – Platform Strategy Advisor, Developer & Platform Group, Microsoft UK

Referring to Microsoft’s strategic partnership with the British Library, Hughes stressed this was primarily about using Microsoft’s technology for the digital library platform.

More generally, he reflected in an aside, the ubiquity of digital content is blurring the line between me as a consumer and me as a consumer at work. The mission of the partnership is to enable the UK to preserve and use its digital output forever. The vision is to create a management system for digital objects.

By the 4th November 2005 some 100,000 out-of-copyright books had been digitised and Bill Gates has said that it’s not only about digitisation and preservation, but also about delivering a great experience for people accessing these amazing collections through the British Library and MSN websites. On 25th October 2005, he continued, MSN joined the OCA, and work is being conducted in Microsoft’s Cambridge Labs toward submitting an XML file for Office 12 to become an open standard.

The internet removes data from the preservation of data beautifully, Hughes maintained, and he described the digitisation project as a combination of software and services that will deliver compelling new delivery methods and business models.

Stressing Microsoft’s commitment to copyright, he explained that it is the content owner and publisher’s prerogative to determine the business model that works for them. Search is a software challenge and identity and DRM are necessary building blocks. But are URLs in a browser the pinnacle of user experience? What we need, he concluded, are answers not a 100,000 links.

Genevieve Kunst – Senior Manager, Digital Media Europe, Amazon

Kunst recapped on Amazon’s vision: “to be the earth’s most customer-centric business”. With 52 million currently active customers worldwide, the busiest day for Amazon to date occurred in December 2005 when in the space of 24 hours over 3.6 million books were ordered (41 per second) worldwide.

Amazon’s ‘Search Inside’ service was launched October 2003 in the US, and in the UK, France, Germany, Canada and Japan in 2005. The US site saw a sales uplift of 7% in the first 12 months following it’s introduction, while the UK and Germany experienced an 8.3% increase. In the US one in every two books is sold via the Search Inside service.

Amazon doesn’t scan books unless they have been given the explicit rights to do so by the rights holder. Illustrating its functionality she outlined the search for the term “irrational exuberance” – all books containing the phrase appear and you can look at the phrases’s mentions and the surrounding excerpts. If you have bought from Amazon before, you can also look at pages 1 and 100 of the book.

They take book submission in two forms: the physical book – which is scanned into JPEGs and text files and uploaded (taking 4-8 weeks), and the PDF which is uploaded in 1-2 weeks. Another service – Amazon Upgrade – allows customers to upgrade their physical book purchase for an incremental fee whereby you are able to have digital access to that book in your own online locker. Another initiative – Amazon Pages – allows customer to simply and inexpensively purchase and read online just the pages they need. This unbundles the physical world experience of being and reading a book.

Finally Genvieve touched on the promotion and development of Mobipocket, noting its DRM application that spans the range of operating systems and mobile applications.

Discussion & Audience Q&A

The basic question of whether these projects and perspectives are relevant to journals was addressed first by Geoff Hughes of Microsoft who explained that they are also developing an academic search service, while Genevieve said that Amazon does sell eJournals on it’s .com site although primarily the focus is books. JL Needham described Google as a very user-centric organisation. Their perception is that seasoned scholars know information is in journals but they don’t care about the format, hence Google Scholar.

Another delegate asked how transformative their activities were on the sector. Geoff Jones replied that until we can track identities across different devices, we can’t unbundle the concept of the book but, he asserted, we will also suffer in that the potential of the book online won’t be realised until that identity-tracking is enabled.

Book concept up for grabs

Kunst recalled how the eBook was a flop, but the type of adaptability that has already happened in music with iTunes and the like was a harbinger of wider change, adding that the form of the book would change but not the concept. Needham said that Google are just enabling discovery and access to partial excerpts, surmising that there would be no big changes in the next 5 years. In terms of blog search, Hughes rejoined, Microsoft were not doing so well but they were poised to in the future.

A delegate commented that publishers need to decide what they’re offering – textual content or “a proposition”, elaborating that a journal could well be a book if you wanted to sell it as a book. But, they added, the open access debate seems to have had little impact on the journals industry. JL Needham addressed this with a speculative scenario: unless the industry innovates, publishing could have an alternative history with Amazon and reputations gained from the blogosphere in the ascendant.

Publishers bring quality control to the product, asserted another delegate, to which Geoff Bilder responded that the discussion needed to be had about how that authority gets transferred in the digital age. Kunst said that the music industry scenario is too drastic but there are lessons to be learned.

Personal digital identity in the frame

In university libraries there is a great demand for electronic books (from iPod-toting students) one delegate explained, and academic libraries also need to be integrated with online learning environments. JL Needham cited the Google Scholar feature ‘Library Links’ and he added that Google are working out issues of entitlements and partnering with library service providers who can validate links.

Yahoo! have a similar search for consumers and soon we will log into our favourite search engine and see everything we are entitled to, he said. Geoff Hughes pointed out that levels of identity are being recognised more widely in the industry, and Microsoft are working with Amazon to look more closely at the idea and applications of digital identity.

Recommendation & trusted sources

The internet has changed the distribution of hierarchies of authority, commented one delegate. The librarian doesn’t know, but they do know where you should go to find out. What the speakers companies are doing however is codifying into tools the ability to make us all librarians, people are becoming able to serve themselves.

Geoff Jones addressed this saying that librarians are in a position of trust because people know they have expertise and have devoted time to their practice. The issue is how do you connect that with an audience online? JL Needham stated that the role of the librarian is shifting – away from authority and control and towards reference and consultation, with more time and effort spent on developing and presenting collections and less in preserving them.

Business models in beta...

The International Publishers Association delegate asked isn’t the next logical step to think of paying for content, ie. micropayments? JL Needham responded conversely that Microsoft added Encarta’s commercial content to their free search engine and improved it. Genevieve Kunst said that Amazon see their relationships with publishers as a partnership. This is different from Google, Microsoft, etc because they are dealing with books that are in print and selling physical product.

Geoff Hughes rejoined that Microsoft are driving more usage of their content and looking at how they can then deliver a more compelling user experience and potentially derive new ways of monetising that content. In the future some of Microsoft’s software might be free, he suggested, because if you have a billion users then you can sell advertising on the back of that.

For more information about ALPSP (The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers) and their events programme visit www.alpsp.org

The next ALPSP Technology Briefing event is Web 2.0: Hip Or Hype? on 23 March 2006.