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We all have a great deal of resources at our disposal most of the time, we look things up on our tablets and phones immediately, and are able to retrieve information on almost any topic at any time, almost anywhere. We’ve never been so connected globally. As a marketer, I’m intrigued and excited by engaging with this global community; working in global online product marketing, I’m keen to embrace new technologies and digital resources so we can fulfill our aim to disseminate content to everyone and anyone who wants and needs it. I think about digital resources a lot, mulling over the best way to use new technologies to tell people that these resources exist, reflect on how I can best show people what they can do, and ponder what they have to offer students, academics, and professionals. (You just haven’t lived the full life of a marketer until you wake up thinking of how to best run a digital advertising campaign.)

This is because I work in the online product marketing department at Oxford University Press and am responsible for the marketing of several online products, including Oxford Scholarship Online and University Press Scholarship Online.

I started my OUP life in the medicine marketing department. It was here that I learnt about how to market a list of books. And not just any old books, but ones that help save lives. I learnt about how to pick out the key features and benefits in order to draw the reader into what the essence of the book is about, I learnt about what makes a good book-jacket design, how to produce creative and engaging material to tell our audience about these books. I traveled abroad to all sorts of conferences to show doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists directly the academic content we had to offer.

In the almost four years I’ve worked at OUP a not insignificant shift has taken place towards an online environment, as more and more people begin their research online (who doesn’t start everything with a Google search?), connect with colleagues and peers through social media, and increasingly use online resources in their teaching to be able to reach students across the globe. As a result of this shift more and more of our books were placed onto various online resources (in medicine this largely took the form of Oxford Medicine Online) and as marketers we relish rolling with the changes, adapting, embracing, and championing this new way of providing content to people.

It was a big shift and involved a change in the way we thought about our lists and marketing. But the skills and aims at the heart of what we do remained the same: how can we best engage with you, our audience?

This has led to our ways of working continually changing with this shift to digital (and this is true of all marketing departments and companies everywhere). We are now able to reach and interact with a global audience through our digital campaigns, no longer having to solely rely on printing and mailing thousands of leaflets without knowing if anyone ever read them. We now tweet, post on Facebook and Tumblr, create podcasts, videos, write blog posts, and encourage authors, contributors, librarians (the wonderfully named Tumblrians spring to mind) to join our communities and get involved. The way we relate to our audience has changed; there is an increased desire for a dialogue between publishers and users of our content. We want to talk and listen to our community — we are closer to people than we’ve ever been before. In this brave new world people can tell you what they think in hardly any time at all via a Facebook post or tweet — a scary, but exciting prospect.

As for what the future holds for marketing, I think the communities that continue to grow and evolve are vital. It is the people who use and value what we make who are going to be sharing, commenting, contributing, and making us better.

I can’t wait to see how we’ll be communicating in another ten years’ time!

Featured image: Computer by kropekk_pl. Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) launched in 2003 with 700 titles. Now, on its tenth birthday, it’s the online home of over 10,000 titles from Oxford University Press’s distinguished academic list, and part of University Press Scholarship Online. To celebrate OSO turning ten, we’ve invited a host of people to reflect on the past ten years of online academic publishing, and what the next ten might bring.

By Kathleen Fearn

It may be hard for some of us here at Oxford University Press to imagine a life without Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO), but even though it has reached the grand old age of 10 years old, it is still only a baby in comparison with some of our other venerable institutions. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary first published in 1884, 130 years ago, and the Oxford Almanack 340 years ago in 1674; even our celebrated duck pond is almost 200 years old. OUP employees in our Great Clarendon Street building are used to bumping into history in the most unexpected corners; my most recent find has been the story of the Oxford University Press Voluntary Fire Contingency, our very own fire brigade formed in 1885, with photos and artefacts displayed in a cabinet created from the space previously used to store the fire hoses. We even have an OUP Museum, open to the public (by appointment) and well worth a visit.

Yet even though OSO has existed for only a decade among centuries, for those of us working on book production, it has been a time of unprecedented change. My career at OUP began in 2006, when OSO was in its infancy, and my first impression of the office was, well, that I couldn’t see very much of it beneath the piles and piles of paper: manuscripts, galley proofs, first proofs, second proofs, final proofs, on desks, shelves, often even on the floor. At each stage of production, we diligently photocopied the pile just in case the courier should misplace our precious bundle. Production Editors faced the constant health hazard of paper cuts, to be feared only a little less than that dread moment when the padded envelope containing the author’s proofs splits on opening, sending an explosion of sticky grey dust over desk, floor, and clothes. The end of the production process came with the delivery of a box of (hopefully) pristine advance copies and the eventual recycling of a wall or two of our paper fortress.

The development of digital publishing was, of course, well under way, and as more and more modules were added to OSO, the production teams began to get involved in the delivery of titles online. We have worked from the start to create our online content using XML, and although the words and spaces on the screen may be the same as those in the print book, there’s actually an awful lot going on behind the scenes, as it were. Abstracts and keywords, for example, make it much easier for the reader to find what they’re looking for online, and these, together with other bits of metadata generated during the publication process, make it possible to link up each title with other relevant resources. One of our biggest challenges was, and to some extent still is, making sure that what works in a print book also works on a PC – and now on a tablet or mobile phone too. There’s no point in referring a reader to a picture overleaf when there are no pages to turn, and it’s not at all easy to create working cross-references using that old print standard, ibid.

During OSO’s life, the days of paper in the office have also passed. If you visit us today, it’s a lot easier to spot the team at their desks, as most of the production processes are now carried out on-screen. (Since we’re enjoying the benefits of a paper-light life, we’re glad that OSO readers can also save those 400 metres of shelf space freed up by reading online.) And although we still look forward to opening those advance copies, we don’t stop there, as we’ll often also be delivering the same content as an e-book and for online publication. No one knows exactly what the digital world will look like when OSO reaches its twentieth birthday, but even if our paper proofs have been consigned to the museum with the hot metal typesetting, we’ll still be producing great OUP content in whatever format our readers want and need.

Kathleen Fearn is the Content Operations Manager for Oxford University Press’s Law, Academic, and Trade books in the UK.

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Image: Urval av de böcker som har vunnit Nordiska rådets litteraturpris under de 50 år som priset funnits by Johannes Jansson/norden.org. CC-BY-2.5-dk via Wikimedia Commons.

The post A decade of change: producing books in a digital world appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) launched in 2003 with 700 titles. Now, on its tenth birthday, it’s the online home of over 9,000 titles from Oxford University Press’s distinguished academic list, and part of University Press Scholarship Online. To celebrate OSO turning ten, we’ve invited a host of people to reflect on the past ten years of online academic publishing, and what the next ten might bring.

By Margarita Lugo Hubp

Translated by Karina Estrada and Greg Goss

From a librarian’s perspective, there has been a huge change in the types of electronic publications that academics, students, and researchers use. In Mexico, as in other developing countries, journals, e-books, and other electronic works make it possible to offer greater access to scholarship in increasingly large university populations. In the last ten years, many people have found a solution to the lack of availability of traditional libraries and the consequent lack of access to quality information. Access to journals and e-books has strengthened higher education institutions and research centers, particularly in the areas of science and technology, increasing the ease and breadth of access to full text content.

University faculty and students who work in rapidly changing science fields are no longer restricted to physical libraries for access to electronic publications. Remote access and mobile device access options are becoming more common.

Perhaps the most pertinent change in how publishers grant access to scientific, technical, and humanistic information can be seen in electronic books. Several years ago, libraries faced restrictive acquisition models; now the ease of availability allows for a more favorable user experience. Consider the option of acquiring a single electronic book to be used only by a single user. Clearly, this model was unfavorable, particularly for the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. We considered these proposals unacceptable because of the large student population at the postgraduate level, exceeding 26,000 students, and at the undergraduate level, reaching 190,000 students.

The central library of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México by Maximiliano Monterrubio. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In regards to the routes pursued by publishers promoting Open Access for scientific information, there have been significant changes. Some proposed routes were carefully crafted while others gave the impression of being more scrupulous, which mandated the decision makers proceed with caution. We are progressing in a framework that fosters increasingly fruitful communication between publishers, researchers, teachers, government representatives and librarians.

In the coming years, electronic publications will continue to develop and maintain their role as one of the most important factors in the realm of science via striking or even startling technological changes. At the same time, we will witness the evolution of initiatives that aim to facilitate access to information, especially as the debate over these alternatives is moving increasingly into a political, rather than academic or scientific, sphere.

*          *          *

Las publicaciones electrónicas en una universidad Mexicana

Desde el punto de vista bibliotecario, el cambio que muestran en los últimos años las publicaciones electrónicas que demandan los académicos, estudiantes e investigadores ha sido impactante. Lo que quisiéramos resaltar es que en México, como seguramente sucede en otros países en vías de desarrollo, las revistas, los libros y otras publicaciones electrónicas nos ofrecen la posibilidad de tener mayor acceso al conocimiento en poblaciones universitarias cada vez más amplias.  En los últimos 10 años, numerosos usuarios han encontrado una solución al problema de la escasez de sistemas bibliotecarios tradicionales en nuestro país, y por lo tanto, a la falta de apoyo para obtener información de calidad. La revista y el libro electrónico son las opciones que han permitido el fortalecimiento de las Instituciones de Educación Superior y Centros de Investigación para que el conocimiento científico y tecnológico universal sea del dominio de los usuarios, para ampliar, consolidar y facilitar el acceso ágil y con amplia cobertura nacional e internacional, a los recursos de información referencial y en texto completo

La población universitaria que se caracteriza por conocer más rápidamente los avances de la ciencia y por  adaptarse mejor a los cambios, ha dejado de luchar contra las dificultades que representaba el hecho de transladarse a una biblioteca para acceder a las publicaciones electrónicas, ya que además de las opciones de búsquedas desde sitios remotos cada vez más frecuentes en nuestro medio, se ha generalizado el uso de los dispositivos móviles que resultan accesibles y adecuados para estos fines.

Tal vez el cambio más relevante en los esquemas que ofrecen los editores en relación con el acceso amplio  al conocimiento científico, técnico y humanístico, se puede encontrar en los libros electrónicos. En este sentido, la apertura y flexibilidad que se observa en las ofertas actuales  favorece a los usuarios en nuestro medio. Pensemos en la opción de adquirir un libro electrónico que se va a utilizar únicamente por un usuario simultáneo  (modelo de venta que se promovió hace años). Por supuesto que era desfavorable, en particular en la Universidad  Nacional Autónoma de México. Siempre consideramos inaceptable esa propuesta debido a la población estudiantil tan grande, misma que en el nivel de posgrado rebasa los 26 mil alumnos y en el de licenciatura llega a 190,000 estudiantes.

En relación con la ruta que siguen actualmente los editores para lograr que se promueva el acceso abierto a la información científica que publican, los cambios también se muestran significativos; son muy diversos los caminos que plantean. Algunas  propuestas se presentan cuidadosas, otras dan la impresión de ser muy  escrupulosas y hasta  se proponen con cautela. Nos movemos en un marco de acción que propicia la comunicación cada vez más fructífera entre los editores, investigadores, profesores, representantes gubernamentales y bibliotecarios.

En los próximos años, las publicaciones electrónicas seguramente continuarán su desarrollo cambiante y mantendrán uno de los liderazgos más importantes en el mundo de la ciencia, se mantendrán además añadiendo cambios tecnológicos llamativos y hasta asombrosos. A la vez se podrá constatar la evolución de una serie de iniciativas que persiguen facilitar el acceso a la información en un mundo que debate estas relevantes alternativas, cada vez más  en el terreno político que en el académico y el científico.

Margarita Lugo Hubp is a member of the Libraries Department at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

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The post Electronic publications in a Mexican university appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) launched in 2003 with 700 titles. Now, on its tenth birthday, it’s the online home of over 9,000 titles from Oxford University Press’s distinguished academic list, and part of University Press Scholarship Online. To celebrate OSO turning ten, we’ve invited a host of people to reflect on the past ten years of online academic publishing, and what the next ten might bring.

By Nicola Wilson

When I was invited to develop two lists for Oxford Scholarship Online, I jumped at the chance. From the perspective of a commissioning editor, digital publishing has extended the “life” of our copyrights indefinitely, and we no longer need to hold a book in physical print for it to continue to be available to our readers.

The first module that I developed was “Public Health and Epidemiology,” back in 2008. The books contained in the module have been published by our medical department over the course of three decades, and many are now considered public health classics, such as Michael Marmot’s Social Determinants of Health, and Geoffrey Rose’s The Strategy of Preventative Medicine.

The books that we chose to include on Oxford Scholarship Online present research and analysis of global health issues, and insight into the impact of diseases and conditions on populations. Several of the projects in the module have directly influenced policy planning and clinical attitudes to disease prevention and management, transforming scientific investigation methods and treatment approaches worldwide.

The biggest challenge in developing the module was the time that it took to clear permission to reproduce the material online. Many of the contracts and agreements that we held for our older books long pre-dated electronic resources, and we had to ask the authors and editors to sign contract addendums to allow us to proceed with publishing the books online. In some instances, authors had died since the book was published with us, so we needed to contact authors’ estates and ask surviving relatives to grant us permission to reproduce the material online.

In other cases, we needed to trace the ownership of third-party copyrighted material which was included in the books, so I became a detective, trying to identify the current owners of defunct publishers, some of which had changed their ownership through multiple company mergers over a thirty-year period. What naively started out as a few hours of looking through dusty hard-copy records in our basement, turned into a few months of internet heavy investigation and phone calls to numerous publishers’ Rights departments.

The amount of work that clearing permissions created turned it into an “all hands on deck during evenings and weekends” project. Over half of the medical department pitched in extra hours over a four-month period to ensure that we hit the launch deadline that we had been set. (Never underestimate the power of food to complete a project on schedule.)

The trickiest book that we worked on was Nutrition for Developing Countries, which was originally published in 1993 before our copyright clearance rules were defined. It’s full of unique hand drawn illustrations of Tanzanian families, different types of food, and easy-to-read graphs. It was specifically presented in such a way that could be used as a “show and tell” book by doctors working with non-literate families in Africa. For example, they could point at the illustrations of healthy foods in the book and explain to nursing mothers how eating those foods would help their babies to grow strong and remain healthy.

However, our challenge was trying to find out who had drawn the pictures, and subsequently who owned the copyright for them. Many of the illustrations had been drawn by a friend of one of the editors, and given to the editor as a wedding present. Did this mean that the copyright was held by the editor, or was it held by the artist? No copyright permission had ever been signed to state either way, and we had no contact details for the artist to enquire with them directly. We contacted the book editor, but they were often working in areas of Africa where Internet access was non-existent, so it took around four months to liaise with the editor and the artist (whom the editor contacted on our behalf), and acquire permission from both of them (to cover all legal bases) to use the illustrations in a digital form.

A major benefit of putting books online is the global availability of the information they contain; practitioners and academics can access and use these books online wherever they are in world. It’s wonderful that public health and epidemiology books attract a global readership, and through their availability online, they will have an even broader reach, and continue to help develop and improve research and treatment for many years to come.

Nicola Wilson is Commissioning Editor for the “Palliative Care” and “Public Health and Epidemiology” modules on Oxford Scholarship Online.

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The post Developing a module for Oxford Scholarship Online appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) launched in 2003 with 700 titles. Now, on its tenth birthday, it’s the online home of over 9,000 titles from Oxford University Press’s distinguished academic list, and part of University Press Scholarship Online. To celebrate OSO turning ten, we’ve invited a host of people to reflect on the past ten years of online academic publishing, and what the next ten might bring.

By Adrastos Omissi

As someone who has lived out his entire academic career in a research environment augmented by digital resources, it can be easy to allow familiarity to breed contempt where the Internet is concerned. When I began my undergraduate degree in the autumn of 2005, Oxford’s Bodleian Library, as well as every faculty and college library, had already digitized their search functions, Wikipedia was approaching one million English articles, and all major journals were routinely publishing online (as well as busily uploading their back catalogues). Free and instantaneous access to a vast quantity of research material is, for those of my generation, simply assumed.

The Radcliffe Camera, part of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. By Kamyar Adl CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The Internet’s greatest gift is text, in every permutation and definition of that word imaginable. For research students, one of the greatest obstacles is to acquire the necessary information that they need to make their own work a solid, and above all, living piece of scholarship, in communication with the wider academic world. Text is, ultimately, the sine qua non of this struggle.

Each specialism has its own particular loves, its debts owed to the Internet. Find any doctoral candidate in Britain today and they’ll each have their own version of ‘I couldn’t have completed me doctorate without online product X.’ For me, a classicist, it was the digitization and free availability of an increasing proportion of the written records of the ancient world. Online libraries of Greek and Latin texts, libraries like Perseus, Lacus Curtius, and the Latin Library, or searchable databases like Patrologia Latina brought the classical world to life (and to my laptop).

Of course, it’s not just ancient books that are now open to easy access from anywhere that the Internet can reach. When I was an undergraduate I looked into how much it would cost me to buy the entire Cambridge Ancient History series, which I felt would make an invaluable addition to my bookshelves. The answer – somewhere in the region of £1,600 – was enough for me to go weak at the knee. Now, I have all fourteen volumes in PDF. Google Books and the increasing digitization of the archives of publishers and academic libraries means that paradigm shifting debate can now beam into student rooms and even into private homes.

Just as the automated production line turned the automobile, once a bastion of elitism, into an affordable commodity for the average household, so the Internet is now putting books that would have once been hidden in ivory towers into the hands of any person with the desire to find them. And as hardware improves, these options become more and more exciting. Tablet computing means that this enormous corpus of academic texts and original sources is now available on devices that fit into a coat pocket. Gone – or going – are the curved spines and broken bag straps that were formerly the lot of any student forced to move between libraries.

Of course, not everyone is beaming as barriers of cost and inconvenience are stripped away from academic texts. Publishers still have businesses to run and it will be interesting to see in years to come how sharply the lines of battle come to be drawn. Nor is the marginalization of the book, a thing of beauty in its own right, much of a cause for celebration. But for those wishing to access academic texts, the trend is up, and texts that would once have been found only after a long search through some dusty archive or at the outlay of several hundred pounds are now nothing more than a Google search away.

Adrastos Omissi grew up in Jersey, in the Channel Islands. He recently completed a doctorate in Roman History at St John’s College, Oxford, and now works as a researcher for the social enterprise consultancy, Oxford Ventures.

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