Thursday, June 08, 2017

MediaWeek Report (Vol 10, No 2): PND Media news update - Subscriptions, Copyright and Acquisition News.

Solving the crossword puzzle: Rebuilding a print habit on digital devices
Sometimes, I’ve learned, you have to take opportunity where you least expect it. And in the end that’s what happened to us. Nieman Labs

Lack of copyright support in India may require radical publisher rethink:
Mr Bisht runs Delhi University’s photocopy shop, a crowded room crammed with photocopiers and computers where students queue to get their entire course material copied for a fraction of what it would cost to buy the books.   Following the decision in March of three international publishing companies — Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor & Francis — to drop their legal case against Mr Bisht, his business is functioning with impunity.  The trio claimed his photocopying business undermined their intellectual property, but the Delhi high court ruled that it was not in students’ interests to shut him down. The companies appealed but later dropped the case, citing “longer-term interests”. Executives say they had given up hope of winning, but believed they could still make money in the country long term.
FT
Global library cooperative OCLC has signed agreements with distinguished publishers from around the world to add metadata for high quality books, e-books, journals, databases and other materials that will make their content discoverable through WorldCat Discovery.
OCLC has agreements in place with 315 publishers and information providers to supply metadata to facilitate discovery and access to key resources relevant to researchers, faculty and students.
WorldCat Discovery provides over 2.8 billion records of electronic, digital and physical resources, including articles, books, dissertations and audiovisual materials in support of libraries and information seekers.   Metadata from many of these publishers will also be made available to users through other OCLC services based on individual agreements. Details about how this metadata may be used in library management workflows will be communicated to OCLC users as the data is available.  By providing metadata and other descriptive content, these partnerships help libraries represent their electronic and physical collections more completely and efficiently. More about WorldCat Discovery and OCLC partnerships is on the OCLC website.
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The New York Times Sees Record Newsletter Subscriptions and Open Rates.
Times free newsletters have always been popular with readers. However, growth remained fairly flat for a number of years. A team of newsroom editors, product managers, designers and engineers began taking a more systematic approach, including making better use of analytics, new tools and promotional strategies. The Times’s newsletter subscriptions have more than doubled to over 13 million in April 2017, from 6 million newsletter subscriptions in April 2014.
The Morning Briefing newsletter has more than 1.3 million newsletter subscriptions with a 60%+ open rate (an additional number of readers access the Briefing on Times apps and on the web). Other Times newsletters, including Today’s Headlines and Cooking, also boast more than a million newsletter subscriptions and many have especially high open rates: NYT Australia, Booming, Nicholas Kristof, California Today, Vietnam ‘67 and the Interpreter all have open rates of 80% or higher.
 New York Times
Academic publisher Taylor & Francis Group has acquired colwiz, an innovative, early stage digital research services firm, as part of its ongoing investment in technology and digital capabilities that support the use and discoverability of content. colwiz launched in 2013 from the University of Oxford's Isis Software Incubator.
colwiz launched in 2013 from the University of Oxford’s Isis Software Incubator. It provides interactive digital collaboration and reference management services for researchers in academia, industry and government around the world.
colwiz’s current suite of tools allows researchers to read and annotate PDF-based academic content wherever they are, manage and store research drafts, share citations and data and connect and collaborate within research groups around specialist content in an efficient and user-friendly way.
As part of the Taylor & Francis Group, the team from colwiz will in the first instance work on the launch of wizdom.ai, a cutting-edge and comprehensive proprietary research knowledge graph. wizdom.ai uses artificial intelligence and big data to generate continuously-updated analytics on scientific developments, delivering new insights into academic knowledge to inform how researchers advance their work.
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Sheridan, a provider of print, publishing services and technology solutions to publishers, has acquired PubFactory, the industry-lauded online publishing platform for journals, books, and reference works, from O'Reilly Media. PubFactory will continue to be based out of Boston, MA, and will blend seamlessly into the Sheridan stable of publisher technology products and services.
The PubFactory team has been developing and delivering scholarly publishing technologies since 1999. In 2010, the PubFactory platform officially launched with the deployment of several major Oxford University Press products. This was quickly followed by the International Monetary Fund’s eLibrary and De Gruyter’s journals, books, and database products launching in 2011. Notable publishers including Bloomsbury Publishing, Brill, Edward Elgar Publishing, Harvard University Press, Peter Lang, and others have since joined the growing list of PubFactory customers.
PubFactory’s configurable suite of front-end and back-end capabilities allows for optimal support across content types, making it a truly content agnostic platform that is host to 1400+ journals, 400,000+ books, and numerous database and reference work products.
“We are delighted to offer our journal and book publishers this proven and comprehensive hosting and publishing platform,” said Gary Kittredge, Managing Director of Sheridan Journal Services. “PubFactory will propel Sheridan into a new level of engagement with our customers as we extend our range of services from high-touch editorial production and print solutions to hosting our customers’ content – a complete package.”
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Leading Companies, Trade Associations Launch Corporate Committee for Library Investment to Save Federal Library Funding (PR)
Many of America's leading information, software, publishing and other businesses as well as multiple national trade associations today unveiled the Corporate Committee for Library Investment to advocate for federal library funding.

As Congress turns to funding the government beyond next September, CCLI launches against the backdrop of Administration proposals to eliminate most federal library funding and the agency that distributes those funds to every state. Members of CCLI are united by the common belief that America's libraries are business-building, job-creating, workforce-preparing engines of the U.S. economy in every corner of the country. The group formed to tell that story to Congress and other federal policy makers who control library funding and to encourage every American business to do the same.

CCLI today delivered a letter, which remains open to signature by any business of any size, to all members of the United States Senate. (Eight companies made a similar delivery in their own names on May 11.) The letter expressly asks senators to sign two letters to their colleagues on the Appropriations Committee calling for $186.6 million in FY 2018 funding for programs under the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) and $27 million for the Innovative Approaches to Literacy program (IAL). LSTA funding goes primarily to a population-based matching grant program that puts states in charge of how federal funds are spent. IAL allows school libraries and non-profit groups to buy books and educational materials for the nation's neediest children.

CCLI also will work to: rapidly reauthorize the Museum and Library Services Act, which created LSTA; and assure that any infrastructure investments authorized by Congress both include library facilities and leverage the nation's 120,000 libraries to make high-speed broadband service available in every corner of America, especially in rural and other underserved communities.

CCLI was co-conceived by Gale, a Cengage company, and the American Library Association, which will provide logistical support for the group. Founding members include Baker & Taylor, bibliotheca, Candlewick Press, Corporate Graphics International, EBSCO Information Services, Encyclopedia Britannica, Findaway, Follett, Gale/Cengage, Information Today, Jamex, Mackin, Macmillan, ­­OverDrive, Peachtree Publishers, Pearson, Penguin Random House, Prendismo, ProQuest, Public Information Kiosk, The RoadRunner Press, Rosen Publishing, SirsiDynix, the American Booksellers Association and the Software and Information Industry Association.
Clarivate Analytics has announced the acquisition of Publons and its leading global platform for researchers to share, discuss and receive recognition for peer review and editing of academic research. The acquisition brings together the world's preeminent citation database and the world's largest researcher-facing peer-review data and recognition platform.
Clarivate is developing and delivering innovative analytics and workflow solutions that increase efficiencies across the entire research lifecycle; from idea to experiment, to peer review, to publication, dissemination and assessment. The acquisition of Publons, its platform and data, increase the value of multiple Clarivate Analytics products, while supporting researchers as they manage their careers and work across the ecosystem of funders, publishers and institutions.
"The Clarivate Analytics citation network and researcher tools, including flagship products like Web of Science, EndNote and ScholarOne, are some of the most widely used tools in research," said Andrew Preston, co-founder of Publons. "Daniel and I founded Publons with the core belief that peer review is at the heart of research. As the pressures on scientific publishing continue to grow, we see an opportunity for Publons to have an even greater positive impact on peer review. The global scale and impartial position of Clarivate Analytics, combined with Publons, will allow us to further develop the platform, creating the tools and services that the research community needs."
The combined strengths of Clarivate and Publons will address critical research challenges in the $1.7 trillion global research market, including fraudulent scientific research, inefficiencies in peer review that slow down research and identifying and understanding top research as funders increasingly demand demonstrable impact and proof of contributions to the research environment. Peer review is at the heart of solutions to these challenges and will drive future improvements across the research ecosystem.
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