In this ALPSP guest blog, Craig Griffin,

Solutions Engineer at Silverchair Information Systems discusses a two-prong

strategy to help scholarly publishers optimize the use and functionality of

their content.

 

 

We in scholarly publishing have visions of a

future powered by Artificial Intelligence. Self-learning applications. Powerful

discovery techniques. Machine-based learning tools. Change is a constant in any

industry, but the rate of change within

scholarly publishing is increasing rapidly on all fronts.  Journals and books, long the bread and butter

of publishers, have now been joined by an explosion of additional content types

such as video, data sets, grey literature, and learning formats.  Optimizing the use and functionality of this

content in light of researchers’ needs to author, publish, and discover highly

varied content sets alone presents a challenge.

 

 

A second challenge is found in the sheer

volume of content being pushed through ever greater numbers of channels.  Discovery of content, regardless of channel,

occurs off-platform on the servers of Google, PubMed, Crossref, or any number

of social media platforms that no publisher, society, or author controls. With

content in myriad formats and fractured delivery channels, it’s challenging for

even the most capable power-user to be sure that their research is exhaustive

or to stay on top of the latest developments.

 

 

A solution to this problem involves a two-prong

strategy.

 

 

First,

publishers need to Standardize the entire content set. Of course, content formats have

evolved over the years, sometimes in a prescribed, documented evolution, and

other times completely organically.  Since

the software to display this content needs to handle all these variations, the

content itself then becomes monolithic—it works in this one specific way, with

this software layer above it, but does not function correctly outside of the

content structure/software pair. It’s completely locked in its database.

 

 

Standardized formats allow content to

reside in a more efficient database.  With a clearly defined data and database

structure, the software layer above can extract and display information across content

eras and handle associations easily.  Standardization also allows content types to be related in a far more

efficient and flexible manner.  A video

and a journal article, for example, with separate but standard structures can

be related via metadata, content elements, or any other association desired by

the publisher.  Additionally,

Standardized content becomes much more accessible to machines, which as of now are

the primary consumer of content. This can be via discovery bots, search engine

crawlers, or Text and Data Mining apparatuses. 

The rate and volume of these automated tools is the only true match to

the explosion of content.

 

 

Once

Standardized, publishers can then deploy the second strategy:  Breaking Down Silos.  This is achieved by bringing

all the Standardized content—of any type—into a single platform. Once the

unification of content has occurred, with discovery, display, relational

associations, and third-party linkages all coming from one technology stack,

content can then become substantially more functional for the end-user.  Content can then be organized by editorial

concepts rather than simply by types or titles.  By improving the organizational options of

standardized content, publishers can then tailor (and sell) collections

targeted at infinitely narrower user groups. 

This achieves the direct benefit of presenting specific content to a user

at the exact moment of need.

 

 

It’s

important for publishers to think of the user’s journey to their content (via any number of discovery methods): think of the user’s purpose

in accessing the content. Although AI tools have begun the work of meeting the

user at the right moment on their path, publishers can accelerate this process

to the benefit of both their audience and their bottom line. By following the

strategies of Standardization and Breaking Down Silos, users will be rewarded

with an experience that works for them, rather than solely for the content.

 

About Silverchair: Silverchair integrates

and delivers scholarly and professional content from a single platform –

journals, books, video, custom formats, and more. The Silverchair Platform

delivers advanced semantic technologies and publishing platforms to STM and

humanities publishers, professional societies, and the federal government. We

collaborate with publishers to propel their content to greater reach and

impact.

 

 

Website: www.silverchair.com

 

Twitter: @silverchairnews

 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/SilverchairNews/

 

 

Silverchair is a proud Silver Sponsor of

the ALPSP 2017 Annual Conference. Hear from Chief Product Officer, Jake Zarnegar

on his takeaways from the ALPSP conference in this insightful video blog.