The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) will offer a webinar entitled Breaking the Print Model in Digital Delivery, on April 17th, 2018, at 11:00 am Eastern Time.
Registration for the event remains open with a discount available for SSP members.
Over the years there have been many calls for an article of the future in digital delivery and yet users have shown a consistent preference for downloading the PDF version. Is this finally starting to change? This webinar will cover ways the publishers are finding to provide real value to their users that take advantage of the digital medium. And how are these publishers figuring out what is working versus what isn’t? Get a view into where article delivery is going in the future and how to provide significant extra value for your users.
Tom Beyer, Platform Services Director at Sheridan PubFactory, will moderate the event, and is joined on the panel by Rupert Mann, Digital Programme Director, Oxford University Press and Pierre Montagano, Director of Business Development, Code Ocean.
Tom Beyer took the time to answer questions about the event:
Who is the intended audience for this webinar and why should they attend?
Any publisher who is interested in learning about ways to enhance the online experience for their users. Platforms, especially journal platforms, have typically simply been delivery mechanisms for the PDF version of the content. But there are an increasing number of publishers who have implemented features and interfaces that go well beyond what is possible in print.
In this seminar we will talk with one publisher that was an early provider of an enhanced article view page, a publisher that provides a sophisticated interface for viewing their scholarly edition content, and a vendor that provides a mechanism to attach interactive working code samples to articles. These varied ways in which the reading experience is being enhanced should provide inspiration for publishers on how best to take advantage of features of their content to go beyond simply providing a place to pick up the PDF.
Why do you think this topic is important and timely?
The online experience can be so much richer than the print experience for users and yet most publishing platforms have done little to take advantage of the online medium. In a world that is increasingly moving to mobile, PDFs provide a sub-optimal experience at best.
Is there a particular topic you’re looking forward to seeing discussed?
I hope that we can encourage discussion about how a publisher can examine their content and figure out what sorts of interactive features would be most helpful to their users. Interactivity for its own sake isn’t enough – you must provide real value to your users. I hope that the speakers will be able to prove that they have done so and that it has proven worthwhile.
What do the selected speakers bring to the discussion?
Each speaker was chosen to highlight a different aspect of the issue. eLife was a leader in providing a really forward-looking journal article interface. I think now is a good time to check in with them to see the results they are seeing now that it has been in production for a few years.
Similarly on the book side, OUP developed the Scholarly Editions interface a few years ago and have been enhancing and refining it ever since. Code Ocean is a relatively new player with some very interesting technology to allow actual running source code to be delivered along with journal articles. I will be very interested in what they are seeing in terms of user behavior and engagement.
What can attendees expect from the webinar?
Each speaker will give a short presentation and then there will be an opportunity for questions and answers afterwards. I hope that we can really engage the audience in a dialog around this topic, so that means attendees should come prepared to ask questions and engage in the topic.
What do you hope attendees will take away from the webinar?
I hope that this will be a call to arms for publishers and prove that providing enhanced interfaces can be a worthwhile endeavor when the features are well-thought through and provide real value to their users and that it will open their eyes to some of the possibilities that are out there.
Click here to register now: https://customer.sspnet.org/ssp/Events/ssp/Event_Display.aspx?EventKey=WEB180417
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