Understanding the Marketplace, Part Two -- Creating the New Information Product: Workflow, Software and Content

Precursor to Atavism or Evolution? Accelerating Competition in the Service of Mutual Aid

The STM publishing and information services industry has bred new rhizomatic business models that mirror the (sometimes painful) evolution of the mass news & entertainment industry of the 20th century and slowly, at long last, the 21st. A&I businesses have sprouted axillary buds in the form of ratings and metrics companies (analogous to say, the Nielsen Company ratings) which then evolved into an “alternative” stage and which are now being absorbed by the mainstream and referred to as “complementary”. New product development and management methodologies have been adopted by companies formerly known for long and slow development cycles further accelerating the pace of change and increasing the rate of experimentation. Simultaneously, STM publishing and information companies are developing aggressive modes of venture funding and M&A in order to diversify, inspire growth and generate returns demanded by the market. Some claim that a siege upon the scholarly workflow is at play while Swenson contends that instead, our industry is evolving toward a more heterogeneous ecosystem reflecting the inherent needs of scholars and scientists to co-operate and collaborate in the interest of mutual aid.

From Print Book to Writing Platform: Developing an Interactive and Integrated Educational Solution for the 21st-Century Student

Due to advances in educational technology, the landscape for scholarly content and how it is consumed is quickly evolving. As a result, content providers have an opportunity to reinvent their products to better meet the needs of students, instructors, and librarians. To that end, the APA Style team transformed their seminal style guide, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, from a primarily print product to an applied learning, research, writing, and publishing platform. This portion of the webinar will address the market demands that led to this product innovation and will also explore a business model that supports the novel implementation of traditional forms of scholarly content.

Getting away from Widgets: Design Thinking as a Survival Tool

There was a time (I’m told) when the content that publishers created, libraries purchased, and researchers read fit into neat and predefined packages. These packages -- widgets, we’ll call them, although we might also call them books or journals -- came with a clear set of expectations regarding how they would work and how they might be sold. This common set of expectations made it relatively easy for all parties: publishers and authors could focus on making the content within the widget as good as it could possibly be; librarians and researchers would choose between these widgets based on their needs. But the days of this clarity are fading, if they haven’t already passed. The scholarly communication ecosystem is changing rapidly: how to keep up when the rules keep changing?

JSTOR’s approach has been to adopt many of the tools and techniques of the capital-D disruptors in order to rise to the challenge they represent, while creating services that are more aligned with our users’ needs and our mission. Among these techniques are the adoption of new methodologies geared at discovering and building the best products possible. Design thinking and lean startup methodologies have helped us to get away from “merely” producing widgets and instead create new kinds of products and services.

In this presentation, I’ll describe how JSTOR Labs, an experimental platform developmental team at JSTOR, uses design thinking to find new ways to provide value to our partners and users. I’ll explain how we combine user research with rapid, iterative development to create new kinds of user experiences, quickly.

Kanopy: Resource "Experience" Rather Than Delivery

Libraries and library vendors operate today in an exciting and fast-paced digital age with two primary forces for change.

First, being a library vendor today is more about delivering an experience than simply a resource. We used to simply supply the DVD and the job was done; now we must optimize online video delivery with a beautiful UX, great engagement features, and powerful streaming.

Second, consumer solutions today set high user expectations and are the new benchmarks for our performance as a library vendor, especially when seeking to engage the most tech-savvy younger and student populations. As a video provider to libraries, we need to ensure we are delivering patron experience that is at least equal to, ideally better than, these consumer solutions, because this is what patrons are accustomed to and expect.

In my presentation, I will discuss how Kanopy is responding to the increased demand for a more sophisticated user-experience and platform that focuses on resource "experience", not delivery. I will outline our philosophy as a company and examples of how our focus on tech industry best practices, and being located in the heartland of innovation (Silicon Valley), informs how we define our metrics of success, our innovative technical features to better engage audiences, and ourselves and thereby deliver on the complex needs of patrons today.