A Look Ahead at Publishing in 2020: AI, AR, Plan S and More
/by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
AI is all around us
PHOTOGRAPH BY Ragnar1904, DISTRIBUTED UNDER A CC-BY-SA 4.0 LICENSE.
Last year, Artificial Intelligence in publishing was a hot topic at a number of conferences, book fairs, articles and webinars. In 2020, we will likely see the conversation go from theoretical to the implementation of concrete applications. As we previously reported, AI applications are being created to increase discoverability, improve UX, automate tedious clerical work, analyze trends, and expand the peer review pool; and publishers, like our partner Taylor & Francis, are beginning to feel more confident in implementing these applications into their workflow and seeing positive benefits.
Plan S – do or die time for Open Access
2020 is shaping up to be a pivotal year in academic publishing, as the community readies itself for the radical Plan S reforms on the horizon. The ambitious yet controversial initiative set out by European funding conglomerate cOAlition S - which aims to make all journal content available via Open Access while putting an end to paywalled journals - comes into play in January 2021. While many have praised the mandate for its capacity to fast-track and turbo charge an otherwise slow global migration towards OA publishing as the new normal—and many significant international agencies, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization have recently jumped on board—there are still pockets of the academic community who feel Plan S will severely damage their interests. Last May, in the face of strong criticism, COAlistion S announced a renewed, softened approach to allow hybrid journals more time to make the transition to OA. So, it will be interesting to see whether it will now address the remaining concerns of smaller society publishers who feel that Plan S will essentially price them out of the market, and also tackle the resistance of bigger players like Springer Nature who have publicly rejected the mandate’s targets as “unrealistic”.
Augmented reality
In a chicken and egg question, did Android and iPhone makers predict the boom that we have seen in augmented reality (AR) in the last two years by including AR software in their operating systems or did they create it? Either way, every industry from fashion to travel, and food to news, has begun creating such sensory content overlaying the real world to tap into the desire for interactivity from users. For publishers, AR offers the opportunity of exploiting new revenue streams by creating new types of advertising content, expanding discovery tools, providing new ways of understanding information using 3D models, enhancing retention of materials through interactivity, and more. Educational publication is seeing the most opportunity with making applications that can help students with retention, as we noted in this earlier blog post. AR is offering an opportunity to convey information in a wide variety of digital content.
The rise of digital-first workflows
As several publishers move towards digital-first publishing strategies and models, this year could also realistically spell an increase in the adoption of digital-first, or XML-first, publishing workflows. Last year, the likes of Pearson and Cengage revealed their plans to move towards digital-first publishing in an effort to meet consumer expectations, cut production costs and stem profit losses on expensive print products. In order to adapt to this new approach, it is anticipated that these publishers will invest heavily in revamping their editorial and production workflows. Moving away from typically disjointed and disparate print-based workflows towards digital-first workflows, some of which incorporate automation and AI tools, can enable publishers to become more robust, flexible and inclusive in their approach, while improving efficiency and speed to market. As education publishers lead the way in pioneering this long overdue approach to editorial workflows, it is expected that it will also filter down into other sectors of publishing, where it can also make a huge difference to the way people work, the way content is produced and the way the publishing business is carried out.
Don’t be afraid of automation
Each publisher has its own content workflow, often based on an antiquated system. These workflows are sometimes very disjointed and include repetitive or time-consuming tasks, such as rounds of proofing and approvals among all the stakeholders, which more often than not form bottlenecks for project managers. This year, with publishers needing to react more quickly to news and market trends in order to capitalize and increase revenue, we will see the rise of automation. By automating aspects of the workflow process such as pre-editing, copyediting, page production, proofing, and tracking, our customers are seeing shorter schedules, more accurate editing, and higher quality overall.
KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. (formerly Cenveo Publisher Services) is the industry leader in editorial and production services for every stage of the content lifecycle. We are your source for intelligent automation, high-speed publishing, accessibility compliance, digital learning solutions and more. Email us at info@kwglobal.com.