Tackling Global Social Challenges through Technology

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Tackling Global Social Challenges through Technology

Optimizing Content Delivery to Advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have undoubtedly been among the hottest topics on the scholarly publishing agenda since we’ve come out of the pandemic. Although the 17 goals were established back in 2015, the publishing industry’s response to them has certainly accelerated since 2020, when a raft of publishers signed up to the SDG Publishers Compact, affirming their commitment to its 10-point action plan.

At the most recent Charleston Library Conference, KGL PubFactory’s Platform Services Director, Tom Beyer, hosted a lively panel debate which combined the perspectives of several prestigious social science publishers and an open resources librarian, showcasing how they are each adopting new technologies, implementing new initiatives and adapting their content delivery offerings to advance the SDGs and tackle global social challenges.

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Publishing Trends: OSTP and Public Access

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Publishing Trends: OSTP and Public Access

As part of the KGL PubFactory Virtual Series, on October 6 we hosted Industry Day, a half-day online seminar of insights, discussion, and practical takeaways for the scholarly publishing community. Headlining the event was an informative discussion with KGL’s Cara Rivera and Howard Ratner of CHORUS on the implications of the recent US OSTP memo recommending free and immediate access to all federally funded research.

Cara starts the session by reviewing what the memo says and doesn’t say, and presents excerpts from key industry stakeholders. Howard then masterfully explains potential impacts and important nuances. The recording of the 30-minute interview can be viewed here.

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Top Five Author Pain Points

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Top Five Author Pain Points

“If it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it,” wrote Charles Bukowski in his poem “So you want to be a writer?” Being an author isn’t easy. Writers experience challenges in research, struggle with expressing their thesis, and even have writer’s block at times. But even if the ideas, the story, the research, and the writing all come bursting out of a writer, the difficulties don’t end there. Once the work is written, writers must then attempt to get their work published. And, as any writer can tell you, navigating the publishing process may be even more difficult than writing in the first place.

From an author perspective, the lack of development of this process poses significant difficulties during a time when their earnings have declined dramatically—42 percent over the last decade, according to an Authors Guild survey of trade and academic writer associations. The following are some of the more significant pain points for authors that publishers can help them navigate.

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Scholarly Video: a Case Study

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Scholarly Video: a Case Study

Journal of Neurosurgery Publishing Group unleashes the power of dynamic content with the Cadmore Media video player on KGL PubFactory

At the KGL PubFactory Virtual Series user group meeting this past October, we took the opportunity to delve deep and really put scholarly video under the microscope. In a session hosted by PubFactory’s Tom Beyer, we examined in detail how one journal publisher in particular was harnessing the power of video to revolutionize its approach towards traditional journal publishing, adding fresh content types into the mix and enhancing user experience for its members in the process.

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Developing a Culture of Accessibility

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Developing a Culture of Accessibility

Accessibility has been the buzzword in publishing over the last several years as the industry embraces the need to make its content available to all readers. We at KGL have previously highlighted innovations in accessibility in K-12 learning and also potential hazards of not making scholarly content accessible.

As we look to the future, most specifically 2025 when the requirements of the European Accessibility Act will be enforced, we want to focus on the important steps and perhaps changes in corporate culture publishers need to take in order to make their content available for all readers.

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Knowledge Sharing: 5 Minutes with Merryn Smit, Senior Project Manager at KGL PubFactory

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Knowledge Sharing: 5 Minutes with Merryn Smit, Senior Project Manager at KGL PubFactory

This week begins the latest edition of the KGL PubFactory Virtual Series user group meeting, bringing the scholarly publishing community together to share lessons learned, new platform developments, and industry insights. To mark the occasion, we welcome PubFactory’s new UK-based Senior Project Manager, Merryn Smit to the team, following her time in digital content and production roles at Oxford University Press and Taylor & Francis. I spoke to her recently about moving from the publisher to vendor side, challenges publishers face with digital content, and embracing change.

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Preview: KGL PubFactory Virtual Series 2021

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Preview: KGL PubFactory Virtual Series 2021

Platform Services Director, Tom Beyer gives us an idea of what to expect at this year’s user group meeting

The PubFactory online hosting platform, established in 2010, has been holding an annual customer meeting—either in-person or virtual—for many years. This eagerly anticipated event is one of the great benefits of belonging to the PubFactory community and continues under ownership of KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. (KGL).

Once again, from October 13-15, over 60 scholarly publishing stakeholders will convene a three-day Virtual Series to share knowledge, hear from platform partners and industry experts, and learn the latest developments in the PubFactory roadmap during a variety of information-packed and interactive remote sessions. Recently I asked platform co-founder and technical lead, Tom Beyer what we can expect this year.

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Accessibility Fast Becoming an Essential Pillar of Scholarly Publishing

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Accessibility Fast Becoming an Essential Pillar of Scholarly Publishing

Two years ago, we (as Cenveo at the time) hosted a panel discussion at the SSP Annual Meeting, which brought the subject of accessibility to the center stage and helped shine a spotlight on the importance of making content accessible to readers with disabilities, such as learning difficulties and visual impairments. To mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD), we take a look at how this landscape is evolving and how scholarly publishers are now actively improving access to academic research.

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Content Platform Migrations: 5 Important Lessons

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Content Platform Migrations: 5 Important Lessons

The publishing platform business is constantly evolving, with home-grown technologies and commercial solutions continuously developing new capabilities to better serve authors and researchers. As a result, publishers occasionally migrate journals, books and other content from one delivery platform to another, a process considered by many to be something of a perilous minefield.

In March, KGL PubFactory’s very own Tom Beyer took part in a virtual panel discussion at the Electronic Resources and Libraries (ER&L) Annual Conference 2021 entitled “How We Work Together: Improving the Content Platform Migration Process”, alongside some of our friends and colleagues in the NISO Content Platform Migrations Working Group. The session explored the current state of platform migrations from the viewpoint and experiences of a major university press, an academic library and the content platform provider perspective, while showcasing some of the recommendations and deliverables of the NISO Working Group. Here are five key lessons we gleaned from the session.

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SSP OnDemand: AI Goes From Disruptive to Imperative

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SSP OnDemand: AI Goes From Disruptive to Imperative

For the Society of Scholarly Publishers OnDemand Video Content Library, KGL participated in a panel discussion entitled, AI Goes From Disruptive to Imperative: Publishers overcoming hang-ups and getting real with intelligent automation, where we invited movers and shakers in AI to highlight why researchers and publishers must embrace the technology now in order to remain competitive.

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy, Part 3 (The Creative Process)

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy, Part 3 (The Creative Process)

When designing your publishing platform, there are many factors to consider to deliver an optimal user experience. It’s critical to establish a user-first driven process.

As discussed in parts 1 and 2, it is imperative that your web publishing platform be designed with accessibility, responsiveness, and consistency for all users and devices. Publisher websites are often built using templates and components to help present content in a familiar pattern that users recognize and can easily access. But when designing the “skin” for these experiences, maintain your stylistic uniqueness to strengthen your brand presence. Your brand’s attributes and voice must be visually communicated.

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy, Part 2 (Accessibility Improves Experience)

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy, Part 2 (Accessibility Improves Experience)

Website accessibility is not a new topic. In fact, it’s been a factor since 2010 when the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) published standards that digital technology and information must be accessible to all people. At that point, most companies did not think that responsibility for website accessibility applied to them, or that they were required to address it unless they were receiving federal funds/grants. Additionally, the general perception was that creating accessible websites was more costly and entailed a lengthier process to implement. Not surprisingly, the ROI to include accessibility as part of the web design process was not considered valuable enough to be a default priority.

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy: Part 1

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy: Part 1

Tracey Greene is the Chief Creative Director at Digital Artisans, KGL PubFactory’s lead design partner. In this three-part blog post series, Tracey shares valuable insights into maximizing discoverability and accessibility when creating your digital content platform.

Your website platform should be available to every person on any device. The following are critical considerations in a “mobile-first” world for maximizing discoverability and accessibility when creating the optimal user experience for journeys across all of your digital content.

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How Publishers Can Put AI to Use in the Pandemic

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How Publishers Can Put AI to Use in the Pandemic

Earlier in the year we predicted how artificial intelligence could impact the industry in 2020—with AI applications being created and perfected to increase discoverability, improve user experience, automate tedious clerical work, analyze trends, and expand the peer review pool. We also noted that publishers were beginning to feel less tentative about adopting these solutions into their workflows. At the time, we could not have imagined that a global pandemic would disrupt the industry and society in the way that it has. So in light of recent events, we wanted to revisit a few ways this technology can immediately be used to assist researchers, publishers, and the wider world.

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Accessibility as a Civil Right

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Accessibility as a Civil Right

In October, the United States Supreme Court handed down an order stating that it would not take up a plea from Domino’s pizza chain to reverse a decision in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stating that the company must make its website accessible to people with disabilities. This lawsuit is one of many that have been brought in the last two years against fashion designers, art galleries, gyms, grocery stores, among other companies in a variety of industries, which host websites featuring content which is inaccessible to the visually impaired.

Under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act, any business with at least 15 full-time employees which operates for 20 or more weeks every year must provide accommodations for those with disabilities. As the marketplace is going from a physical to a digital one and more content—from news to research—is being read more online than off, it has become vital for those hosting the content to adapt to accessible content.

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AI 2.0: Machine-Generated Content, Intelligent Automation, and the Future of Academic Publishing

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AI 2.0: Machine-Generated Content, Intelligent Automation, and the Future of Academic Publishing

Every year at the Frankfurt Book Fair, there is a buzzword or phrase that continues to pop up on panels, in articles, and in conversations and meetings. In the past, we have seen ‘big data’ and ‘blockchain’ dominate the headlines, but this year’s buzz word (or acronym) was ‘AI,’ as publishers, information professionals, service providers, and the media debated how this technology can be used in the industry.

Because machine learning and artificial intelligence are integral to KGL’s work helping to alleviate pain points for publishers, we partnered with Springer Nature to host a panel entitled “AI 2.0: Machine-Generated Content, Intelligent Automation, and the Future of Academic Publishing.” On the panel, speakers from KGL (Cenveo at the time), HighWire, and Springer Nature talked about everything from workflow automation and high-speed publishing, to companies that use machine learning and AI for discovery, peer review, and even highlighted emerging technologies which allow publishers to offer a broader range of tools and services to serve researchers and authors.

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The Case for a New Alt Text Strategy

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The Case for a New Alt Text Strategy

In recent years, Alt Text—a contextual description that conveys information on the appearance and function of an image or graphic in digital content—has become a hot topic for publishers. A common practice in education publishing where accessibility standards come in to play, there has been a wider awakening regarding the art and benefits of applying effective Alt Text for publishers and authors, particularly in the STM domain.

While many refer to the challenges involved in getting it right, publishers shouldn’t be intimidated by the basics, but rather begin to apply image accessibility as part of a successful online content strategy.

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Open, Sustainable, Usable: The Continued Importance of Identifiers

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Open, Sustainable, Usable: The Continued Importance of Identifiers

While some publishers and researchers are currently including identifiers in their metadata, there are many who are waiting for wider adoption of these practices before changing their workflow to include them. The benefits of standardized metadata only materialize when they are widely adopted, so with the hope that more publishers will adopt these practices, KGL revisits each of the identifiers from our white paper, All Things Connected, and outlines their importance for research and scholarly writing.

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Accessibility Takes Center Stage, Finally

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Accessibility Takes Center Stage, Finally

At the 2019 Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) Annual Meeting in San Diego, KGL was excited to see accessibility at the forefront of the agenda, with keynotes and panel debates tackling the topic from varying angles. We hosted a seminar entitled “Digital Equality: The Importance of Accessibility in Your Publishing Strategy” which included guest speakers Pamela Starr from San Diego State University; Caroline Desrosiers, formerly of SAGE and founder of textBOX Digital; and our very own Atul Goel. The following are the key takeaways from the discussion.

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Accessibility: Because the Internet is Blind

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Accessibility: Because the Internet is Blind

Like the visually impaired, the Internet cannot “see” content the way a sighted human being does. It can only discover relevant content via searchable text and metadata. When publishers take the right steps to make content accessible, they also make it more discoverable.

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