Publishing and the Climate Emergency: the Monumental Challenge Ahead

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Publishing and the Climate Emergency: the Monumental Challenge Ahead

The global publishing industry has always had a conflicted relationship with the environment. On the one hand, no single industry has done more to educate and inform the general public about environmental issues. Whether through peer reviewed research and journals, consumer magazines, news reporting, books sold in shops or loaned through libraries, pretty much everything we know about the climate crisis is down to publishing, in some shape or form.

Yet, on the flip side, the industry cannot shy away from its own impact on climate change. Hundreds of years of deforestation to serve the print publishing industry are taking its toll. In the US alone, it is estimated that 32m trees are felled every year in order to make books—25 per cent of which are sent back to publishers unsold. Throw in reliance on fossil fuels, water usage, the use of chemical dyes and solvents, and the toll of shipping and flying physical products around the world, and you’ve got yet another manufacturing industry with a resource-heavy supply chain.

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Spotlight on Our India Teams

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Spotlight on Our India Teams

The worldwide publishing industry today would not function without the experience, support and technical skills of vast content services operations in India. Publishers, in the Global North especially, rely on the production and technology expertise of an entire support industry in one of the world’s largest emerging markets.

While initiatives to promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) among staff, authors, reviewers and other stakeholders have (rightfully) taken center stage in recent years at scholarly, education, and trade publishing houses in North America and Europe, they have largely focused on issues of race and gender. Not nearly as much recognition is paid to geographical inclusion or to our industry colleagues in the Global South who ensure the ultimate delivery of a large quantity of the world’s books, journals and other publications.

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The Meteoric Rise of Video Content

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The Meteoric Rise of Video Content

Consumer behavior is constantly evolving. Some consumer trends are temporary and relate to the circumstances and conditions du jour, while others take on greater cultural significance, establishing a permanent foothold on society, our habits and customs, and the way we go about our everyday lives.

Our relationship with video content is perhaps one of the most underestimated cultural phenomena of recent years. And global consumption of video as a medium has certainly accelerated since the start of last year. A recent study by video marketing firm Wyzowl revealed that 68 percent of consumers felt the pandemic had impacted the amount of video content they watched online, with 96 percent saying this had increased.

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5 Books for Thwarting Fake News, Deliberate Bias, and Flawed Research

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5 Books for Thwarting Fake News, Deliberate Bias, and Flawed Research

Much has been written in the past year about the phenomenon of fake news and falsified research infiltrating the mainstream and muddying important issues from vaccine effectiveness to voting irregularities to basic trust in science—including advice from the Washington Post just this week. In our sector, there have been attempts to trace the history and help the scholarly community come to grips with the rise in junk science. We at KGL have blogged recently how publishers can rely on industry partners, whether by helping manage the peer review process or streamlining production, to both publish critical research faster in a time of need while maintaining faith in the process.

For clearer understanding of the overall problem, we decided to dig deeper into the literature to uncover several works that can help discern what information can be trusted. Here are five books—from recent backlist to new releases, trade to academic—that can help both content providers and the public at large to be more savvy reporters and consumers of knowledge.

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Is XR technology’s “Zoom moment” finally on the horizon?

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Is XR technology’s “Zoom moment” finally on the horizon?

Every year - like clockwork - technology experts and futurists speculate as to whether this will finally be THE YEAR for mass market adoption of VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality) and MR (mixed reality), now commonly referred to under the useful catch-all umbrella term XR (extended reality) technologies.

When the vast majority of the world’s population was plunged into lockdown this year, and whether we liked it or not, staying in became the new going out, these debates around XR adoption logically intensified. This was to be the perfect storm. Suddenly the conditions were ripe for immersive innovations to really come to the fore and show their full potential.

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More than Words: Why Human Translation is Leagues Ahead

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More than Words: Why Human Translation is Leagues Ahead

The American philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky once famously said: “A language is not just words. It’s a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It’s all embodied in a language.” While these words are revered by many of those who work with languages for a living, decades of attempts to mechanize translation would suggest that the technology industry believes we are not far from finding an automated system which has a deeper understanding of these wider complexities of language.

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Accessibility for Publishers: Practical Tips That Demonstrate it's Well Within Your Reach

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Accessibility for Publishers: Practical Tips That Demonstrate it's Well Within Your Reach

Accessibility is an approach to publishing and design that makes content available to all, including those with disabilities who use assistive technologies on the computer. Publishers also benefit from embracing this essential initiative. When accessibility is well executed, it can expand readership and provide a higher-quality user experience for everyone. In our latest industry report, KGL provides business cases for accessibility that can be brought to leadership and stakeholders in a publishing organization.

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Rights & Permissions Service for Publishers

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Rights & Permissions Service for Publishers

Copyright is far more than just a necessary evil to protect intellectual property from theft. Copyright furthers all creative interests by making the rich marketplace of ideas available to a wider audience. Resourceful rights and permissions management supports author content while maximizing the publisher’s budget.

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