The prevalence of the Internet and the ease with which information can be searched for and stored for retrieval makes the academic publisher’s job a bit more challenging. With the advent of websites like Quora and Wikipedia (to name a few) and peer-to-peer collaboration becoming easy and convenient, academic publishers must rise to the challenge of making books, in its various forms, relevant and important to the academic community. This session will discuss how academic publishers can meet the various challenges facing it – challenges such as a) the digitization of content, b) the parsing of content i.e. the demand of academics to allow chapter-based access to textbooks, c) the need to incorporate cross media technologies and d)the need to engage with the academic community in knowledge creation and its documentation.
Scope:
- How is value added to the traditional concept of a text-book so that they are kept relevant?
- What should be the digital strategy of academic publishers?
- Who should drive content creation (the call to commission/prescribe a book)
- Is there scope for a chapter-based pricing model?
- Academic publishers’ stand on DRM?
- Is demand seasonal? Can any steps be taken to make it perennial?
- Rights management
- How should new blood be encouraged in academic publishing
Panellists:
Chair:
- Vivek Mehra, Sage India »