EBSCO announced today that Paul Harwood has been appointed into a new role as General Manager of the UK and Nordic operations for EBSCO Information Services. Paul will officially start with EBSCO on 30 May 2013.

Well known in the library, publisher, and intermediary communities, Paul has been active on various committees and professional interest groups, including a long association with UKSG, where he was Chair between 2006-2008 and he is currently a member of the UK Open Access Implementation Group. Most recently, Paul has been Deputy CEO of JISC Collections, playing a lead role in their open access activity for journals. Prior to JISC Collections, Paul successfully co-founded and grew the licensing company, Content Complete Limited and he joined JISC Collections as part of its acquisition of the company in December 2009. During his time at Content Complete, and more recently at JISC Collections, he has played a leading role in many of the NESLi2 journal negotiations with publishers. A librarian by training, Paul has recently obtained an MBA, and he has prior degrees in English, History, and Marketing.

Robert Schoenvogel, EBSCO’s European General Manager, welcomes Paul to EBSCO’s management team, commenting that “As an experienced and respected leader in the information industry, Paul brings to EBSCO a high level of energy and a keen focus on continuing to grow our leadership position in the UK and Nordic markets.”

The number of publisher-owned online communities is set to more than double over the next two years, according to new research released today by Publishing Technology at The London Book Fair.

The study, conducted by Bowker Market Research, a service of ProQuest affiliate Bowker, found that two thirds of responding publishers currently host reader communities, and that this is set to rise to over 90% over the next two years. A quarter expect to have seven or more networks up and running by 2015, with many respondents predicting a huge growth in the number of online communities for their company, from a current average of 2.1, to more than five over the next two years.

The survey, which included UK and US publishers across trade and academic sectors, revealed that trade publishers are currently most engaged in this area with 86% of respondents owning an online community in some shape or form.

The study also investigated the rationale and perceived benefits for publishers moving into this arena, revealing that:
· 84% of publishers felt their spending on online communities would increase in the next two years with only 14% envisaging expenditure remaining stagnant
· 64% of publishers with online communities were convinced that their investment in this market is already paying off and a further 24% believed it would do so in the short term
· 73% of all the publishers interviewed felt that online communities helped or would help them to engage better with their audiences
· 72% of trade publishers said they helped or would help to increase direct relationships with customers and 45% claimed they provided or would provide good marketing support to sales channels
· 40% of academic and professional publishers said that increasing knowledge and understanding of customers was a key benefit, whilst 40% felt increasing content usage was a priority

Although currently only 16% of all respondents viewed online communities as viable direct sales channels, the formats that have benefited most from online community activity are e-books for trade publishers (40%) and online resources for academic publishers (67%).

Jane Tappuni, Business Development Director at Publishing Technology, commented: “Online communities are far more than a channel for selling books, these results send a clear message that both trade and academic publishers want to use these platforms to establish closer relationships with their core readers, be it to communicate with them directly or to better understand their needs.”

She continued: “Online communities provide publishers with a way of striking up a direct rapport with their audiences and, at a time when publishing business models are evolving to become more consumer-focused, it comes as no surprise that publishers are ramping up investment in this area. This is the first major research that has been carried out in this field and the results are significant; they prove that publishers have moved far beyond the testing, experimental phase and now consider online communities to be a powerful tool that is an integral part of their marketing mix.”

Jo Henry, Director, Bowker Market Research, said: “There is a substantial amount of activity going on in this area as publishers seek new ways in which to engage directly with their consumers. It is interesting to note that in this survey US publishers were not significantly more advanced than UK ones – and that trade publishers appear to be leading the way in developing online communities.”

Key findings were made available at the joint Book Marketing Society (BMS)/Publishers Publicity Circle (PPC) London Book Fair panel on THE CAMPAIGN REVOLUTION: Reshaping the way publishers are reaching readers.

Trade and academic publishers in the UK and US were invited to contribute to the survey. The full results are available now on publishingtechnology.com/blog

ProQuest is helping universities build robust institutional repositories (IRs) by sharing digital copies of their graduate works which have been converted from paper or microfilm and archived in the ProQuest Dissertations and Thesis database (PQDT). The move enables universities to build their own searchable, historical archives even if their IR programs are new.

“Our goal is to expand the reach and impact of graduate works as a driver of innovative research,” said Austin McLean, ProQuest director of dissertations publishing. “By teaming with our university partners, we can maximize the profile of dissertations and theses as an integral part of the scholarly communications landscape.”

The new program deepens ProQuest’s policy of sharing digital copies of dissertations with universities as they are submitted when authors allow broad dissemination. Any university that has participated in ProQuest’s Digital Archiving and Access Program (DAAP) is eligible to receive copies of their converted dissertations for loading into their IRs. Some nominal charges may apply. Additionally, the university must comply with any limits that the author has placed on posting and dissemination.

ProQuest has been showcasing innovative graduate works through multiple new programs. In 2007, it launched PQDT Open, an online repository of Open Access graduate works. This expanded service provides authors with the widest possible distribution of the official published version of their dissertation or thesis. ProQuest’s traditional publishing service is also included with rigorous quality assurance, assignment of an ISBN and permanent storage in the company’s microfilm and digital vaults. Breadth of dissemination is determined by dissertation authors within the context of institutional policies and ProQuest strictly adheres to author dissemination choices.

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses is the world’s largest commercially available repository of graduate works. Chosen by the United States Library of Congress as the official archive of American dissertations, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, whose precursor was begun in 1939, now encompasses more than one quarter of a billion pages, creating a unique, continually growing trove of emerging research and landmark works. Researchers rely onProQuest Dissertations & Theses as both a source of enlightening information and as a pivotal component in making their own scholarly production available to the world’s intellectual communities. The archive is managed at ProQuest by a team of scholars and technologists, who combine their talents to make the archive accessible, reliable and supported by continually advancing technology.

ProQuest is streamlining research by enabling ebrary® and ProQuest® content to be discovered within a single search experience. Now, researchers can surface e-books side-by-side with relevant reports, videos, journal and newspaper articles and more in one step. The advance in searching comes via linking technology that enables users to navigate seamlessly from search results to the platform that best supports the content they want to explore.

“Our research shows that e-books are important to both scholars and students, but there has been some frustration in trying to find them,” said Kurt Sanford, ProQuest CEO. “We’re addressing that barrier in a way that respects the nuances of different formats. E-book content is supported by the ebrary platform, which includes tools designed specifically for e-books and traditional scholarly content is supported by its own set of tools.”

ProQuest launched a beta of the linking technology in 2011, making ebrary’s flagship subscription database, Academic Complete™, discoverable alongside ProQuest Research Library, ProQuest Central and ProQuest 5000. Now, all ebrary e-books are discoverable on the ProQuest platform and cross-searchable with any ProQuest database. Users connect to full-text of any of the sources through the search results screen. In the case of e-book content, they move directly to relevant passages within the books via ebrary’s relevancy ranking by document and chapter.

Interoperability between the platforms is automatic for libraries that have ProQuest and ebrary content through any acquisition model.

“Format is increasingly irrelevant to research and search technologies need to reflect that,” said Mr. Sanford. “Flexible and interoperable models are essential for libraries to manage change in a dynamic environment.”

E-book discovery is being propelled by a variety of initiatives at ProQuest. In 2012, the company completed full-text indexing of ebrary’s vast collections of titles within the Summon® discovery service, enabling users to find relevant e-books as part of a broad search of their library.

Click here to learn more.