Over the past decade, the Institute of Network Cultures has led several applied research projects about new (digital) publishing models: the Hybrid Publishing Toolkit, Urgent Publishing and Going Hybrid. Time and again, publishers, designers, coders, authors, and readers bring up the same problem: the ‘book publishing industry’ fails to fulfill the promise of a rich multi-media reading experience in the digital era. Many digital tools for publishing experiments remain marginal, while traditional publishers and big tech platforms shy away from new formats. Audio and video integration — technically possible for a good three decades — is all but absent. Book sales keep decreasing. Young people read less and less, both online and offline. All in all, it becomes increasingly harder to sustain indy and experimental publishing practices while the regressive gap between so-called real paper books and the ‘virtual’ social media swiping keeps growing. Gutenberg the Second, where are you now that we need you?
Open access combined with Web 2.0 networking tools is fast changing the traditional journal's functions and framework and the publisher's role. As content is more and more available online in digital repositories and on the web, an integrated, interconnected, multidisciplinary information environment is evolving and Oldenburg's model disintegrates: the journal is no longer the main referring unit for scholarly output, as it used to be, for Scientific, Technical, and Medical disciplines, but scholars' attention is now more focused on the article level. New journals models are thus evolving. The first part of this paper discusses these new experimental journal models, i.e. overlay journals, interjournals and different levels journals. The second part directs readers' attention to the role commercial publishers could play in this digital seamless writing arena. The authors consider that publishers should concentrate much more on value-added services for authors, readers and libraries, such as navigational services, discovery services, archiving and evaluation services.
The central thesis of this book is that access to information represents a vital aspect of contemporary society, encompassing participation, accountability, governance, transparency, the production of products, and the delivery of services. This view is widely shared, with commentators and scholars agreeing that access to information is a key factor in maintaining societal and economic stability. However, having access to information does not guarantee its accessibility. Assuming that information is (cognitively) interpretable is incorrect, as many practical examples illustrate. In the first chapter, this book offers insights into the challenge of access to information in a digitalized world. The concepts of access and accessibility are addressed, elucidating their meanings and delineating the ways in which they are influenced by the exponential growth of information. It examines how information technology introduces a novel access paradox. The second chapter examines the challenges to access to and accessibility of information in a digitalized, hybrid world where code may be law, where there is an inescapable loss of privacy, where doing business opens and restricts access, where literacy is a necessity to survive ‘digital divides,’ and where environmental concerns may have an adverse effect on high expectations. The third chapter presents a review of theoretical approaches to access and accessibility from seven different research perspectives: information access disparity, information seeking, information retrieval, information quality, information security, information management, and archives management. Six approaches to information access and accessibility are identified: [1] social, economic, and political participation; [2] ‘smart’ and evolving technology; [3] power and control; [4] sense-making; [5] knowledge representations, and [6] information survival. The fourth chapter addresses the bottlenecks and requirements for information access and accessibility, culminating in a checklist for organizations to assess these requirements within their own business processes. In the fifth chapter, some perspectives on artificial intelligence and the future of information access are presented. The sixth chapter represents an attempt to draw conclusions and to bring this book to a close.
The scientific publishing industry is rapidly transitioning towards information analytics. This shift is disproportionately benefiting large companies. These can afford to deploy digital technologies like knowledge graphs that can index their contents and create advanced search engines. Small and medium publishing enterprises, instead, often lack the resources to fully embrace such digital transformations. This divide is acutely felt in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Scholars from these disciplines are largely unable to benefit from modern scientific search engines, because their publishing ecosystem is made of many specialized businesses which cannot, individually, develop comparable services. We propose to start bridging this gap by democratizing access to knowledge graphs – the technology underpinning modern scientific search engines – for small and medium publishers in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Their contents, largely made of books, already contain rich, structured information – such as references and indexes – which can be automatically mined and interlinked. We plan to develop a framework for extracting structured information and create knowledge graphs from it. We will as much as possible consolidate existing proven technologies into a single codebase, instead of reinventing the wheel. Our consortium is a collaboration of researchers in scientific information mining, Odoma, an AI consulting company, and the publisher Brill, sharing its data and expertise. Brill will be able to immediately put to use the project results to improve its internal processes and services. Furthermore, our results will be published in open source with a commercial-friendly license, in order to foster the adoption and future development of the framework by other publishers. Ultimately, our proposal is an example of industry innovation where, instead of scaling-up, we scale wide by creating a common resource which many small players can then use and expand upon.
Dit onderzoeksproject heeft als doel het oplossen van knelpunten die zich voordoen bij het uitgeven van publicaties en aldus kennis te produceren over het verwerven en behouden van economisch en cultureel kapitaal in de uitgeefsector, ook in digitale tijden. De snelheid van debat en publicatie is in de gedigitaliseerde samenleving sterk toegenomen. Dit betekent dat de beschikbaarheid van betrouwbare, kwalitatieve en verzorgde informatie onder druk staat. Uitgeverijen spelen van oudsher een belangrijke rol in het maatschappelijk debat door het publiceren van zulke informatie. Zij ervaren echter moeite om mee te gaan in de hoge omloopsnelheid. Het versnellen van het proces van uitgeven is niet vanzelfsprekend gunstig. Te vaak gaat namelijk een van de drie succespijlers in het vak - snelheid, kwaliteit en positionering - ten koste van de andere. Toepassingen en methoden uit de digitale technologie kunnen in dit proces ten voordele worden aangewend. De in de vraagarticulatie geïdentificeerde knelpunten liggen op het gebied van verwachtingsmanagement, redactie en publieksbereik. Deze knelpunten houden de optimalisering van het uitgeefproces op gebied van snelheid, kwaliteit en positionering tegen, en verzwakken de positie van de uitgever als producent van economisch en cultureel kapitaal en als aanjager van een veerkrachtige samenleving. Dit project onderzoekt hoe (digitale) applicaties en werkmethoden het uitgeefproces kunnen optimaliseren om deze maatschappelijke functie te verstevigen. Het state-of-the-art-onderzoek heeft daarvoor de volgende veelbelovende strategieën uitgewezen: 1) modulair werken, waarbij het uitgeefproces wordt opgedeeld in losse onderdelen; 2) automatisering, waarbij kleine stappen in het uitgeefproces worden geautomatiseerd; 3) hybride en publieksspecifieke formats, waarbij met verschillende vormen van publicatie wordt geëxperimenteerd. Dit leidt tot volgende hoofdvraag: Welke toepassingen en werkwijzen uit de digitale technologie, vallend binnen de strategieën van modulair werken, automatisering en nieuwe formats, kunnen worden ingezet om de knelpunten in het uitgeefproces op gebied van verwachtingsmanagement, het redactietraject en nieuwe publieken te verhelpen, met het oog op het versterken van het economisch en cultureel kapitaal van de sector? Na het gedetailleerd in kaart brengen van de knelpunten en het uitvoeren van een vergelijkingsanalyse van bestaande state-of-the-art tools, worden oplossingen ontwikkeld in de genoemde categorieën. Deze oplossingen worden in de uitgeefpraktijk getest alvorens doorontwikkeld te worden tot werkbare prototypes voor de gehele sector. Het onderzoek wordt uitgevoerd in multidisciplinaire teams, waarin professionals uit het werkveld samenwerken met onderzoekers. Deze oplossingen opereren in de bredere context van disciplines als publishing studies en communicatiewetenschap, creatieve industrie en zelfstandige MKB-bedrijven, en innovatie in de cultureel-maatschappelijke tak van de economie. De ontwikkelde software en handleidingen en de theoretische kennis worden publiekelijk ontsloten en gedeeld met alle stakeholders. Het consortium bestaat uit drie hogescholen, en uitgevers, vormgevers en softwareprogrammeurs, en heeft ruime ervaring opgebouwd in innovatief en toegepast onderzoek in een gedigitaliseerd domein. Het consortium wordt ondersteund door de Vereniging van Zelfstandige Uitgevers en heeft een uitgebreid internationaal netwerk. De partners zetten zich in om bij te dragen aan de versteviging van de concurrentiepositie van uitgevers en professionals in de boekproductie, met de ambitie het economische en culturele kapitaal van de uitgevers te behouden.
In the Dutch National Environmental Vision the societal challenge of building sustainable 1 million homes by 2035, is associated to the energy and mobility transitions. New living and working locations are mapped on existing urbanized sites - mainly at catchment areas of public transportation (PT) nodes or stations – and connected to good accessibility. The stations of the future become hubs, where you can transfer from one mode of transport to another, and find places to meet up, work, exercise and eat. In order to reduce congestions and CO2 emissions, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management has developed a vision on the future of public transport in PT 2040 based on Door-to-Door solutions. This requires the development of new city policies in the field of bicycle and car parking, shared mobility systems, environmental zones (car-free) and public space design. The hubs are important enablers of the mobility transition (promoting the transition from car to PT or bike, in combination with shared mobility to be prepared for a post-pandemic phase). Most stations do not meet the new mobility requirements and face problems such as lack of space for bicycle parking and shared modes, as well as lack of public space. How to improve mobility transition, make it seamless and create public space for more inviting and attractive stations for people and with less cars? WALK-IN will develop a toolkit for designers which provide generic guidelines and spatial solutions for the integration of sustainable mobility in public space at PT nodes. The toolkit is developed between and with academia, public and private partners. The project aims to develop a new network and an EU funding proposal on Energy transition and Sustainability or for the forthcoming Driving Urban Transitions program from the Joint Program Initiative Urban Europe.
