Reaching out to customers: review of Ingenta's US Open Forum
February saw Ingenta's US publisher forum take place in Washington, DC, to coincide with the PSP annual conference. The event, attended by IngentaConnect clients and selected representatives from the publishing industry, was heralded by delegates as one of the most successful and insightful forums we have hosted.
The day adopted the new open-forum style (successfully road-tested at a UK forum in June 2006), which facilitates interactive discussion and endorses a collaborative approach in sharing ideas and building on knowledge in the industry. Chaired by scientific, technical and medical publisher consultant Mary Waltham, topics discussed ranged from emerging markets such as China, South Korea and India, to Web 2.0 and what it means for libraries and publishers (presented by past NASIG president and Rutgers University librarian Mary Page).
Themed discussions led by IngentaConnect representatives Holly Rondeau, Chris Gorman and Louise Tutton also raised valuable reaction to current industry trends, as well as an opportunity to review IngentaConnect's performance and functionality. Publishers were invited to share their experiences and thoughts with their client managers within the refreshingly informal environment, with the ultimate aim of continuous improvement of efficiency for the end user. The most widely-appreciated session presented a review of the licensing arrangements of the various publishers in attendance. Ingenta had carried out a study to ascertain where publishers' content could be accessed online. The results were surprising to many delegates who had not realised the extent of the licensing agreements they had, and highlighted how closely it is necessary to monitor licensing arrangements with aggregators.
Other topics raised during the session included:
- Meeting users at their web entry points. Increasing visibility, and driving up usage as a result, is a key requirement for publishers. Many already take advantage of Ingenta's third party relationships to ensure maximum exposure through subscription agent gateways, abstract & indexing databases, link resolvers and more. Ingenta's pioneering work with Google Scholar has helped publishers in this area, and will be complemented during 2007 by continued work with Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! Ingenta is also building relationships with preservation initiatives LOCKSS and Portico to ensure publishers' needs in this area are fully met.
- Web 2.0. Publishers value IngentaConnect's ability to integrate and connect with Web 2.0 tools and their users, for example through RSS feeds and social bookmarking features - this is very much an area where publishers are keen to have their technology partner take the lead!
- Print on demand. IngentaConnect could act as a shop-window for publishers wishing to provide print-on-demand capabilities for books; this is also a useful feature when wishing to move journals to e-only without completely withdrawing from the ability to offer print. Ingenta is in discussion with a number of POD vendors with a view to offering this functionality should our publisher clients require it.
- Copyright clearance continues to be a laborious and time-consuming process for many publishers. Ingenta subsidiary Heron provides this service for UK institutions and may be able to help publishers reduce their administrative burden in this area.
Usage statistics, reporting and online advertising were also hot topics on the day.
Louise Tutton, Head of Client Management, said, "We are delighted to have captured a trend for greater collaboration with our new format. The informality of the environment, and the rapport within the group, led to an unprecedented level of openness which resulted in some truly valuable sharing of experiences. We are looking forward to further success with future events of this nature."
Our next UK open forum is planned for the last week in May 2007 - look out for news and further details on this and other publisher events in forthcoming eyetoeye newsletters.