Platform developments: 2007 in review, 2008 sneak peek
The last quarter of 2007 saw many exciting developments to the IngentaConnect platform and the tools we give you to maximise its potential. The latest release incorporates a number of new features which have been developed in response to user feedback and evolving technologies. Here's a quick round-up:
"More like this" article recommendations
We partnered with content guidance pioneer Baynote to provide "more like this" article recommendations based on both the current context but also, more unusually in scholarly publishing, the user's previous behaviour. Articles reviewed or acquired by users with similar interests and behaviour will be recommended for consideration and potential purchase.
This development underlines our commitment to behavioural tracking and targetting as a more sophisticated means to deliver content to users; during the last year, we have also built a relationship with behavioural advertising network Tacoda to increase the efficacy of its online advertising services. (Read our Publishing Technology Trends feature to find out more about behavioural targetting). We hope that Baynote's recommendations will help more users to discover your content.
"Buy now" purchasing
In addition, IngentaConnect's pay-per-view and document delivery experience has been simplified with a new "Buy now" purchasing option enabling logged-in users to purchase documents with one click, instead of adding them to a shopping cart and completing a full checkout process. "Buy now" purchases will be charged to the user's default credit card or to an authorised payment account. You can view an example here. Again, the idea behind this development is that simplifying the check-out process encourages more users to purchase.
Screenshot of IngentaConnect's new "Buy now" feature,
with magnified highlight of the function within an article abstract page
Our development process
Our feature-driven, iterative development process sees regular platform releases, every 6 to 8 weeks, to ensure that new functionality is made available to you and your customers as quickly as possible. Other additions during 2007 include integration with CrossRef's Forward linking service, (an example of which can be found here), as well as LOCKSS and Portico compliance; the site also recently passed an audit for adherence to the second release of the COUNTER code of practice, which you can read more about in our Industry Projects Update, and there were a number of developments to our advertising programme during 2007 - read our full update on that project.
Subscription Management Tool Developments
At the beginning of 2007, we were delighted to launch our new Subscription Management Tool. SMT replaced the now redundant WebSAS system with the objective of providing you with greater control over how you manage your subscriptions and renewals, through a more robust and intuitive interface. The latter part of 2007 saw many further improvements and additions to the service, designed to enhance the process of subscription management and to improve the efficiency of the tool itself. This phase saw delivery of the following features and improvements:
- The option to download a file of existing active subscribers
- Tabbed browsing for Business Rules; splitting out Business Rules, Rejection Messages and Subscription Renewals
- The option to change the administrator email address has been made clearer
A further phase of development is currently underway and should bring even more enhancements, including:
- blocking of duplicate requests for access
- the ability to modify existing subscriptions, and set up new ones
- new tools to manage sales of e-subscriptions.
Publisher statistics
We are in the process of reviewing our publisher usage statistics package. Many of you have given feedback on what you would like to see improved or added to the system, and we are grateful for your input. Some of the features that we hope to be able to deliver include:
- breakdown of subscriber versus pay-per-view access
- number of turnaways
- improved performance.
New search engine
We also plan to roll out a new search engine for IngentaConnect during 2008. This will be built on the same open source code as the search engine that powers Wikipedia, and will enable:
- more flexible advanced searching
- search stemming, spell checking and relevance ranking
- federated searching
- full-text search.
Metastore integration: Virtual Journals and more
For the last couple of years we have been carrying out a research & development exercise to explore flexible, scalable data storage solutions. Our pioneering use of RDF triples to store and interconnect complex data sets is the largest commercial application and has won us an HP award. During the course of this year, the Metastore will be integrated with IngentaConnect to support a broader range of publication types. Its granular storage, in which data is split down and stored as many different components, also allows for new services such as data mining and the creation of "virtual journals".
Updated design
Can you believe it is now four years since we launched the IngentaConnect service? Web design, browser capabilities and user requirements have all changed a great deal since then. During the course of this year we will be working on a new design for the IngentaConnect interface. Our intention is to retain all functional tools in broadly the same locations, but to use collapsible menus to simplify the display of the many tools we now offer. There'll be some new features to look out for as well, including semantic browsing to help users extend their research path (which in turn should help more users to discover your content).
For more information about any of these recent or forthcoming developments, please contact your Client Manager.