In August, Information Media Partners released its annual “Publishing Technology Report,” authored by Michael Cairns. CCC was among the companies and services covered in this report.
As a fan of Massachusetts’ own MBTA, I especially liked the updated version of the “subway map,” an infographic based on the idea of depicting the solutions marketplace as a series of interconnected stops in a transportation network. It is a:
… “Subway” Market Map showing the universe of software and services companies supporting the publishing industry and their capabilities across up to 14 process areas. Many publishing specific technology companies provide support across multiple functional areas within their target markets. Many publishing companies will contract with multiple vendors on this chart to create integrated and mixed technology environments within their organizations.
This analysis of CCC’s services offerings in this domain seemed spot on to me:
“CCC helps publishers make the most of their existing CMS solutions to improve workflows, find new customers and create new kinds of content. Part of that effort involves adding new content types to RightFind and Marketplace, expanding access to document delivery and reprints, spurring the shift to Open Access with better data and tools and streamlining academic licensing.”
Given what we’ve written about the scientific and scholarly ecosystem as well as about specific components of the publishing workflow such as peer review , two of the report’s market insights really stand out:
“Metadata management continues to be a challenge for the industry. The best solution will enable frequent metadata updates, open data and proactive metadata checks whereby data is checked for accuracy on retailer websites.”
[And, within editorial workflow] “More focus on low-cost editorial workflow solutions to support open access publishing; Renewed effort to speed up the editorial and production process is with the adoption of standards, formats, templates and technology; Increasing format types with video, audio and data sets embedded in production workflow will complicate editorial workflows ; Greater focus on disambiguation of name data (authors, institutions) will enhance search and retrieval and also better support open access business models.”
For those of us constantly knuckle-deep in the brain surgery of trying to understand (and more effectively implement) the “technical solutions” aspects of publishing, this is an invaluable report and is worth taking time to pore over.
For readers of the Velocity of Content blog, click on this link to purchase the report and use code “PTReport21” for a discounted price. The report is 165 pages and includes in-depth profiles of 31 companies in the publishing software market.