Credibility is vital for established publishers as they have an interest in maintaining quality and ethical standards. The role of the publisher in the developing knowledge economy, however, should not stop with just establishing credibility. Publishers should find ways to advance research through increased discoverability and usability of their content, by revealing and tapping the implicit connections within it. One way publishers can go beyond establishing credibility is to leverage content enrichment practices.
Content enrichment is the transformation of text and figures into linkable items thereby creating a dynamic resource. Content enrichment requires skills and infrastructure, and it is transforming the way people are thinking about publishing. Previously publishers were focused on reducing the time to publication from manuscript acceptance. Currently, the focus is on taking the time to add value.
Content enrichment can help publishers add value by generating a “fingerprint” of an article. The fingerprint represents the focus and scope of an article and provides a kind of “index on steroids.” As a result, it offers several things that benefit researchers, authors, editors, and societies.
For instance, a life scientist accessing an article will see a list of related articles on the abstract page. For editors, it can be a challenge to find reviewers outside their usual pools to provide fresh perspectives within a discipline. Article fingerprints can help build a service that can identify relevant authors from their highly similar, previous works and present them for consideration. Similarly, a researcher working on a particular disease would be able to identify a collaborator.
Furthermore, by powering society hubs, content enrichment offers a ready way for researchers to survey related content across the various titles in a society’s portfolio. In many cases, these hubs are bringing researchers’ attention to titles they may not have explored. Similarly, a publisher can create a cross-society hub, delivering a rich collection of material within a subject area.
In all these scenarios – some actual, some potential – it will be important to establish industry standards. It will ensure that the knowledge models for topics are shared across the scientific and research community to enhance the discovery and evolution of knowledge.
In short, content enrichment is driving an iterative process that is changing the conversations publishers can have with their audiences. They can now have a dialogue to make their content richer and more useful. Additionally, content enrichment can give publishers a foundation to do things they do not yet know that they would want to do.
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