The arrival of new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and machine learning are causing more than just a stir in the academic publishing sector. Several key players in academic publishing including SAGE, Springer Nature and Elsevier are commissioning R&D projects to see how they can improve what they do by leveraging these technologies.
Elsevier’s Chairman Ys Chi spoke of his company’s total transformation—from a publisher to an analytics firm—at ITHAKA’s Next Wave Conference in New York. Other publishers are talking about similar 360° pivots. At ConTech, food and health publishers, IFIS spoke of how they used new technologies to reinvigorate middle-aged ways of working and broke down the work into manageable phases.
The team from the Royal Society of Chemistry spoke about an automated and streamlined open access system they had developed, at the STM Week. The team revealed that the system was tailored entirely around the customer journey and funder requirements. The result, the authors are happier, funders satisfied and the data in the new system has the potential to become a more valuable asset. The team now wants to take a broader look at how the system interacts with its authors to ensure they are delivering an excellent service.
However, Sam Herbert, founder of the publishing technology firm 67 Bricks and Co-chair of ConTech, sounded a word of caution. He cautioned academic publishers from becoming too caught up in the hype. Instead, he suggested that they should focus on the data and the content that is at the heart of scholarly and academic research.
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