Publishing and disseminating documents via electronic means
Electronic publishing
(also referred to as
e-publishing
,
digital publishing
, or
online publishing
) includes the digital publication of
e-books
,
digital magazines
, and the development of
digital libraries
and catalogues.
[1]
It also includes the editing of books, journals, and magazines to be posted on a screen (computer,
e-reader
,
tablet
, or
smartphone
).
[2]
About
[
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]
Electronic publishing has become common in
scientific publishing
where it has been argued that
peer-reviewed
scientific journals
are in the process of being replaced by electronic publishing. It is also becoming common to distribute
books
,
magazines
, and
newspapers
to consumers through
tablet reading devices
, a market that is growing by millions each year,
[3]
generated by online vendors such as Apple's iTunes bookstore, Amazon's bookstore for Kindle, and books in the Google Play Bookstore. Market research suggested that half of all magazine and newspaper circulation would be via digital delivery by the end of 2015
[4]
and that half of all reading in the United States would be done without paper by 2015.
[5]
Although distribution via the
Internet
(also known as online publishing or web publishing when in the form of a website) is nowadays strongly associated with electronic publishing, there are many non-network electronic publications such as
encyclopedias on CD and DVD
, as well as technical and reference publications relied on by mobile users and others without reliable and high-speed access to a network. Electronic publishing is also being used in the field of test-preparation in developed as well as in developing economies for student education (thus partly replacing conventional books) ? for it enables content and analytics combined ? for the benefit of students. The use of electronic publishing for textbooks may become more prevalent with
Apple Books
from
Apple Inc.
and Apple's negotiation with the three largest textbook suppliers in the U.S.
[6]
Electronic publishing is increasingly popular in works of fiction. Electronic publishers are able to respond quickly to changing market demand, because the companies do not have to order printed books and have them delivered. E-publishing is also making a wider range of books available, including books that customers would not find in standard book retailers, due to insufficient demand for a traditional "print run". E-publication is enabling new authors to release books that would be unlikely to be profitable for traditional publishers. While the term "electronic publishing" is primarily used in the 2010s to refer to online and web-based publishers, the term has a history of being used to describe the development of new forms of production, distribution, and user interaction in regard to computer-based production of text and other
interactive media
.
[7]
History
[
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]
Digitization
[
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]
The first
digitization
initiative was in 1971 by
Michael S. Hart
, a student at the
University of Illinois at Chicago
, who launched
Project Gutenberg
,
[8]
designed to make literature more accessible to everyone, through the internet. It took a while to develop, and in 1989 there were only 10 texts that were manually recopied on computer by Michael S. Hart himself and some volunteers. But with the appearance of the Web 1.0 in 1991 and its ability to connect documents together through static pages, the project moved quickly forward. Many more volunteers helped in developing the project by giving access to public domain classics.
[9]
In the 1970s, the
French National Centre for Scientific Research
digitized a thousand books from diverse subjects, mostly
literature
but also philosophy and science, dating back to the 12th century to present times. In this way were built the foundations of a large dictionary, the
Tresor de la langue francaise au Quebec
. This foundation of e-texts, named Frantext, was published on a
compact disc
under the brand name
Discotext
, and then on the
worldwide web
in 1998.
[10]
Mass-scale digitization
[
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]
In 1974, American inventor and futurist
Raymond Kurzweil
developed a scanner which was equipped with an
Omnifont
software that enabled
optical character recognition
for numeric inputs.
[
clarification needed
]
The digitization projects could then be more ambitious since the time needed for digitization decreased considerably, and digital libraries were on the rise. All over the world, e-libraries started to emerge.
[
citation needed
]
The ABU (
Association des Bibliophiles Universels)
, was a public digital library project created by the
Cnam
in 1993. It was the first French digital library in the network; suspended since 2002, they reproduced over a hundred texts that are still available.
[11]
In 1992, the
Bibliotheque nationale de France
launched a vast
digitization
program. The president
Francois Mitterrand
had wanted since 1988 to create a new and innovative digital library, and it was published in 1997 under the name of
Gallica
.
[12]
In 2014, the digital library was offering 80 255 online books and over a million documents, including prints and manuscripts.
[13]
In 2003,
Wikisource
was launched, and the project aspired to constitute a digital and multilingual library that would be a complement to the Wikipedia project. It was originally named "Project Sourceberg", as a word play to remind the Project Gutenberg.
[14]
Supported by the
Wikimedia Foundation
,
Wikisource
proposes digitized texts that have been verified by volunteers.
[15]
In December 2004, Google created
Google Books
, a project to digitize all the books available in the world (over 130 million books) to make them accessible online.
[16]
10 years later, 25 000 000 books, from a hundred countries and in 400 languages, are on the platform. This was possible because by that time, robotic scanners could digitize around 6 000 books per hour.
[17]
In 2008, the prototype of
Europeana
was launched; and by 2010, the project had been giving access to over 10 million digital objects. The Europeana library is a European catalog that offers index cards on millions of digital objects and links to their digital libraries.
[18]
In the same year,
HathiTrust
was created to put together the contents of many university e-libraries from
USA
and Europe, as well as Google Books and
Internet Archive
. In 2016, over six millions of users had been using HathiTrust.
[19]
Electronic publishing
[
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]
The first digitization projects were transferring physical content into digital content. Electronic publishing is aiming to integrate the whole process of editing and publishing (production, layout, publication) in the digital world.
Alain Mille, in the book
Pratiques de l'edition numerique
(edited by Michael E. Sinatra and Marcello Vitali-Rosati),
[20]
says that the beginnings of Internet and the
Web
are the very core of electronic publishing, since they pretty much determined the biggest changes in the production and diffusion patterns. Internet has a direct effect on the publishing questions, letting creators and users go further in the traditional process (writer-editor-publishing house).
[21]
The traditional publishing, and especially the creation part, were first revolutionized by new
desktop publishing softwares
appearing in the 1980s, and by the text databases created for the encyclopedias and
directories
. At the same time the
multimedia
was developing quickly, combining book,
audiovisual
and
computer science
characteristics. CDs and DVDs appear, permitting the visualization of these dictionaries and encyclopedias on computers.
[22]
The arrival and democratization of Internet is slowly giving small publishing houses the opportunity to publish their books directly online. Some websites, like
Amazon
, let their users buy
eBooks
; Internet users can also find many educative platforms (free or not), encyclopedic websites like
Wikipedia
, and even digital magazines platforms. The eBook then becomes more and more accessible through many different supports, like the e-reader and even smartphones. The digital book had, and still has, an important impact on publishing houses and their economical models; it is still a moving domain, and they yet have to master the new ways of publishing in a digital era.
[23]
Online edition
[
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]
Based on new communications practices of the web 2.0 and the new architecture of participation, online edition opens the door to a collaboration of a community to elaborate and improve contents on Internet, while also enriching reading through collective reading practices. The web 2.0 not only links documents together, as did the web 1.0, it also links people together through social media: that's why it's called the
Participative (or participatory) Web
.
[24]
Many tools were put in place to foster sharing and creative collective contents. One of the many is the Wikipedia encyclopedia, since it is edited, corrected and enhanced by millions of contributors.
OpenStreetMap
is also based on the same principle. Blogs and comment systems are also now renown as online edition and publishing, since it is possible through new interactions between the author and its readers, and can be an important method for inspiration but also for visibility.
[25]
Process
[
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]
The electronic publishing process follows some aspects of the traditional paper-based publishing process
[26]
but differs from traditional publishing in two ways: 1) it does not include using an
offset printing
press to print the final product and 2) it avoids the distribution of a physical product (e.g., paper books, paper magazines, or paper newspapers). Because the content is electronic, it may be distributed over the Internet and through electronic bookstores, and users can read the material on a range of electronic and digital devices, including
desktop computers
,
laptops
,
tablet computers
,
smartphones
or
e-reader
tablets. The consumer may read the published content online on a website, in an application on a tablet device, or in a
PDF
document on a computer. In some cases, the reader may print the content onto paper using a consumer-grade ink-jet or laser printer or via a
print-on-demand
system. Some users download digital content to their devices, enabling them to read the content even when their device is not connected to the Internet (e.g., on an airplane flight).
Distributing content electronically as
software applications
("apps") has become popular in the 2010s, due to the rapid consumer adoption of smartphones and tablets. At first, native apps for each mobile platform were required to reach all audiences, but in an effort toward universal device compatibility, attention has turned to using
HTML5
to create
web apps
that can run on any browser and function on many devices. The benefit of electronic publishing comes from using three attributes of digital technology:
XML
tags to define content,
[27]
style sheets
to define the look of content, and
metadata
(data about data) to describe the content for
search engines
, thus helping users to find and locate the content (a common example of metadata is the information about a song's songwriter, composer, genre that is electronically encoded along with most CDs and
digital audio files
; this metadata makes it easier for music lovers to find the songs they are looking for). With the use of tags, style sheets, and metadata, this enables
"reflowable" content
that adapts to various reading devices (tablet, smartphone, e-reader, etc.) or electronic delivery methods.
Because electronic publishing often requires text mark-up (e.g.,
HyperText Markup Language
or some other markup language) to develop online delivery methods, the traditional roles of typesetters and book designers, who created the printing set-ups for paper books, have changed. Designers of digitally published content must have a strong knowledge of mark-up languages, the variety of reading devices and computers available, and the ways in which consumers read, view or access the content. However, in the 2010s, new
user friendly
design software is becoming available for designers to publish content in this standard without needing to know detailed programming techniques, such as
Adobe Systems
'
Digital Publishing Suite
and Apple's
iBooks Author
. The most common file format is
.epub
, used in many
e-book formats
. .epub is a free and open standard available in many publishing programs. Another common format is .folio, which is used by the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to create content for Apple's iPad tablets and apps.
Academic publishing
[
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]
After an article is submitted to an
academic journal
for consideration, there can be a delay ranging from several months to more than two years
[28]
before it is published in a journal, rendering journals a less than ideal format for disseminating current research. In some fields, such as
astronomy
and some areas of
physics
, the role of the journal in disseminating the latest research has largely been replaced by
preprint
repositories such as
arXiv.org
. However, scholarly journals still play an important role in quality control and establishing scientific credit. In many instances, the electronic materials uploaded to preprint repositories are still intended for eventual publication in a peer-reviewed journal. There is statistical evidence that electronic publishing provides wider dissemination,
[29]
because when a journal is available online, a larger number of researchers can access the journal. Even if a professor is working in a university that does not have a certain journal in its library, she may still be able to access the journal online. A number of journals have, while retaining their longstanding
peer review
process to ensure that the research is done properly, established electronic versions or even moved entirely to electronic publication.
Copyright
[
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]
In the early 2000s, many of the existing copyright laws were designed around printed books, magazines and newspapers. For example, copyright laws often set limits on how much of a book can be mechanically reproduced or copied. Electronic publishing raises new questions in relation to copyright, because if an e-book or e-journal is available online, millions of Internet users may be able to view a single electronic copy of the document, without any "copies" being made.
Emerging evidence suggests that e-publishing may be more collaborative than traditional paper-based publishing; e-publishing often involves more than one author, and the resulting works are more accessible, since they are published online. At the same time, the availability of published material online opens more doors for
plagiarism
, unauthorized use, or re-use of the material.
[30]
Some publishers are trying to address these concerns. For example, in 2011,
HarperCollins
limited the number of times that one of its e-books could be lent in a
public library
.
[31]
Other publishers, such as
Penguin
, are attempting to incorporate e-book elements into their regular paper publications.
Examples
[
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]
Electronic versions of traditional media
[
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]
New media
[
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]
Business models
[
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]
See also
[
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]
References
[
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]
- ^
Smith, Stephanie A. (March 9, 2018).
Careers in Media and Communication
. SAGE Publications.
ISBN
978-1-5443-2078-6
.
- ^
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.
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- ^
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"Tablet sales may hit $75 billion by 2015"
.
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- ^
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.
- ^
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,
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, October 2010. As reported by Richard Hart,
E-books look to be hit over holiday season
,
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, November 21, 2010.
- ^
"Apple jumps into digital textbooks fray - Yahoo! News"
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- ^
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.
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.
- ^
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Les mutations du livre a l'heure de l'internet
, Net des etudes francaises, Montreal, 2007
- ^
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ISBN
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.
- ^
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.
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- ^
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Les mutations du livre
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- ^
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.
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- ^
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.
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on January 29, 2017
. Retrieved
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- ^
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.
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. Retrieved
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.
- ^
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.
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- ^
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.
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.
- ^
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.
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. Retrieved
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- ^
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.
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.
- ^
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(pdf)
- ^
Vitali-Rosati, Marcello; E. Sinatra, Michael (2014).
Pratiques de l'edition numerique
(in French). Sens Public.
ISBN
978-2-7606-3592-0
.
- ^
Sinatra, Michael E.; Vitalli-Rosati, Marcello (2014).
"Histoire des humanites numeriques"
.
Pratiques de l'edition numerique
. Pratiques de l'edition numerique (in French). Montreal: Presses de l'Universite de Montreal. pp. 49?60.
ISBN
978-2-7606-3202-8
. Retrieved
April 10,
2017
.
- ^
"5. L'edition numerique et le livre numerique"
. Archived from
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on February 22, 2019
. Retrieved
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.
- ^
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. European Parliament
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2018
.
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"Web 2.0 Revolution: Power to the People"
.
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. Applied Clinical Trials-08-01-2006
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. February 22, 2019. Archived from
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- ^
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Ellison, Glenn (October 1, 2002).
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.
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.
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.
ISSN
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.
- ^
Online Or Invisible?
by
Steve Lawrence
of the
NEC Research Institute
- ^
Chennupati K. Ramaiah, Schubert Foo and Heng Poh Choo,
eLearning and Digital Publishing
.
[
where?
]
- ^
Stross, Randall (December 24, 2011).
"Publishers vs. Libraries: An E-Book Tug of War"
.
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0362-4331
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.
- ^
The term "non-subsidy publisher" is used to distinguish an electronic publisher that uses the traditional method of accepting submissions from authors without payment by the author. It is, therefore, to be distinguished from any form of self-publishing. It is traditional publishing, probably using a non-traditional medium, like electronic, or
POD
. See also:
Subsidy Publishing vs. Self-Publishing: What's the Difference?
Archived
January 2, 2010, at the
Wayback Machine
External links
[
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]