Liz Martin - Practicalities and challenges of ePub creation
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Presentation from JIBSs event February 2016
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Liz Martin - Practicalities and challenges of ePub creation
- 1. Practicalities and challenges of ePub creation from a technical perspective Liz Martin, Head of Production
- 2. Book received Assess files Create XML Language edit Apply XSLT to create layout Proof to author Check author corrections and proofread Amend XML and create final deliverables Publish online
- 3. Key benefits • Multiple format outputs • Device independence • Future proofing • Accuracy and consistency • Metadata enrichment • Content reuse
- 7. Questions?
Hinweis der Redaktion
- SLIDE 1: Introduction As a bit of background, IOP Publishing published traditional books for many years, but sold their programme to Taylor & Francis in 2005. This meant that unlike many publishers, we had a “clean slate” to start from, when we decided to launch a new books programme in 2013. This was key to how our programme and our processes developed because what this allowed us to do was clearly define what we were trying to achieve, not only from a content perspective, but also from a product perspective. Without the need to consider complexities like a back archives requiring digitization. We wanted to build our programme around the way people read content now, and in the future, rather than how they read it in the past. To us, this meant enabling people to read the book the way they want to, when they want to, on the device they want to. All of this meant that we were able to ensure that our programme was “born digital”, by which I mean it is not reliant on print sales; if print disappeared tomorrow it would not be a problem. What I will talk about today is how IOP Publishing has approached their ebooks, from technical, production perspective, and that in doing that I hope to provide some insight when considering the question of why all publishers aren’t immediately embracing the potential of ePub. ----------- I was talking with a colleague recently, about a completely unrelated subject, but they talked about a change that they were trying to make and compared it to trying to change the direction of an oil tanker at sea, i.e. not being able to change overnight, needing planning, commitment and patience, etc.
- SLIDE 2: Production workflow I’m going to launch straight in to our process. As you can see, even in this highly simplified view, the path from receipt of a book to publication is multi-step process. The book is received into Production from our colleagues in the Commissioning team and is assessed for completeness and for language editing requirements Immediately, following this the source files structured and converted to XML The content is language edited directly into the XML A “style sheet” is applied to create the layout which is sent to the author for approval Author corrections are applied and the article is proofread Changes are made to the master XML and all the final deliverables, including PDF and ePub are created These are then uploaded to our delivery platform (website) and published Creation of the XML is handled by off shore suppliers, as are certain elements of styling and layout. We use these suppliers to do the “heavy lifting”, the conversion of the source files into XML and appropriate figure formats and broad brush typographical layout, much of which can be automated to one degree or another. This allows the in-house Production Editors to focus on the key value adding areas of the process that cannot be handled by machines or processes, primarily language editing, proofreading etc.
- SLIDE 3: XML You will probably have noticed that ePub has had very little mention so far. This is because in our process, ePub is one of the final formats that we create as a result of using a single-source XML-first workflow. XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. It *looks* similar to HTML but works differently: HTML describes the look, feel and action of a webpage, and combines data structure with display XML describes the meaning of a document (data structure) and uses XSLTs (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) for display Using XML and XSLT you are very clearly separating the content from the display. Because the XML structures the content, an XSLT can transform it into anything – so from this one XML file we can create all the file formats that we need, HTML, print PDF, online PDF, ePub, Mobi, etc at the touch of a button. (Makes it sound easy, but I’ll come back to this later!) For example, our article display on IOPscience (our content delivery platform) is an XSLT applied to our XML to give an HTML “view”. I’ll show what that looks like in a moment. One of the other big benefits of XML is that it is technology agnostic, so the content is future-proofed. When a new file format comes out (whether that be upgraded XML, or something completely new), we can run our XML content through a transform and it will be ready to go: a huge contrast with the much larger amount of work which would be needed to convert PDF into something new, for example. The “single source” part is also important. There is one file, the XML that is created, and that remains the single source for any other deliverable format. If you need to make a change, you make it is one place, once and then generate all the other formats you require for all the different devices people may use to access the content, ensuring accuracy and consistency. This also means that from a content perspective, you are only required to check one place. When it is right in the XML, it is right in every one of your final formats. XML also enables metadata enrichment – content is tagged in XML to structure it, but the content can also be “described” which means that we can enrich with metadata. This can be used for a variety of things: Version information, pricing, almost anything related to the history of the content and path to publication Compliance with industry standards – e.g. ORCID, CrossRef, funding information To aid discoverability - full-text searchable unlike some PDFs, linking between related content, semantic enrichment, content re-use by A&I services, image/data banks Content reuse – because the content is clearly described it can be used in different ways depending on needs e.g. image or equation banks
- SLIDE 4: What this allows us to achieve Enables multiple formats: full-text HTML for all titles and EPUB3 as well as PDF at a: Book level HTML PDF ePub Table of contents Chapter level HTML PDF ePub And particularly important in the physics community, MathML equations, making even the maths searchable, reusable, “copy and pastable”, resizable, accessible etc.
- SLIDE 5: Pros and cons What I have described so far makes it all sound really easy (right?) and at some level it is, on an ongoing basis our process is robust, which allows us to eliminate the rounds of checking that are required when you are doing format conversions late in the process. This means it is resource effective and quick. We have published books in 8 weeks from acceptance (although that is not achievable on all books!) It also allows us to make books more than just words and pictures, making them more interactive, user friendly, informative, etc. It protects us in the future for updated versions of books, even without having all answers to the technology of the future and changing reading habits. It is also scalable, our programme is small right now, only about 75 books so far, but we have big plans. All of that said, we had to take difficult decisions along the way, for example we choose the types of books that we were going to publish and are disciplined with ourselves in sticking to that, we do not have bespoke designs available to each title or author, and there is more standardisation than might be appropriate in other markets or for different types of content. This process is also costly to set-up, there are significant investments required upfront in terms of resource, infrastructure, systems, workflows. There are significant impacts on skills sets of internal staff, the overhead of supplier management, endless specification and testing. And , this is where I circle back to the comment I made earlier about “creating all the file formats that we need at the touch of a button”. This is absolutely true, but the time, effort and technical skill involved in creating that button to press is enormous. As such, the level of change that this would entail for more traditional book programmes cannot be overestimated.
- SLIDE 6: Opportunities & challenges Following on from that theme, I’ve entitled this next slide opportunities and challenges, because almost everything I list here as an opportunity for us can equally be considered a challenge or constraint for other book publishers of different sizes, structure (and infrastructure), backgrounds, subject areas, geographical reach, etc. Subject area Physics is a discipline particularly well placed for the use of multimedia, the nature of the work turns itself to video, animations etc. This means that within this community readers are very open to e-only products, but it also means their expectations of these products are high – a flat PDF with words and figures is not enough. Other subject communities have different requirements and expectations, for example very high resolution images. Market Different geographic markets have different preferences/demands in terms of print, and different perceptions of quality, so where your market is will influence your choices. IOP Publishing has a global reach and needed to cover all the bases, but do it in a cost effective way to not price products out of the market. ___________ Print is most stable in EMEA (especially Germany) Asia, specifically China, is a major flat digital market US most volatile, but growing market for 2.0 aggregations ___________ Suppliers and skill sets To create a process such as ours, based on XML, you need different types of technical supplier than those for traditional book typesetting. Not only do they need XML coding expertise but they need to be able to develop all the tools necessary to handle the creation of multiple formats. These suppliers can also provide support in dealing with emerging technologies. Initial supplier set-up, however, is not for the faint hearted. It can take a significant amount of time, even years, partnering with a supplier to achieve the levels of quality required. In house staff also require very different skill sets, those necessary to monitor the performance and quality of output from the suppliers. This was an opportunity for us, as we already had these skills and expertise in house as a result of our journals publishing programme, which could then be applied to books. There are significant differences between journal and book publishing, not least in terms of timescales, relationship with the author, but at IOP Publishing fundamentally they use the same process. _______________ Hoops to jump through in dealing with Amazon: can’t not, in this day and age. But they insist on a proprietary format called Mobi to be included. Print on Demand, extensive experience but actually more straightforward to use existing services. _______________ Systems Delivery platform We have our own delivery platform, called IOPscience that has always been used for our journal content. We wanted our books content to be integrated with our journal to enable readers/researchers to search across all products. We had this infrastructure in place already, but still had to considerable changes to handle books well, but we were in control of those changes, unlike many publishers that use commercial delivery platforms. Workflow systems There are parallels that can be drawn between journal articles and books in terms of the content hierarchy, articles & chapters, books & issues etc. We used these to adapt existing journal workflows for books where possible. Journals experience and expertise Not necessarily a constraint, but for us was a definite opportunity, as our approach to our books programme, from a Production perspective, was based upon the journals workflow and leveraged our current set up, expertise, supplier base etc Without this experience and expertise, the whole enterprise would have been far more challenging and I have no doubt would have turned out very differently for us.
- Notes EPUB 3 is basically packaged Web content. It’s for the interchange and distribution of digital publications and documents based on Web standards. Example in IOPscience http://iopscience.iop.org/book/978-0-7503-1094-9 Product type Two collections, "Expanding Physics" and Concise Physics "Expanding Physics" contains research monographs and graduate level textbooks in physics - highly developed texts from leading names in the field "Concise Physics" are short books that aim to be the "first" book. Either the first book on a rapidly advancing area of research OR the first book on a topic to gain an understanding. The really big benefit of being short is they can be written and published fast so they are current. Miscellaneous Books 1.0 = Print Books 2.0 = Flat digital versions, e.g. PDF [Books 3.0] = delivering everything in 1.0 and 2.0, but better One last comment is that any organisation needs a number of small scaleable 2.x or 3.0 solutions, focused on a small number of well-defined markets. This requires a high degree of discipline and is contrary to some notions of 'innovation'. Open access - as we are a digital programme, OA is a possibility. However, we aren't seeing any demand from authors at this time, so it's unlikely we will be publishing any books on an OA basis any time soon Further reading – “Jon Walmsley on the changing face of academic and professional books” http://blog.alpsp.org/2015/02/jon-walmsley-on-changing-face-of.html Bill Kausdorf – annual updates on technology developments IOP ebooks Collections price matrix Release 1 (published 2014–15) Release 2 (published 2015–16) Collection Number of books GBP USD Number of books GBP USD IOP Expanding Physics 10 £1500 $2400 20 £3000 $4800 IOP Concise Physics 25 £1875 $3000 40 £3000 $4800 IOP ebooks package* (includes 10% discount) 35 £3038 $4860 60 £5400 $8640 Saving £337 $540 £600 $960 Key notes * Purchase the Expanding Physics and Concise Physics collections together for a 10% discount.