New New Things--Trends to Watch in Professional Publishing

New New Things--Trends to Watch in Professional PublishingRichard W. NewmanSSP, June 8, 2006

In the Beginning…

• There was Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, father of the Web

• Those who shared his vision took the technology and developed new application after new application

• New was better

• Lots of new features made Web sites look timely, created buzz, generated traffic

And It Continues Today:Ideas, Ideas, Ideas

• Presentations at SSP, PSP, CSE, other professional meetings

• Online host’s new features• 47 new at HighWire meeting in May

• New features on competitor sites

• Advice from authors, board members, readers, librarians, gadget freak colleagues

• This morning’s Wall Street Journal

Continuous Pressures to Add New Features

• Self-imposed, after watching Kent Anderson presentations

• Competitive pressures—they have it, don’t we need it?

• The need to impress others with your technological prowess

Adding More and More, But Why?

• The primary focus has been: • What are new and better ways to do things?• not ways to evaluate what we have done• not what should be replaced .

• Does “new” always mean worthwhile?• Resources are finite• Space on Web pages is limited

• at least “above the fold”

• Without restraint…

Sobering Feedback

• Librarians at Charleston Conference• worry about feature cost• like trade show booths• their focus was content

• Physicians at Council of Science Editors• don’t know about, or use, or have time for,

most features

• JAMA/Archives Web survey• few know about features• even in a “survey of the willing”

What the Question Isn’t

• Is it new?

• Is it state-of-the art?

• Is it on other sites?

The Key Strategic Questionsfor New Features

• What problem are we trying to solve? • Have readers cited the problem?• Have readers requested the proposed

solution?

• Will it attract a key audience (authors, academics, physicians)?

• Are our intelligent competitors doing it?• Do we know whether their readers use it?• Or are we throwing money down the same

sinkhole they already have?

How Do You Evaluate Potential Features?

• Are you trying to attract readers? authors? media? the public?

• What do users expect/need/want?

• What makes them want to come back?

• Do the bells and whistles matter to them, ultimately?

How Do You Evaluate Potential Features?

• What is your metric? • subscriptions?

• Web hits?

• submissions?

• impact factor?

• notoriety?

• Can your site be all things to all people?

How Do you Evaluate Ideas?3-Stage Screening Process

• First screen: Before investing any time or effort

• Second screen: Before implementing

• Third screen: After implementing

Preliminary Screening: Will It Improve an Important Metric?

• Quality metrics:• Impact Factor

• Times-cited statistic

• Commercial metrics:• Subscription sales

• Usage statistics

• Readership scores (for journals that carry advertising)

• Features are a means to an end

• Site sexiness is not an important metric

Preliminary Screening: Will It Improve an Important Metric?

• Quality metrics:• Impact Factor

• Times-cited statistic

• Commercial metrics:• Subscription sales

• Usage statistics

• Readership scores (for journals that carry advertising)

The Quality Metrics

• Relate to content

• New technology feature will not improve the quality of a journal’s content, but…

• Could make existing content more visible:• RSS

• PDA alerts

• Could help attract/retain authors:• Author Data Center

• Publish-ahead-of-print

Preliminary Screening: Will It Improve an Important Metric?

• Quality metrics:• Impact Factor

• Times-cited statistic

• Commercial metrics:• Subscription sales

• Usage statistics

• Readership scores (for journals that carry advertising)

The Commercial Metrics

• Relate to usage

• Usage is difficult to measure for print journals• pass-along estimates

• journals generally do not circulate

• some libraries use re-shelving counts as the only possible usage statistic

• COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) reports show which journals are most used

• Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) will make aggregating easier

The Commercial Metrics

• Increased importance of usage statistics:• Major pharmaceutical company analyzed the

cost of each full-text access by company staff (journal price --divided by--full text views).

• Librarian informed us that the cost per access for JAMA and for eight of the Archivesjournals was within acceptable limits.

• No criteria beyond cost per full-text download used in the evaluation

• Impact Factor, ISI “times cited” statistics, and other potential factors were ignored.

The Commercial Metrics

• No evidence that librarians select online journals because of features

• Only full-text article usage is typically evaluated in library statistics

• even publishers have difficulty obtaining feature statistics

• New features can help explain price increases

Possible Metric-Focused Criteria

• Favor: • features that drive users to articles

• e-mail a friend

• intra-site links that drive traffic to other articles (“site stickiness”)

• related article links (e.g., editorial)

• carry search-engine search to site

• Be Cautious:• search bells and whistles, unless your journal

is a portal site (not destination site)

Second Screen: Might Actual Readers Find It, Use It?

• Key is actual users in non-survey environment• user panels

• in-depth interviews or non-intrusive observation

• Probe how new feature would be used in day-to-day activities

• Usability testing of prototype to ensure that users will find feature

• Scenarios to see if feature fits into logical workflow:

• don’t focus scenarios too closely on feature being examined

Second Screen: Might Actual Readers Find It, Use It?

• Be neutral in studies

• Reject the role as champion

• Be a scientist, not a partisan

Final Screen: Is It Actually Used?

• Most-used feature stats much more important than most-read article info

• Is typical workflow what you anticipated or want?

• Where do users abandon the path?• Sophisticated statistics package desirable• Simple, but effective, techniques if journal

cannot afford sophisticated package• Snapshot data better than nothing

Before Abandoning a Feature, Try New Placement

• Commercial sites do this regularly; Washington Post daily

• Remember to adhere to prevailing placement standards and conventions

• Jakob Nielsen's Law of the Internet User Experience: users spend most of their time on other websites.

• In visiting all these other sites, people become accustomed to the prevailing design standards and conventions.

• When users arrive at your site, they assume it will work the same way as other sites.

It’s OK to Delete Features

• Especially if license, or other ongoing fee is involved

• Page real estate in valuable

• Too many choices may confuse or distract readers

The 3-Step Process

• Will the proposed feature improve an important quality or commercial metric?

• Is it likely to be used, based on:• ability to meet a user need

• visibility on the Web site

• Is it actually being used?

Final advice: Wait, if in doubt

Being First Is Generally Unimportant

PIONEER

• Ampex

• Books.com

• Compuserve

• Bowmer

EXPLOITER

• JVC, Sony

• Amazon.com

• AOL

• Texas Instruments

Don’t Be Afraid to Try, and Fail

• Batting 1.000 is a bad statistic

• Experiment, observe, react

• Share negative results with scholarly community, too