Dec
20
Yet Another Turning Point….
Filed Under B2B, Big Data, Blog, data analytics, Industry Analysis, internet, Publishing, Reed Elsevier, Search, STM, Thomson, Uncategorized, Workflow | Leave a Comment
As some readers at this place already know , the boring fact is that I started work in the publishing and information industry in October 1967 , and am thus over fifty years as an observer of change in these parts . And , in what some regard as a fifty year dotage , , I am prone to remark that change is the new normal etc etc and pour scorn on the wealthy publisher who I approached for work in 1993 and who replied “ tell me when your digital revolution thing is over and then help me to cope with the next five hundred years of the post-printing world “ . And I quite see the point . Revolutions are not for everyone . And there were comfortable years in my twenties when it seemed possible to believe that Longman ad OUP, Nelson and Macmillan , could go on ruling the post colonial world of school textbook publishing with nothing more exciting than a revised Latin syllabus to stir the waters of their creativity . Yet in truth the world of print , from the rise of Gutenberg to the fall of the house of Murdoch , has been full of change . It just happens faster and more completely now .
In the old world ( my personal calendar divides at 1993 , Year 1 ,when I did my first internet strategy consultancy job : Appearances to the contrary my age is only 25! ) we bought and sold companies on valuations that reflected something of their ownership of unique , proprietory content . In the deals that I did for Thomson in the early 1980s , and particularly in the building of the then large law database Eurolex , ownership and exclusivity were critical . Journeying to Luxembourg last week , I reflected on my first visit there in 1980 to negotiate the rights to put the judgements of the European Court of Justice online . Reporting triumphantly to my chairman , I recall him saying – “ but surely they are worthless if everyone can get them ? “ Since that day the following earthquakes have taken place : cross-file searching that gave real utility to collections of documents held online ; the Internet and the Web , which permitted exposed content to be treated and searched as if it were all in the same place ; and then the ability to scrape , copy , transmit and , in the age of SciHub , mass-pirate that allegedly precious content , proprietory or not .
And so we emerge into the Age of data . It took a decade for the content world to understand that the Web was not just a place where you took the formats of yesterday , reloaded them digitally and pursued the same business models . By 2005 much of this had been done , and over the next ten years we had some really interesting Web formats , many new variant business models , and the first tremors of the new ‘shake . We call this round of shifting and grinding tectonic plates the Data revolution , and you need to look closely at micro movements to see it happening . In an area like science research , always a useful bellwether , the last quarter showed real progress in terms of the reaction of major players . In landmark announcements in the past three months Springer Nature have indicated that their SciGraph now contains over a billion metadata items ( https://www.springernature.com/go/group/media/press-releases/one-billion-metadata-facts-now-on-springer-nature-scigraph/15313528?utm_medium=spredfast&utm_content=SpringerNature_Press%20Release&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=SpringerNature_&sf176646201=1. ) while Elsevier have cleverly released their Unified Data Model (UDM) to a club of Pharma companies (https://www.dataiq.co.uk/article/elsevier-opens-data-model-life-sciences-innovation) . In short this means that the largest traditional content players in the sector are awakening to two critical factors in the post-content world – the content-about – thee-content will be more important than the content itself , and that your data model will be the most important means you have of communicating with your customers .
This column has many times rehearsed the market moves away from research and towards workflow . We have dwelt here at almost embarrassing length on the device as a solution rather than a primary access point . In the research world we can clearly see the emergence of a tools and services economy , in a market that has moved away from budget restricted purchasing points like the library and towards a total concentration on researcher support . Many publishers would love to go on living in a traditional publishing world – especially in scholarly societies dependent on journal income – but as Roger Schonfeld has indicated in two recent Scholarly Kitchen articles , it is simply no longer possible . If even Titans like Elsevier and Springer Nature are moving off the floodplain and seeking higher ground , everyone else needs a lifeboat . This is a consolidating market too – acquisition and failure are increasing , though who would want to buy traditional journals at present ? Consolidation here means outlets decreasing , more preprints and an increase in informal availability and transmission ( ResearchGate ) .
But the move to a data driven market where metadata searching is routine and text and data mining is a fluent part of most research processes implies that everything is available to be swept . Academic publishing is a paywall world where use of advanced mining techniques has to be negotiated with data holders . And publishers building analytics will find that you need a centrality of deployment to make them meaningful . As Roger Schonfeld indicates , this implies a partnering spirit that is alien to the capitalist spirit. And Danny Kingsley , director of Scholarly Communications at Cambridge said in an LII speech at the beginning of this month , the risk is that while the public purse can pay for some initial innovation , these funds cannot be reliably sustained – with the result that companies she named like Elsevier were buying their way into the academic service economy . This obviously worried her more than it does me – people fleeing for the hills cannot be too picky – but it does raise the interesting question of where the value now lies that underpins these players . It is not surely in the copyrights . It may be in the software . Increasingly it will be in the analytics , but this will be a fast moving game of winner -takes-all. – for a moment . And how many big service companies do you need – I suggest a market leader and a competitor to keep him honest is enough . This is the trouble with earthquakes , you end up sitting somewhere unfamiliar waiting for the aftershocks .
To those who have reached this point , thanks and seasonal greetings . More funeral rites next year , for which I wish you every happiness and success- especially if you are tackling the enigma which is the networked digital society .
Nov
10
Watching the Future Take Flight
Filed Under B2B, Big Data, Blog, data analytics, Financial services, healthcare, Industry Analysis, internet, mobile content, Search, social media, STM | Leave a Comment
Lets start with the Flight. At the end of last week came that rare luxury and respite – the NOAH show! For two whole days, since 2009, the investment community have been able to lounge in Old Billingsgate and make up their minds about what is likely, what is imminent and what wont happen in eCommerce and Internet services. On three stages and in front of some 600 investment outfits, over 500 early growth players say “its me you were really looking for”. The cases, the comparitive performance, and the real knowledge on display is hugely heartening. Something tells me that London as the start-up centre of Europe is now a bit off the top of the curve. NOAH advisors, who run this show, have opened a Berlin show and intend one as well for Tel Aviv next year, and if I were them then I would also be looking at Barcelona when the current crisis subsides. But location is not the most important thing here. Innovation in services cultures in a networked society goes viral – and comes out of a global market to start with, as the Dallas, Texas, based founder of Bumble demonstrated as she appeared on stage with her Russian tech partner, Badoo. They were interviewed by the founding partner of NOAH, and its Master of Ceremonies, Marco Rodzynek, in a session. That reminded me that behind the apparent strength of seemingly impregnable network market leadership like Facebook there always looms a lither, smarter competitor who grows very quickly, and who must be emulated or acquired if seemingly impregnable positions are to be maintained.
Then if you waited till the end of Marco’s Show you got to fly. Featured there were Volocopter and Lillium, a full week before NASA and Uber announced their deal, adverting the glories of investing in autonomous air taxis. Lillium, a vertical take off jet solution, can land on a tennis court and can take you 300 km at 300 km per hour. Volcopter, as its name suggests, is driven by a ring of small rotors, is also battery driven but shorter in range. Both are German, both do huge information-based navigation work, and Lillium has been extensively experimented with in urban conditions in Dubai. Although they were a surprizing find in this context, for those of us who lead a screen based existence, they were a welcome reminder of the real world significance of all the data crunching going on around us. And as I rode home comfortably on German owned Chiltern Railways, I reflected on leaders in my country prepared to invest $75 billion on a new railway line, not yet begun, which will, when it opens in 2033, clip a life and job saving 22 minutes off the train schedule between London and Birmingham. Mercifully I shall not be here to see it – I shall be in the air taxi!
Another visionary with a loaded gun full of ideas at NOAH was Ali Parsa, the founder of Babylon healthcare. Within days of the show he had announced another big leap forward in supporting Britain’s overworked healthcare system with voice and video medical practice extensions, allowing computer supported diagnostics for those who cannot or need not get a consultation in person. as this gets better and better, and has more intelligent systems support, it offers the only real hope we have of getting the NHS back on track as a national free-at-the-point-of-use system. And as the network gets better the diagnostic session will improve, and the analytics will deliver more insight. Listening computers will be able to prompt the doctor with more questions, and produce a range of answers and probabilities, and a treatment schedule for the doctor to consider and turn into prescriptions, patient notes and records for the regular GP. By using this for minor ailments the system may survive – if we do not use it outside of London then it certainly won’t, but it does point again, in a tiny country like Britain, towards a need for equality in what is rapidly becoming a human rights issue – access at home to superfast broadband. We should be giving every citizen regardless of where they live at least 40 megabits of upload and download. The fact that we are not (yet the South Koreans are) was graphically demonstrated by the village in Devon who, on 5th November, the traditional Bonfire Night , burnt in effigy not Guy Fawkes, but a British Telecom Superfast Broadband van. Not much diagnostics down there, then, and not even a high speed train in 15 years time to take them to the next NHS bottleneck much quicker. The future is here, as William Gibson so wisely said, but its not very evenly spread.
Much more to say about journals and funders and scholarly communication next week. After the Great Debate at the Stationers company this week, we all decided that regulation under Brexit was only going to get worse, and as we thought of data regulation and copyright we felt better off where we were than where we might be going. And I am chairing the session on “whose Research is it Anyway” at London Information International on December 5-6. More warming than mulled wine, I assure you!
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