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The purpose of this paper was to identify whether the two‐sided nature of markets in both online and offline channels affects the versioning strategies of multi‐channel publishers in the presence of channel substitutability.

Using analytical models, the versioning of a multi‐channel publisher is analysed, with consideration of advertising revenue and possible channel substitutability.

The paper shows that not only the two‐sided nature of the online market but also that of the offline market affects the versioning strategy online. Multiple online versions are desired when the offline advertising market shrinks and the online advertising market proliferates. In a reverse situation, providing one online version (for free) can be optimal.

Previous studies on versioning have mostly considered only the information market per se. However, studies on two‐sided markets have shown that analysis that focuses on a single side leads to analytical error due to inter‐market network externalities. In this context, it is proven that advertising revenue is a critical factor in the publisher's decision whether to provide multiple online versions.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the educational value of prestigious and productive Spanish scholarly publishers based on mentions of their books in online scholarly syllabi.

Syllabus mentions of 15,117 books from 27 publishers were searched for, manually checked and compared with Microsoft Academic (MA) citations.

Most books published by Ariel, Síntesis, Tecnos and Cátedra have been mentioned in at least one online syllabus, indicating that their books have consistently high educational value. In contrast, few books published by the most productive publishers were mentioned in online syllabi. Prestigious publishers have both the highest educational impact based on syllabus mentions and the highest research impact based on MA citations.

The results might be different for other publishers. The online syllabus mentions found may be a small fraction of the syllabus mentions of the sampled books.

Authors of Spanish-language social sciences and humanities books should consider general prestige when selecting a publisher if they want educational uptake for their work.

This is the first study assessing book publishers based on syllabus mentions.

This paper provides an extensive survey of the recent literature on scholarly publishing and its conversion to the electronic medium. It then presents the results of a questionnaire survey of the UK‐based scholarly publishing industry. The results of this survey suggest that the publishers are moving quickly towards the use of the Internet as a major medium for the distribution of their products, though they do not expect an early print publication. They also do not expect that any alternative system, based on scholars providing their results free of charge at the point of use, will seriously threaten the future of the commercial scholarly publisher. They do, however, perceive several significant difficulties in the near future. These include a shortage of appropriately trained staff, uncertainties about pricing mechanisms, lack of adequate budgetary provision by universities for library purchases, and unrealistic expectations on the part of scholars that electronic information should be inexpensive.

Libraries and professional publishers have long had a complicated relationship. This chapter seeks to explore some elements of this relationship in order to suggest new ways of regarding each of the parties and to generate an active dialog with the aim of improving collaboration and cooperation between them.

An online survey was conducted among 800 readers of Arab electronic newspapers resident in different parts of the world. The aim of the survey was to obtain baseline data about the readership for such newspapers, readers’ opinions about these publications, and antecedents of overall satisfaction with the services provided by these publications. Most readers of Arab online newspapers were male, students, professionals or business persons resident overseas, and were established, regular users of the Internet. For most, the Internet was regarded as an important news source and more than half the respondents claimed to read Arab online newspapers every day. Internet news was valued because it was readily available all the time, free of charge and provided a substitute for printed newspapers not available to them in their current location. The main problems were technical, linked to difficulty downloading or browsing content. The great majority (72 per cent) were satisfied with online newspapers. Frequency of reading electronic newspapers and overall satisfaction with online newspapers were predicted.

To provide a historical look at the development of web versions of reference materials and discuss what makes an easy‐to‐use and useful electronic handbook.

Electronic reference materials were limited to handbooks available on the web. Observations and assumptions about usability are tested with an information retrieval test for specific tasks in print and online editions of the same texts.

Recommended adoption of those elements which create a well‐designed book in combination with robust search capabilities and online presentation result in an easy‐to‐use and useful electronic reference source.

The small sample size that was used for testing limits the ability to draw conclusions, and is used only as an indication of the differences between models. A more thorough look at difference between electronic book aggregates, such as ENGnetBASE, Knovel^® and Referex would highlight the best features for electronic reference materials.

Advantages to particular models for electronic reference publishing are discussed, raising awareness for product evaluation. Areas of development for electronic reference book publishers or providers are identified. Work in these areas would help ensure maximum efficiency through cross title searching via meta‐searching and data manipulation.

The paper presents results from some human computer interaction studies about electronic books which have been implemented in a web interface, and the positive effects achieved.

This paper aims to identify the opinions of undergraduate students on the importance of internet‐based information sources when they undertake academic tasks.

Based on a set of identified typical academic tasks for undergraduate students, three research questions were designed around the students' usage and views of information resources for completing these tasks. Web‐accessible questionnaires were used to collect data from participants in two universities in the USA and China, and the data were analyzed using quantitative methods, which included several statistic methods.

The results confirm that undergraduate students use different information resources for various academic tasks. In their tasks, online electronic resources including search engines are the most commonly used resources, particularly for complex academic tasks. Social networking sites are not used for the students' individual academic tasks, and traditional resources still play equal or more important roles in certain specific academic tasks. Students in collaborative tasks look for resources that make it easy to share documents. Participants from the two countries also exhibit interesting and important differences in their usage of information resources.

This study examines undergraduate students' usages and views of different information resources in their various academic tasks, and pays special attention to the impacts of being from their different countries. The study also considers both students' individual academic tasks and collaborative tasks. This study is an invaluable addition to the information seeking behaviour literature.

Innovation Strategy/Entrepreneurship.

The case can be used in an MBA/postgraduate management program for a course on Innovations Strategy with a focus on disruptive innovation, specifically in relation to disruption in the value chain with the adoption of new technologies or for a course on Entrepreneurship focusing on the opportunities created by the Internet-based technologies for start-up businesses. Alternatively, it can be used in a course on e-commerce strategies, particularly to demonstrate the efficiency of online distribution vis-à-vis physical channels.

The case illustrates how Medknow Publications created a profitable e-commerce model out of a struggling conventional business, namely, the learned society journal publishing. It also provides a useful ground to discuss the challenges faced by the conventional scholarly journal publishing models, the current crisis in scholarly journal publishing and how Medknow, a disruptive business model innovation, would address these issues. Besides, the case illustrates how Medknow created a sustainable “for-profit” alternative to the prevailing not-for-profit models of open access publishing.

After the analysis and discussion of this case, students will be able to: appreciate how technological innovation can disrupt existing business models; understand how digitization helps improve the efficiency of value chain in the content industry, particularly the scholarly journal publishing industry; and appreciate that the flexibility of digitized content and the global reach of the Internet have the potential to transform the scholarly journal publishing industry for good.

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