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E-PUBLISHING:
E-Reference
Revolution Oxford
University Press launch the biggest general knowledge website
on the Net
LAUNCHED IN MARCH,
Oxford Reference Online has made 100 reference titles available
via the Internet, including the Concise English Dictionary,
Fowler's Modern English, A Dictionary of Economics, and Who's
Who. They plan to eventually expand this to 300 volumes, including
the Popular Oxford Companions series. This will make it the
largest reference source on the Internet, almost three times
larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica and twice the size of
the current record holder, the 60-million words of the full
Oxford English Dictionary.
"It will offer
a new global standard for reference across the Internet, and
in the process make accessible Oxford's massive reference assets,"
says Rob Scriven, managing editor of Oxford Dictionaries.
In common with other
major reference and scholarly journal publishers, the core technology
being used to publish the material online is XML, the computer
language that allows content to be "re-purposed", re-organized,
or re-formatted, at the click of a mouse.
Sadly for the general
public, Oxford Reference Online will only be available by annual
subscription to schools, academia, Government offices, and businesses
worldwide. Subscription fees range from $250 for a school and
$3,000 for a large university.
Money can be made
in e-publishing The site, which cost
over $1.5-million to build, was developed largely due to the
phenomenal success of the Oxford English Dictionary site, which
(interestingly) boosted sales of the printed version, and is
set to become a profitable venture in its own right later this
year. This latest project will further test Oxford University
Press' (OUP) belief that it is possible to make money in e-publishing:
The plan for Oxford Reference Online is that it reaches break-even
point in three years and becomes profitable in year four.
But will it succeed?
After all, doom and gloom has dogged the e-publishing industry
for a couple of years - ever since analysts (wrongly) predicted
the "end of the printed word." The truth is,
they were really referring to the bestseller market in e-books,
which failed to take off due to lack of portability and a general
dislike of reading lengthy tomes on a monitor screen. Paperbacks,
it seems, are by far the best format for reading potboilers.
"Oxford
University Press
are banking on the idea that reference publishing
is a niche market that lends itself very well
to the Internet."
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Reference books,
however, are a different animal altogether and OUP are banking
on the idea that reference publishing is a niche market that
lends itself very well to the Internet. The odds look good;
after all, users of reference books don't read whole tomes,
they pull out chunks of information or simply check facts. This
means that, unlike potboiler readers, they're happy to access
reference works on a PC or laptop. It forms part of their daily
work or study, and so the use of a dedicated reading device
doesn't come into it - as comfort is not a priority.
The other key advantages
of Oxford Reference Online include the ability to regularly
update titles and publish new editions - very useful when it
comes to volumes of statistics, and scientific, educational,
or business titles. In comparison, keeping a printed reference
collection up-to-date is a costly, not to mention space consuming,
business.
Publishing texts
online is good for the user too: It allows them to perform word
searches across knowledge bases and get results from a variety
of information resources, while also permitting narrow single-volume
searches.
Beats free web
reference sources Put together, all
these advantages make Oxford Reference Online look like a strong
Internet business model. Not only does the online format offer
important advantages over print and CD-ROM, but the target
users are organizations that have a need and a budget to fulfill
that need.
Oxford University
Press are also confident
that their latest Internet publishing venture will be successful
because of the reputation of its brand. So much information
on the Web is published without verification. Whereas every
Oxford reference work is written by experts and cross-checked
thoroughly. This, they believe, will make it a market leader. As
Rob Scriven, managing editor of Oxford Dictionaries says: "Oxford
Reference Online offers reference material that is of the highest
quality. It is easily searchable with the ability to cross-search
from any word. And it's all in one location. Nothing similar is offered
free on the Web."
DCLnews Editorial
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