Print on demand (POD) from a publisher's viewpoint: the case of Taylor &amp; Francis journals

Matthew Howells

doi:10.1629/22230

Abstract

Serials: The Journal for the Serials Community has been digitised and can be accessed in full on this website. All content is freely available on an open-access basis. Serials was published between 1988 and 2011. In 2012, the journal was retitled and is now published as Insights: the UKSG journal.

Highlights

Over the past few years, Print on demand (POD) has enjoyed increased usage throughout the book publishing industry
The question for journal publishers has been: how do we make it work for journals? Taylor & Francis answered this question by developing over the past two years an initiative termed ‘Distributed Print on Demand’ (DPOD) where journal issues are printed and despatched simultaneously from three global locations (USA, UK and Singapore), near to the subscriber
This increase in use of digital equipment, along with the recent increased use of content management systems and improved sales order processing systems, has led to the POD workflow for journals becoming a realistic option. This convergence of technologies has led to the development of a variation of the POD workflow for Taylor & Francis journals, which has been in use since the beginning of 2008

Summary

Introduction

Over the past few years, POD has enjoyed increased usage throughout the book publishing industry. Print on demand (POD) from a publisher’s viewpoint: the case of Taylor & Francis journals Increased use of POD is the result of significant improvements: first, in technology (file supply, content management and data quality) and, second, in the quality of what is being produced.

Results

Conclusion