Digital Publishing Research Articles

Digital Opportunities for Local Journalism: A Panel Data Analysis on the Economic Performance of Online-Only vs. Print Newspapers

Digitalisation led to a structural crisis in the newspaper industry, undermining revenues from both readers and advertisers. Economies of scale play a central role in the newspaper business, but in a context of falling incomes, the major route to take advantage of them is the reduction in the asset size and operating costs. The digital business model can be a way to increase companies’ profitability, as online-only media publishers do not need as many assets and costs as their print counterparts to operate. Digitalisation is particularly interesting for local news outlets, since they operate in small markets and could have difficulties to reach an optimal size. However, there are little empirical evidence on how digital business models influence the profitability of newspapers. Using a sample of 198 and 69 Spanish print and online-only media publishers, respectively, during the period 2008–2018 and applying a dynamic panel data methodology, this article analyses the extent to which the main features defining print vs. digital business models affect firms’ profitability. Empirical evidence reveals a better performance of digital publishers, with lower material costs being the route through which the digital business model benefits from the economies of scale and achieves greater efficiency.

Digital Publication of Catherine Stevens's Recordings of Chinese Vocal Genres (1960) and Other Audiovisual Collections from East Asia

Digital Publication of Catherine Stevens's Recordings of Chinese Vocal Genres (1960) and Other Audiovisual Collections from East Asia

A close look at Martynas Jankus, a Lithuanian from Prussia (in Lithuanian)

Seeks to cover interdisciplinary research topics on book and digital media history and culture, including book history and historiography, traditional and digital publishing, research on media literacy and reading, printed and digital heritage etc. Indexed in the Scopus database from 2018.

Bestsellers, Digital Technologies and Their Limits in Book History

Seeks to cover interdisciplinary research topics on book and digital media history and culture, including book history and historiography, traditional and digital publishing, research on media literacy and reading, printed and digital heritage etc. Indexed in the Scopus database from 2018.

Wallenrodia: a catalogue of small part of a big scattered library (in Lithuanian)

Seeks to cover interdisciplinary research topics on book and digital media history and culture, including book history and historiography, traditional and digital publishing, research on media literacy and reading, printed and digital heritage etc. Indexed in the Scopus database from 2018.

A book looking for an answer to why it’s worth reading in digital times (in Lithuanian)

Seeks to cover interdisciplinary research topics on book and digital media history and culture, including book history and historiography, traditional and digital publishing, research on media literacy and reading, printed and digital heritage etc. Indexed in the Scopus database from 2018.

Bestseleriai, skaitmeninės technologijos ir jų ribos knygos istorijoje

Seeks to cover interdisciplinary research topics on book and digital media history and culture, including book history and historiography, traditional and digital publishing, research on media literacy and reading, printed and digital heritage etc. Indexed in the Scopus database from 2018.

Research papers of the National Library of Latvia and their 27th volume (in Lithuanian)

Seeks to cover interdisciplinary research topics on book and digital media history and culture, including book history and historiography, traditional and digital publishing, research on media literacy and reading, printed and digital heritage etc. Indexed in the Scopus database from 2018.

Virtual Reality Design in Reading User Experience: 3D Data Visualization with Interaction in Digital Publication Figures

With computer technology rapidly growing in recent years, there is a significant trend that virtual reality technologies turn into the public. The paper found that VR has a high potential to improve reading efficiency. The research discussed various figures, which is the key element for data visualization in digital publications. Furthermore, the research analyzes the characteristic of VR. The research divides the data into three types: Static Data, Dynamic Data, and Interactive Data. The research designs the framework to transfer the data into VR platforms. In order to evaluate the performance efficiency of the framework, we conducted performance evaluations and a user study with 20 participants. Compared with traditional 2D figures, the experimental results show that the 3D framework can be used as an effective visual tool for reading on VR platforms. The paper indicates the possible future view based on the design study.

Digital Philological Practices: the Project “Chekhov Digital”

The article examines the role of “digital practices” in the formation of interdisciplinary humanitarian knowledge, the peculiarities of the development of digital humanitarian projects in the field of philology. The model of development of a digital project in the field of preparation of semantic markup of literary publications “Chekhov Digital”, which is a digital publication of the academic Сomplete works and letters of A. Chekhov, is considered. The goal of the project is to develop machine-readable (semantic) markup of the writer’s texts based on the standards of digital publication Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). Within the framework of the project, standards for the preparation of digital Russian-language publications are being clarified, conceptual and technical conditions for implementation are being formulated, and infrastructure and new research methods are being developed. The structure of machine-readable annotation of documents has been developed, which enables marking up semantic entities in Chekhov’s texts, notes and comments for building semantic search within the corpus of the writer’s texts. To clarify the markup of semantic entities in the works of A. Chekhov the methods of automatic text processing were used, including topic modeling and vector semantic models to analyze the most important author’s concepts in the texts; corpus methods for studying the contexts of the use of verbal representations of concepts. The conceptual analysis made it possible to reconstruct the author’s concepts in the context of the markup of semantic entities. To mark up the names of real people and objects, a special database, based on pointers to letters, has been created. The project implements the principle of Open data, one of the goals of which is to create scientific communities around data. The work on the project has led to the development of scientific cooperation between the Centers for Digital Humanities of the HSE and the SFedU.

Letter from the Editor

Dear Reader,
 
 This past season, the journal’s editorial board continued to engage with the scientific community through the release of our newest Spring 2022 issue, production of online content in the form of blogs, and a fundraising event for Help Ukraine 2022. With a combination of in-person and online meetings, the journal maintained an active campus-wide and online presence. 
 
 The journal released its first print edition with the publication of the Fall 2021 issue, which was well-received and marked an important achievement for the editorial board. A copy of this printed issue will be kept in the Columbia Libraries archive. We credit the Production and Design team for their work in converting the online formatting into an issue suited for printing. We anticipate more print editions to be released in the near future for upcoming issues. 
 
 This Spring 2022 issue explores a broad range of global health topics from the Breast Cancer Screening Programme in Nigeria to current issues with the information ecosystem. This issue also delves into ongoing public health concerns such as eradicating Guinea Worm Disease and addressing the healthcare needs of ethnic minority populations. We thank our authors and peer reviewers for their submissions and contributions without which our journal could not exist.
 
 We would like to thank our staff across all the teams – the Editorial Review Board, Production & Design Board, Online Board and the Business & Communications Board – for their dedication and commitment towards the journal. We are also especially grateful for the continued support from the Columbia University Libraries and the Faculty Advisory Board composed of Digital Publishing Librarian Michelle Wilson and faculty advisor Professor James Colgrove. 
 
 Sincerely,
 Scarlet Au & Sophia Spiegel
 Co-Editors-in-Chief, The Columbia University Journal of Global Health

Reflections

In my recent history of Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), the case study of Patrick Browne’s The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica (1756, 1789) focuses on bibliography and technology to illuminate a story of remediation. The case study was silent, however, on how this book was imbricated in the system of Atlantic enslavement and colonialism. My Reflections essay attempts to redress this erasure by recognizing that the field of eighteenth-century studies is entangled within the legacies of global colonialism and by drawing on anti-racist and decolonial reading strategies. This essay intersects with postcolonial and decolonial approaches to digital humanities, book history, and the archives of the Caribbean and the Black Atlantic. It traces the routes across time and place of two book copies, connecting biography, provenance, archives, the violent histories of place and geography, the neo-colonial conditions of digital publishing and technology, and the contexts of power and privilege of my own situation as a white scholar.

RNA Therapeutics: Top 5 RNA Therapeutics Companies to Watch in 2022

RNA Therapeutics: Top 5 RNA Therapeutics Companies to Watch in 2022

The Evolution of CRISPR Technology from Editing to Diagnostics

The Evolution of CRISPR Technology from Editing to Diagnostics

Culture of digital publication

The purpose of the article is to define the essence of the concept of e-publishing culture as a complex information product of the joint life of the author and a group of workers working on its creation, taking into account knowledge, streamlined rules, and the introduction of new information technologies. The research methodology consists of the application of the information method and the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete. The scientific novelty of the work is to expand ideas about the culture of modern publishing, as a system of knowledge, skills, and abilities of collective interaction of the author and publishers on it, their information culture on the one hand, and information culture of the organization on the other. Conclusions. The culture of digital publishing, as an interactive product of collective activity and the main object of cultural creativity of the publishing staff, can be presented as a complex, multifaceted structure, including knowledge of tools and methods of information product preparation, ability to summarize, analyze and organize information, ability to create elements publishing, forming images, processing audio recordings, forming and correcting animation files and videos, the ability to perform proofreading operations, layout pages of the publication, structure documented information and evaluate its quality. The combination of the main elements of the culture of digital publishing is based on the principles of complexity, differential approach, and continuity and gives a new vision and understanding of the need to create an appropriate information culture of employees engaged in creating a modern interactive product. Key words: digital edition, interactive product, culture, information processing, information search, information technologies.

The Propulsion Path of Synergy and Linkage Based on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Economy

From conception to birth, artificial intelligence inherited the power of human reproduction, such as creativity, self-improvement and language use, etc. These abilities cannot be exercised in other places. The purpose of this paper is to explore the path of collaborative promotion based on artificial intelligence and digital economy. First, it outlines the scattered use of data by individuals at the two application levels of the digital economy and the systematic use of data by enterprises on large organizations. In this study, artificial intelligence and digital economy are introduced into the ability of project information sharing in the field of the enterprise project, and then their important role in improving the performance of enterprise project management is analyzed. Secondly, try to use interviews, scale analysis and logical subtraction to formulate the measurement standards of the digital environment and project information publishing ability, and provide basic data for follow-up research. The experimental results show that 54% of middle-level personnel said that the synergy between enterprise artificial intelligence and digital economy is very good, and they have a positive attitude toward exploring new ways to promote digital economy integration in the field of artificial intelligence.

LIBRARIANS' ROLE IN PROCESSING DIGITAL COLLECTIONS FOR THE BENEFIT OF LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES IN SOUTH SULAWESI PROVINCE

The goal of this study was to ascertain the librarian's role in processing digital collections and to ascertain the procedure by which digital collections were processed. The author employed descriptive research with management and pedagogical perspective in this study. Then, primary and secondary data were used in this study. Interviews and documentation served as guidance for the research instrument. Data collection techniques included observing, interviewing, and documenting. Then there were procedures for data analysis such as data reduction, data display, and conclusion drafting. The study's findings indicated that librarians played an important role in processing digital collections at the Library and Archives Service of South Sulawesi Province, including participation in librarian training activities, digital collection processing activities, and digital collection promotion activities. The Library and Archives Service of South Sulawesi Province were in the process of processing digital materials, specifically scanning, editing, and publishing. The processing of digital collections could be adapted to technological advancements to make them more effective and efficient.

Networking down: Networks, innovation, and relational labor in digital book publishing

While management and network scholars have long asked why some groups adapt to innovation more readily than others, such questions have been surprisingly absent in studies of new media production. We offer a network analytical framework which relates producers’ informal networks to their capacity to adopt digital innovations. Through a network ethnography of 4264 romance writers, we find that established authors who reversed traditional advice patterns, by seeking advice from inexperienced newcomers rather than experienced peers, were more likely to adopt digital self-publishing. By linking the concept of relational labor to network structures, we demonstrate the value of “networking down” in a digitally disrupted cultural industry—a surprising finding in a business where networking up, to powerful actors, has seemed critical for success. We argue that strategic relational labor by established content creators facilitates adaptation to digital conditions and provides some measure of protection against precarity in a changing landscape.

Research on the Influence of Media Convergence on the Transformation and Upgrading of the Media Industry

With the continuous development of social science and internet technology, media convergence has become an inevitable trend in the development of the media industry, and the current society has entered the era of media convergence. In this environment, media convergence has emerged at a pivotal period. Traditional media and emerging media are integrating with one another, putting forward not only new but also higher requirements for the traditional publishing industry in China. Under the development trend of this kind of media, the digital publishing industry chain is undergoing profound changes, and the publishing industry must actively upgrade its thought ideas, operation mechanism, information dissemination, and many other optimization transformations to ensure that under media convergence, there is stability of the traditional publishing industry, sustainable innovation, as well as development. This paper will make a detailed analysis of the characteristics of media convergence and explore the difficulties and development strategies of media industry upgrading in the era of media convergence.

Scientific and Publishing Services on the Lobachevskii-DML Platform

The article provides an overview of existing digital publishing systems, existing ways to expand the functionality of such systems, and also proposes a project for a set of services to expand the functionality of the Open Journal Systems publishing system on the platform of the Lobachevskii-DML digital mathematical library. The proposed set of services includes services aimed at the authors of articles and intended for the editorial staff of the journal. The existing developments in individual parts of the project are described, and the main ideas for the development of all services are proposed.