17 May, 13 | by BMJ
In the past month, almost 1 million new magazines have appeared on Apple’s iPad. Rather than heralding a long-awaited comeback from traditional publishers, nearly all of these collections of articles, photos and social-media updates are the handiwork of ‘armchair editors’, using a new tool from the social magazine app, Flipboard.
12 Apr, 13 | by BMJ
In last week’s blog I looked at the innovative ways that publisher’s are monetising their products in the face of a shifting digital landscape. One of the most ground-breaking moves has come from Forbes Media, who opened up their content creation platform, not only to external authors but also to marketers and brands.
This idea of interweaving promotional content with both editorial and user-generated content (UGC) is central to a much larger concept gaining traction in the online advertising community; native advertising.
But what is it? One of the biggest advocates of native advertising is Dan Greenberg, CEO of Sharethrough (the agency that runs Forbes Media’s ‘Sponsored Stories’). When asked for a definition, Greenberg offers the following:
It refers to digital ad formats that integrate more seamlessly (yet transparently) into website aesthetics, user experiences and/or editorial in ways that offer more value to both advertisers and readers. Put simply, native ads follow the format, style and voice of whatever platform they appear on.
For a more in depth discussion of Forbes’ collaboration with Sharethrough, take a look at the video below:
5 Apr, 13 | by BMJ
There were a number of key themes at this year’s Guardian Changing Media Summit — an annual conference which brings together a mixture of CEO and director level executives responsible for commercial, creative and digital strategies.
Most significantly, it was clear that publishers are beginning to see more opportunities than threats from digital technologies and much time was spent discussing the innovative monetisation of digital products.
1 Mar, 13 | by BMJ
Richard Robinson, Director at Google, kicked off this year’s Technology for Marketing and Advertising event with a keynote presentation on the ‘Future of Digital’.
He reeled off some impressive statistics relating to three main areas of development:
Pace
8 Feb, 13 | by BMJ
At the end of January, Twitter announced a new mobile service called Vine, which allows users to create and share looping videos.
“Like Tweets, the brevity of videos on Vine (6 seconds or less) inspires creativity,” the company said in an official blog post. “Now that you can easily capture motion and sound, we look forward to seeing what you create.”
1 Feb, 13 | by BMJ
There seems to be a trend emerging amongst US academic libraries. The University of Florida is just one of many institutions trying out a new iPad app, free to students, that could make academic research a far less cumbersome experience.
26 Oct, 12 | by BMJ
Article-level metrics (or ALMs) were a hot topic at this week’s HighWire publisher meeting in Washington. (Highwire hosts both the BMJ and its stable of 42 specialist journals). From SAGE to eLife, publishers seem sold on the benefits of displaying additional context to articles, thereby enabling readers to assess their impact. These statistics range from traditional indicators, such as usage statistics and citations, to alternative values (or altmetrics) like mentions on Twitter and in the mainstream media.
So, what services are available to bring this information together in one simple interface? There are quite a few contenders in this area, including Plum Analytics, PLoS Article-Level Metrics application, Science Card, CitedIn and ReaderMeter. One system in particular has received a good deal of attention in the past few weeks; ImpactStory, a relaunched version of total-impact. It’s a free, open-source webapp that’s been built with financial help from the Sloan Foundation (and others) “to help researchers uncover data-driven stories about their broader impacts”.
9 Aug, 12 | by BMJ
Mendeley, the free reference manager and academic social network, has released an Institutional Edition for research and impact analysis and signed up a number of leading academic establishments along the way.
Announced on Monday, Mendeley Institutional Edition (MIE) is a module developed to give librarians and heads of library insight into the way researchers work and use their library collection at document level. By offering the MIE to their end users, institutions can seemingly stimulate their productivity and gain real-time feedback on the usage of library content.
2 Aug, 12 | by BMJ
The mass adoption of smartphones among physicians has not only triggered an explosion of medical apps targeted at healthcare providers, it has also encouraged an emerging trend of health and wellness apps aimed at empowering patients. In fact, there are thought to be 40,000 medical applications available for download on tablets and smartphones, with the market still in its infancy.
Medical apps enable users to monitor health and encourage patient wellness on a moment-to-moment basis, instead of only during occasional visits to the doctor’s surgery. Some even replace devices used in hospitals and doctor’s offices, such as glucometers and high-quality microscopes used by dermatologists to examine skin irregularities.
16 Mar, 12 | by BMJ
Online publishing startup Inkling (who featured at this week’s HighWire Press Conference in Palo Alto, CA) has created a new tool that it says will appeal to professional, large-scale publishers. The software, known as Habitat, will use XML and HTML5 that can be read on a variety of platforms, including an upcoming Inkling web reader. In theory, it sounds pretty similar to Apple’s iBooks Author, but Habitat is specifically designed for large teams of collaborators with sharing and collaboration tools.
If anyone has insight into Apple’s educational efforts, it would be Inkling Co-founder and CEO, Matthew MacInnis, who was responsible for Apple’s expansion into educational markets in Asia and later a senior manager of all Apple’s international education efforts. MacInnis told us that the Inkling team set out to build a publishing platform that would redefine digital media, starting with reinventing the textbook. But in doing so, they’ve discovered that to reinvent books, they’ve had to go back to ground zero and re-imagine the entire printing process itself. more…
Keep abreast of the technological developments being implemented on the BMJ journal websites.
