E-Publishing : The new digital frontier

M.G. Sreekumar
Librarian & Head, Center for Development of Digital Libraries 
Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK), India
(mgsree@iimk.ac.in)


The current mainstream publication process, scholarly as well as trade, has
been significantly influenced by the endless possibilities offered by personal
computers, Internet, World Wide Web and its suite of technologies.
Electronic-first as opposed to the traditional paper-first systems has been
emerging aggressively, and of course technology offers the way forward.

E-publication offers a way to bring a new equilibrium to the scholarly
publication ecosystem. SGML, DSSSL, RDF, XHTML, XML, XSLT, Metadata standards,
.... all go together to revolutionize the movement. Recent developments such as
the OpenURL Framework, DOI, CrossRef, ..... mostly remarkable efforts from
publishers and the scholarly world, offer a variety of opportunities for
e-publishing. The Internet has also revolutionized businesses across the globe
by streamlining their supply chains, thereby achieving instant (value added)
information access and substantial cost reduction. Yet the situation is complex
as a result of the proliferation of formats, media, and channels of
distribution, changes in copyright laws and intellectual property practices,
and changes in the economics of publishing. 

The main objective of today's business is to develop a working strategy for
developing "agile" systems that are quick and flexible, to respond to the
changing needs of the end user.  However, the contention that "printed books
and journals will soon be replaced by electronic documents that are malleable,
mutable and mobile" (virtue - granularity) is a matter of debate involving the
interaction of psychological, sociological, economic, political, and cultural
factors that influence the consumption of information at large.