1) The document describes one publisher's experiments in increasing usage of their scientific journal articles by making the articles more discoverable and interactive for users. They redeveloped their article abstract pages to include more metadata and links to related content. 2) Surveys found that users responded positively to the redesigned abstract pages and wanted more granular content like figures, tables and captions. They also wanted improved social sharing and mobile access. 3) Going forward, the publisher plans to further fragment articles into individual objects, add semantic tagging and related content recommendations to improve discoverability of relevant information for researchers.

1. One STM Publisher’s Ongoing Experiments in Turning Users into Usage (and What We Really Learned Along the Way) Adventures in Cat-Herding Larry M. Belmont Manager, Online Product Development American Institute of Physics Session PUB1 – Wednesday, July 22, 2009 – 9:40-11:00 Increasing Discoverability: Case Studies on Publishers Who Drove & Grew Usage

2. cat-herding (verb) : Persuading a group of independently minded people to go in the same direction. (Merriam-Webster Open Dictionary.)

3. user (noun) : Someone doing "real work" with the computer, using it as a means rather than an end. (Online Computer Dictionary.)

4. usage (noun) : The act, manner, or amount of using. (The Free Dictionary.) (Note to the Audience: Think of those bowls up there as your content.)

7. This means metrics must change.

8. “Depth” of article use is becoming important.

10. But All Roads Still Lead to …

12. Steady 3.5% annual increase in # of titles, 1665 – 2006.

13. 1.5M new STM articles published in 2007.

15. Bring in more related content and/or ways to discover related content (and create meaningful relationships).

16. Boost social interactivity options at the article level.

17. Make citation-harvesting easier; bind more tightly to user workflow.

18. Begin the process to make the article (and its free landing page) on Scitation more valuable than the article at ArXiv, or at Dr. X’s web-site, or at Repository Y.

20. Make as many key meta-data bits “actionable” by linking them to construct “guided searches.”

21. Take advantage of granularity of article XML to surface new article components in abstract display, i.e., journal-level meta-data, section heading of article, figure/table captions, etc.

23. “Need to read” is for many reasons (primary research, background, teaching, writing, current awareness). Journal browsing serves one set of purposes (mostly awareness); article parsing another (mostly research).

24. Depth of use is variable too (some need whole journal, some need one or more whole articles, some need only part of an article).

26. An Advert for Evelyn Wood?

28. Virtual representation of printed page.

29. Density of linkable meta-data items very low (author names).

30. No social-networking integration.

31. Only the most basic “article actions.”

33. Fully hinted (“smart”) next/previous navigation.

34. Expanded guided-search functions.

35. Expanded article actions.

36. New social bookmarking toolbar.

39. 65% of users surveyed liked it or loved it.

40. 65% of users started their Scitation session on the abstract page (via Google/Google Scholar).

41. 65% of users said the at-a-glance/one-eyeful presentation of multiple article components was a major improvement.

43. 52% want a mobile rendering for everything, including the full-text (=“mobiHTML”).

44. 48% want to see “articlemetrics” (# of times cited, # of times commented on, # of times shared, etc.).

45. Citation harvesting was the #1 workflow action among those surveyed.

47. Therefore, the following is increasingly important:

48. Ultra-granular discoverability/findability (not searching).

49. No. of citations indicates something worth … scanning.

50. Peer recommendations (via comments, # of shares, etc.) indicates something worth … skimming.

51. Skimming terminology used, indexing, captions, images, data is replacing top-to-bottom reading of “narrative text.”

53. Surface indexed “article objects” (figures, tables), their captions, and their specific descriptors and classification.

54. Add “Find more (articles/objects) like this” discovery tools.

55. Mix more related content into the article display.

56. Expand the social linking and sharing toolbox.

57. The mobile view is just as important as the desktop view, so deliver one.

59. Inline reference, figure, table, and other object citations.

60. Figure, table, and multimedia viewers with “context-browsing.”

61. “Facet” the references and citings.

62. Boost the semantic markup (nomenclature/terminology used, product names, device names, experiment names, materials properties, geocoded data, chemical names/formulas, …) ;drives “more articles like this/mentioning this” discovery.

63. Personalized annotation/commenting/sharing.

65. Thank you! Larry M. Belmont labelmo@aip.org twitter.com/larrymbelmont57 www.facebook.com/people/Larry-Belmont/661181894 http://www.linkedin.com/in/larrymbelmont

67. Charter: to diffuse and advance the knowledge of physics and its application to human welfare.

68. Service mission: to supply economy-of-scale publishing services to Member Societies and other scholarly publishers.

69. Currently has 10 member societies, 23 affiliated societies, and several other organizations under its umbrella (most have a publishing program).

70. A publisher of 10 journals, conference proceedings, database and other electronic products. http://aip.org

71. Scitation …

72. AIP’s online hosting platform; on the web since 1996. http://scitation.org

74. All charts and graphs from Carol Tenopir and Donald W. King, “Electronic Journals and Changes in Scholarly Article Seeking and Reading Patterns,” D-Lib Magazine (November/December 2008), Vol. 14, No. 11/12 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/november2008-tenopir].

75. Future-casting inspired by Allen H. Renear and Carole L. Palmer, “Strategic Reading, Ontologies, and the Future of Scientific Publishing, Science 325, 828 (2009) [http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1157784].

76. Numerous STM publishing stats via Mike A. Mabe, Serials 16(2), 191 2003) and http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/rts/faflrt/initiatives/workshops/2007-mabe.pdf

77. The iArticles concept is a riff on Geoffrey Bilder’siPub concept. (Google it.)

78. The photo of successfully herded cats was kindly provided by Kellan Elliott-McCrea , http://www.flickr.com/photos/kellan/ .

79. “The End” was screen-capped from “The Wizard of Oz.”

80. Company logos and other graphics from their respective “owners” or iStockphoto.