Digital Solutions in India 2016: A Multitude of Outstanding Projects
What went into the initial
stages of planning and executing a digital publishing project? Which area posed
the biggest challenge? What happened after the project was near completion?
Here, 18 digital-solutions providers talk about their unique projects and give
a broad idea on the type of services that they offer to book and journal
publishers.
A
major backlist digitization project involving books for a multinational book
and journal publisher was the highlight at Aaltech Group. "The entire
backlist of 700 titles was converted into three different formats—ePub, Mobi,
and print PDF. In view of the project scale, our technology team first
developed a cost-effective transformation workflow that was tailored to the publisher's
specific needs and type of titles. Then, the output files were QA-tested before
they were delivered to the publisher," says director P. Shivaalkar, adding
that all 700 titles were digitized within four weeks.
For
another project involving highly interactive online courses that are to be made
accessible on mobile, tablet and PC platforms, the Aaltech team decided to use
Adobe Edge Animate CC to create a wide variety of interactivities that were
customizable and applicable to content from different subject areas.
"Games, drag-and-drop, quizzes, and interactive diagrams were some of the
activities used in these online courses. For us, the goals of this project were
obvious: reducing the development and production costs, and shortening the production
time even as we looked for ways to enrich the courses," adds v-p for
business development Thiru Baskaran.
Cenveo Publisher Services
McGraw-Hill
Education's Everyday Mathematics is one complex digital project that allowed
the expertise and experience of Cenveo's digital team to shine. This project
required the creation of about 200 math games using HTML5 Canvas. Each game,
with no fewer than 20 user-interaction data points, is functional across more
than 35 browsers, operating systems, and device platforms. The user data is
integrated with the client's custom learning system to bring about
personalization and analytics.
Another
project involved creating a comprehensive curriculum synched directly to
English courses in China for the first through ninth grades. This project, for
Golden Voice English (GVE) Online Education, covers more than 700 animations;
324 interactive listening exercises; 324 interactive speaking lessons; 252
grammar, reading, and writing exercises; 72 "just-for-fun"
activities; 144 unit assessments; nine midterm exams; and another nine final
exams. "For a game called Mad Movies, where an animated movie clip plays
and students have to select the correct dialogues to complete the movie, our
e-learning team added complex interactive animations in HTML5 and parallax
techniques," marketing director Marianne Calilhanna says. "The entire
course can be viewed on all devices, and has AICC and SCORM conformance for LMS
integration." There is an additional three-lesson short course designed to
keep students engaged in their English studies over the summer and winter
breaks.
CodeMantra
For
Abrams Learning Trends, a publisher of supplementary materials for pre-K
through grade 5, the CodeMantra team utilized Engage—on CP module to provide a
secure and user-friendly environment with social networking to connect
teachers, students, and their parents. "This customized solution includes
a bookshelf and an online reader, and enables the publisher to deliver supplemental
information quickly and easily to teachers directly. The DIG! Platform also
provides a reporting feature to enable Abrams team to see which books, games,
or digital assets teachers are accessing most often," says chief product
and technology officer Sanjeev Kalyanaraman.
Another
client, the World Bank, utilizes CodeMantra's catalogue generator—a part of its
Engage—on CP solution—to leverage customized design templates, stored cover
images, and metadata using specifically tailored business rules to auto-generate
each catalogue as needed. "This feature allows our client to create custom
catalogues on demand for events, subjects, and geographic regions. The reusable
customized design templates save both time and cost on every catalogue that
they created," president Walter Walker adds.
Continuum Content Solutions
Partnering
with a leading governmental agency in an initiative toward ensuring that all
persons with reading impairments can access literature and daily newspapers
through media appropriate to them has brought out the creativity in the
Continuum team. A Web-based application platform was created to distribute and
provide access to more than 150 newspapers for people with visual impairments.
"Our operations convert approximately 5,000 pages of PDF/InDesign files of
magazines and newspapers into XML, with each input file converted within three
hours of receipt at an accuracy of 99.95%. So far we have converted and
distributed over 28,000 newspaper and magazine editions for this particular
client," explains founder and CEO Amit Vohra.
Another
project saw the team producing RePub, PRISM XML, and Digital replica files for
delivery to multiple e-newsstands for one media publishing company. More than
140 titles in multiple formats have been produced so far.
Deanta
A
book comprising 4,000 pages in 1,104 sections with essential and extensive
footnotes of case law, precedents, tax review articles and more than 50,000
internal and external links was a recent challenge at Deanta. "Every year,
more than 5,000 amendments are made to the text, and these have to be
implemented within a short turnaround time. This project also follows a
full-XML workflow, whereby thousands of cross-links have to be updated and generated
for each publication," says CEO Darren Ryan, pointing out that "the
tagging and links are used to populate the client's taxonomy and its
comprehensive tax legislation and commentary portal. Our team designed and
rolled out the DTD for all publication as well as the ePub versions, and
assisted in the development of the client's tax app."
For
one trade series, the task for Team Deanta was to typeset scorecards in table
formats. "These are basically about cricket test matches between two
countries, and their respective scores for each innings. The challenge was in
ensuring that each test-match results fit into a single page. Additionally, we
had to create a table of about 50 pages in landscape format which has the score
details and ratings of each player from the teams and different
countries," Ryan says, whose team handled the full-service project
management process for more than 250 Rowman & Littlefield titles within a
six-month period.
DiacriTech
A
LaTex manuscript from one bestselling author that had to be published within a
few weeks gave the team a major challenge. "Normally, such a project and
tight schedule would not be an issue, but this 650-page manuscript had complex
equations and computer codes on nearly every page. Yet the client wanted to use
InDesign workflow as per their internal policy," says executive v-p A.R.M.
Gopinath, whose team proceeded with a specialized workflow to compile the
equations in LaTex and then paginate the content in InDesign. "The author,
upon seeing the proofs, was very happy to see that his math requirements were
met and the page layout well designed."
For
another publisher wanting to create a digital supplement, DiacriTech first
created the storyboard, and then, upon approval, worked on the digital assets
offshore and its voice feeds onshore. The digital supplement was done in three
languages: English, French, and Spanish. The QC of the language and usability
was also done onshore. "The client envisaged testing the digital products
in the other two languages, and if successful, to proceed with the printed
format. Needless to say, the digital book was well received, and the client
asked us to work on the printed book as well. Increasingly, we see a trend
among publishers to create a digital-first product to test the market before
proceeding with the print version."
Hurix System
For
Hurix, Kitaboo is the much sought-after product for clients. One major European
educational publishers, for instance, has more than one million users accessing
its white-labeled Kitaboo platform, which is extensively used for e-book
creation and distribution. The heavily customized solution is also reconfigured
to offer a flexible platform that integrates the company's products and
services with its infrastructure.
Another
client, this time from the U.S., uses Kitaboo solutions for three different
verticals. The customized Kitaboo enables smooth integration of its
distribution and access of e-books while unifying the verticals under one
stable platform.
Impelsys
Deploying
a new LMS for a nursing/health organization with more than 400,000 members was
a major project at Impelsys. "The client wanted a structured online
courseware built from their existing content, which will allow busy health
professionals the freedom of choosing the time and location to study and
complete their courses. Ancillaries and assessments had to be developed out of
the journal articles and the content transformed into effective learning
modules," explained Uday Majithia, assistant v-p for marketing and
presales.
The
assembled team of subject matter experts—comprising members of the Impelsys
medical advisory board, cognitive scientists, content engineers, and
instructional designers—set out to design the courseware. Templates and
solutions structure were built while the content was transformed into HTML and
made SCORM-compliant so that it can be used in any LMS platform with ease.
Navigation through each ancillary-laden course was further simplified using
instructional design. The complete SCORM courseware was then loaded onto iPublishCentral
Learn platform, with independent access controls for administrators,
instructors, and learners.
Integra Software Services
Converting
one nursing title into an app saw the team breaking down the print chapters
into individual modules that are available through online and offline access.
"This allows nursing students with erratic schedules to download and
digest chunk-sized information on the go. The app, developed using HTML5, CSS3,
JavaScript, JSON, and open-source libraries such as PhoneGap, can track user
progress through the quizzes and has a responsive design to accommodate
different screen resolutions and devices," explains managing director and
CEO Sriram Subramanya, adding that an in-app-purchase feature allows students
to purchase other modules while flurry analytics enables the publisher to track
student progress and collect data. "Our team developed and delivered the
app within two months, ahead of the publisher's schedule for the market
launch."
Another
unique project involved turning a print journal into an interactive e-journal
laden with maps, graphs, and animations for a German publisher. The team used
the Flipbook development tool and HTML5 to add the interactivities. "The
Flipbook interface make the e-journal accessible to readers that are not
tech-savvy—or not used to e-journals—while at the same time, provide them with
additional elements that enrich the content and their understanding of the
subject," Subramanya says.
KiwiTech
"We
have been working on Elsevier's JBSM app for four years now, and we recently
added two important features—Accessibility and Open Access—to the platform.
This was a first for any publisher to add such features to their mobile
platform," CTO Gurvinder Batra says. "The Accessibility feature
allows visually impaired people to have complete access to the content in the
app using the device capability as well as the ability of the mobile platform
to make itself very accessible. Similarly, with Open Access being such a huge
thing in publishing, we made it possible for a mobile user to have free access
to an Open Access article and/or an issue for a specific journal."
GlobeChat,
on the other hand, is unique project featuring a chat platform for iOS,
Android, Windows, and the Web that supports more than 43 languages. "It
allows two or more users to chat in their respective native language. For
instance, a user can be texting in English to another user who only understands
Spanish. Through this platform, the Spanish user will see the text appear in
Spanish, and when he or she responds in Spanish, the text will appear at the
other end in English. Another unique feature connects a celebrity to fans
irrespective of their native language," Batra says, adding that the app
has been very successful at its initial launch, with thousands of users
worldwide.
Lapiz Digital Services
An
e-book project of approximately 100,000 pages—and covering 35 languages—from an
old library landed at Lapiz Digital recently. "Our client did not have
alternative source files, so we had to work from the image PDFs, with each
language requiring a unique workflow. Languages such as Cambodian, for
instance, were challenging, as it is not supported by OCR nor a translation
kit," explains president V. Bharathram, whose team has worked with more
than 50 international languages. "At times, we used the handwriting option
in Google Translator to draw and find the exact character in a specific
language. Using native speakers for proofreading, which is often the solution
for such projects, is not a viable option. Aside from the fact that it was too
costly, the tight deadline and budget simply did not allow sourcing such
resources. But our team was creative in finding solutions and delivering the
project on time and budget."
The
team was also tasked by one client to quality-audit an archive of typeset files
done by several production houses. "The huge volume and extensive
coordination with multiple stakeholders across different time zones required
our team to automate the management process, further resulting in substantial
time and cost savings," says Bharathram, who reports a significant
increase in quality-auditing projects in recent months. "Our analytics
team was then able to generate reports speedily, which helped our client to
rate their production vendors and highlight recurring issues."
Lumina Datamatics
Its
RightsPlatform software solution was exactly what a major client needed after
struggling to manage rights through a mix of spreadsheets, databases, and a
simple reviewing tool. "By implementing RightsPlatform, the client has
greater control over preferred vendor spending, deeper rights data capture and
storage, and a cleaner workflow accessible to all stakeholders," explains
executive director Krishna Tewari, adding that another client uses
RightsPlatform to control rights expenditures for heavily designed products.
"It allows their designers and editors to search through the archives of
20 approved suppliers of images and illustrations, and pinpoint the exact
images that they need. It takes out a lot of frustration and saves time spend
searching. Our pay-per-use model also lowered the cost of the research for the
client."
On
the assessment side, the team has been working in ACT, SAT, GRE, GMAT, CLEP,
and other assessments. "In cases where our client provides raw
item-response data, we use it to understand the psychometric properties of
successful questions, and then create item generators that use the properties
to create new assessment items. This gives test preparation and education
providers the capability of providing students and users endless practice at
precise learning levels," Tewari explains. "We can still use
automatic item generation to create large banks of assessment content if psychometric
data is not available. For one university client that is preparing students in
a premed program, for instance, we delivered more than 5,000 questions. The
faculty selected some for use in the course, and banked the rest for extra
practice and for a new product. We completed those questions in just five
weeks."
Magic Software
Building
new interactive digital learning content for a Eurasian school system was the
complex project at Magic Software last year. The challenge was to ideate,
conceptualize, visualize, and build engaging content for K–12 students to learn
languages, mathematics, and science while keeping in mind the nuances of local
culture and languages. Subject matter experts in various disciplines and local
language and culture were brought in to conceptualize the gamified content.
"Our team put together the stories, characters, games, and assessments on
a templated platform—available on Windows, iOS, and Android devices—to create
large variants of the content to accommodate microlearning," says COO
Anuraj Soni, whose team of learning architects created training modules for
teachers and administrators on using the content in schools and helped the
schools roll out the solutions across the country.
Another
major project involved a custom technology solution for an American education
company that sells online schooling and curriculum to state and local
governments. "Our team defined the framework for digital learning objects
using Google Web Components, and brought in various new generation technology
tools in order to deliver new standards-compliant learning content to a wider
market. We explored new HTML5 frontiers in the context of learning
effectiveness and delivered the components, unit tests, quality control
frameworks, and development process guidelines within the timeline given,"
Soni says.
MPS Limited
The
deployment of DigiCore, MPS's cloud-based digital publishing platform, was
instrumental in getting several publishers' projects on track. For one
prestigious physics society with 50,000 members, help was needed in managing
its huge pool of freelance copy editors and contributors. The MPS team started
by preparing specifications, development, and mapping the society's copy
editing functions. "Then we implemented WordEditPro and TeXEditPro for
structuring, pre-editing, and conversion of manuscripts to XML. Next, the house
styles and journal requirements were categorized into automated, semiautomated,
and manual activities. This was followed by DigiEdit implementation for copy
editing along with DigiComp for auto-composition and proof verification, and
lastly, we rolled out our new MPS Trak for workflow tracking, automated
routing, alerts, and dashboard reporting," CEO Rahul Arora says.
"Through these steps, we eliminated the need for TeX/LaTeX-literate
editors, and skip PDF annotation while editing—thereby eliminating transfer of
corrections—and the results are consistent quality output, effective version
control, and reduced turnaround times and manual exchanges of manuscript files."
In another DigiCore implementation, this time for a major STM journal publisher, the turnaround times for page proofs were reduced from five days to between 24 and 48 hours, depending on journal discipline. Another STM publisher also benefitted from similar implementation in which DigiEdit was customized to the JATS (Journal Article Tag Suite) DTD, copy editing functions and other requirements while the entire DigiCore platform was deployed through AWS Cloud.
In another DigiCore implementation, this time for a major STM journal publisher, the turnaround times for page proofs were reduced from five days to between 24 and 48 hours, depending on journal discipline. Another STM publisher also benefitted from similar implementation in which DigiEdit was customized to the JATS (Journal Article Tag Suite) DTD, copy editing functions and other requirements while the entire DigiCore platform was deployed through AWS Cloud.
Newgen KnowledgeWorks
When
one of the largest North American publishers launched a major initiative to
look at potential opportunities in building efficiencies in their editorial
operations, it started an extensive vendor-evaluation program. Newgen was
selected based on its subject-matter expertise, technology capabilities, and
commitment in editorial processes. The transition program was completed after
nine months.
Similarly,
when a small academic publisher decided to identify a long-term partner for a
virtual editorial, production, and marketing office to smoothen its workflow,
build efficiencies, and double its production, Newgen was chosen for its
extensive experience in academic publishing and author-handling capabilities.
The project was successfully rolled out with the publisher achieving substantial
reduction in costs and turnaround times without compromising on quality.
SourceHOV
By
applying its new product Jet to a journal publisher's project, the SourceHOV
team was able to automate the identification and extraction of required
metadata from accepted journal articles. "We were able to get the
completeness and correctness required for getting a header ready for content
aggregators way ahead of time. Through Jet's automated process, we were also
able to get consistent quality output while reducing operational costs, which
was a major saving for the publisher," says Nakul Parashar, v-p for
enterprise content management. "Jet is found to be applicable to a larger
number of points in the publishing process of a book or a journal. Some clients
have enquired if we could use this at the peer-reviewing stage while others
wanted blocks of content extracted to create end-of-chapter assessments. So
Jet, in essence, simplifies and speeds up the end-to-end editorial and
production processes."
Thomson Digital
For
a full-color French magazine for health professionals, the team used a XML
workflow in which the contributors can change or modify their articles up to
the very last minute prior to publication. "Such collaborative cloud-based
workflow accommodates editorial constraints while at the same time offering the
benefits of full-text XML," says executive director Vinay Singh, whose
team processes around 8,000 pages using the workflow and is set to increase the
volume at least threefold in the near future.
A
pilot project for one major trade publisher, on the other hand, saw the team
delivering 106 titles two months ahead of schedule. It involved creating
templates, scanning, page composition, and quality review. "The challenge
in this project was to understand the requirements, customize the tools and
applications, and deliver within a short duration. However, we were not only
able to achieve the milestone but deliver ahead of schedule with the required
quality, thereby winning customer's confidence and trust," Singh explains.
Westchester Publishing Services
For
academic publisher Mary Ann Liebert Inc., which needed to present more video
content in the digital editions of their journal articles, the Westchester team
worked to leverage the best method for displaying videos (such as medical
procedures) directly from the journal content. "This capability that we
embarked upon for the publisher was later used to help support another client,
New York University Press, when they needed to embed video content into one of
their ePub titles," director of business development Tyler Carey explains.
For
its many STM and trade clients, the team has implemented various digital
solutions such as inserting print-edition page numbers in ePubs for following
along with classroom assignments based on print editions; embedding scrollable
tables and timelines to make for a more efficient reading experience; inserting
links to a publisher's online study space; configuring image overlays and
pan-and-zoom to allow for closer inspection of images in texts, where a deeper
understanding of the visual content is needed; setting up ePubs to hide or show
summaries, sidebars/boxed texts, study questions, quizzes, and other
secondary/ancillary materials; and embedding extra public domain content that is
relevant to a title, especially an academic text. "The above
functionalities tend to cross from one segment to the next, and all our clients
stand to benefit from one another," Carey adds.
Source | http://www.publishersweekly.com
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
Best Paper Award | Received the Best Paper
Award at TIFR-BOSLA National Conference on Future Librarianship: Innovation for
Excellence (NCFL 2016) on April 23, 2016. The title of the paper is “Removing Barriers to Literacy: Marrakesh VIP
Treaty”
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