'Reading' in the digital environment

Authors: Nicholas, David; Clark, David

Source: Learned Publishing, Volume 25, Number 2, April 2012 , pp. 93-98(6)

Publisher: Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers

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Abstract:

For ten years CIBER has been studying the logs of scholarly publishers, and what was clear from the very beginning was that scholars conducted very brief visits to websites and spent very little time reading when there, yet publishers envisaged they would dwell; and if not dwell, then at least deep read the PDF later. Yet CIBER's research points to the fact that 'lite' reading is in fact endemic: younger people prefer it anyway and older people are getting used to it for the speed and convenience it brings. PDFs are largely a means of archiving and collecting and are not the gold standard reading metric people think. User satisfaction comes not from a PDF but from the ability to deep dive into a site and snatch what you are interested as quickly as possible. Publishers are still not comfortable with that and this article helps explain why they have to be.

Articles that cite this article?

Document Type: Short communication

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20120203

Publication date: 2012-04-01

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Editor in Chief: Alan Singleton
North American Editor: Diane Scott-Lichter
Reviews Editor: Pippa Smart

Learned Publishing is the journal of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, published in collaboration with the Society for Scholarly Publishing. The journal is published quarterly in January/April/July/October.

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