Gathering Information on Audience Need

Yesterday, my organization held its yearly editorial meeting. We managed to bring 9 of our 16 associate editors together from around the US and the world, along with our editor-in-chief and our office staff, to discuss in person our journal's progress and future editorial goals. Though the transition to XML is largely a background process that will be confined to the office, I wanted to get some ideas from those present about what formats, aside from the print and online versions in their current forms, would be most useful to them as professors, researchers, and occasional clinicians. In my presentation of the topic, I shied away from too much detail and tried to boil it down to what they would be concerned with as consumers: What device(s) do you use now, or do you plan on using in the future? What formats would be most helpful to you? Would you like a straight translation of the text, or would additional interactivity be appealing?

The discussion—though not long or terribly in depth, given the demographics of the attendees—was a good one that gave me some additional insight into the needs of our specific audience. We came away with the feeling that, for this particular field and group of people, the iPad had the most potential, both in widespread usage and capability to incorporate supplemental material in addition to our articles. There was also a noted interest in applications for mobile devices and tablets, which is obviously secondary to XML, but good to establish as we try to prioritize our efforts in the office.

One part of our audience not represented at that meeting (at least not directly) was students, who would be more (most?) likely to adopt these new modes of delivery for our journal and use them for more than just solitary reading. All of the editorial board teaches on the university level, so they could speak to an extent about what they think their students want, but this meeting reminded me that it would be most helpful to survey actual students to learn more about their views.

Journey to XML: An Introduction

Welcome to Journey to XML, the blog I’ll be keeping as I explore conversion to XML for my company. I am beginning this project with minimal, basic knowledge about XML. I know what it stands for. I understand its basic purpose. I can name a few examples of what it’s capable of. But beyond that, it’s still a fuzzy, abstract concept that I struggle to grasp, something not helped by all I hear about how it’s totally great and, y’know, necessary for survival in e-publishing.

To start, I’ll provide a quick rundown of my company and our current production status. I work for the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, a scholarly, peer-reviewed publication that publishes monthly issues in print and online, serving about 28,750 subscribers worldwide. While we collaborate with hundreds of content experts and contract some parts of the process to outside individuals and vendors, the majority of the work to produce the Journal is done by our four full-time staff members. This can be a challenge when we are held to the standards that larger competitors are setting, as we struggle to adopt new practices that are outside of our staff’s collective skill set. We have spent much time discussing conversion to XML and have agreed that it is long overdue to serve the needs of our readers.

I am embarking on this project to investigate four main questions:

1. What is XML, and how can it be used to enhance the online delivery of our publication?
2. At what step in our workflow should we insert conversion to XML?
3. Given our limited resources, is it feasible to keep XML conversion in-house, or should we contract it out to a third-party vendor?
4. Once we’ve established conversion to XML for the basic purpose of delivering our articles on the web, what further steps can we take to deliver the material beyond our site, such as to e-reading devices?

While I hope to make it all the way through the fourth question, I also know my own limitations as someone with no background in programming or even web design. I don’t expect that this will be easy, or that I will be able to master it over the course of such a short time. I simply hope to learn as much as possible and contribute what I can to the advancement and betterment of my publication.

I plan on updating as I make progress, sharing resources and helpful information along the way. Please feel free to follow along and comment, whether it’s to share your own experience with XML, suggest a resource, or tell me I’m completely wrong about something. Any and all feedback is definitely appreciated and encouraged!