Free edition electrons

The authors

Marin Dacos and Pierre Mounier are both researchers from the humanities who took the turn of new technologies very early on and more specifically from the electronic publishing of texts, with platforms like Revues.org, CalendaOr Homo-numericus. They animate with four hands Blogo-numericuswidely devoted to this theme. At the forefront of the development of these techniques, aware of both technical and content issues, enjoying a certain distance from a world of traditional publishing which seems not to know what end to take it Digital revolution, these two authors were among the most qualified people to talk about the upheavals that IT and networks bring in the publishing.

Electronic text galaxy

Instead of getting lost in the problem of delimiting what electronic publishing is from traditional publishing to the most new forms of writing and publication, the authors have chosen to describe the legal framework , economical and technical of the digital text. What interests them indeed is less a conceptualization of a sector in any way evolving too fast to let themselves be grasped, but the balance existing at each level between on the one hand the adaptation of existing techniques and modes of production digital and on the other hand the forms born of digital itself.

Their chapter on the legal framework is a good example. On the one hand, traditional actors and legislation are fighting to apply to the digital world the standards of copyright in force for physical products. However, point out the authors, the copy is at the heart of the technical digital system: the consultation of a text implies a copy on the servers, several on the way, one on the hard drive of the device of the reader, one in its RAM, etc. Control of respect for copyright referred to in laws Dadvsi And assimilated therefore implies a very low level control of the technical process, which leads to give the beneficiaries of the powers much more extensive on digital goods than on physical goods, and can only be done at the cost of devices Very intrusive for the privacy of users. To this logic of control, the authors oppose that of free licenses (LPG,, GfdlCreative Commons), which specifically abandon the control of the copy to better set limits to the use and reuse of the content concerned.

This example of the legal framework also illustrates the other very great strength of this work. At each stage, the authors are able to make the link between the technical constraints inherent in the digital tool and the organizational, economic and social solutions found to deal with these constraints.

The three forms of digital publishing

The heart of the book is rightly organized around three forms of digital publishing: digitization of publishing, properly said digital edition and network publishing.

The digitization of the publishing covers the conversion in a computer format of existing works or mainly designed for a paper medium. If this type of approach has favors of traditional publishing, which perceives it as closer to its usual functioning, the authors show that they are not the main beneficiaries. Simple conversion to a computer format, whether it is an image (Pdf Not enriched with a text) or a real electronic text, only increases the exposure of a work condition that they can find it in the mass of information provided by the Internet. Digitization is therefore a matter of researchers and operators of search engines, at the forefront of which Google, who find a way to increase the attraction of their research and indexing services. As a result, digitization can only be a way for publishing condition that it is not dependent on this indexing. Such goods, underline the authors, must bring together the advantages of the two worlds: unique identifiers, which make it possible to designate a passage in a clear way as a title, an edition and a page number, cross links allowing to navigate transversely from one work to another, and meta-processes to catalog the content without necessarily using indexing in Extenso.

Intelligence and the use of meta-processes is one of the two major sites of digital publishing, that is to say the design of documents designed to be mainly consulted on digital media (computers, mobile phones, readers, readers, etc.). On this point, the scientific edition is ahead, even if it unfortunately remains often entrenched behind very expensive subscriptions. On the other hand, it is late on the other major project of digital publishing, that of adaptation to the diversity of reading and uses. On this point particularly, economic and technical considerations intertwine, with at the center the choice between the lock, which allows publishers to charge for access to documents, and interoperability, which allows their dissemination and registration in a logic network.

This last logic is at the center of network publishing, which is probably one of the major aspects of the publishing revolution. The authors bring together under this name all aspects of the publishing where the production of content is ensured by a large number of contributors, often volunteers. Journalism sites “ citizen », Wikipedia, blogs, travel guides and, to a large extent, this site are examples. This selection highlights the fact that under spontaneity and direct democracy, network publishing is fundamentally based on the existence of mediators devoting an energy and important means to develop infrastructure and regulate relations between participants (in other words to do editorial work). Wikipedia and its galaxy of projects-briefs illustrate this point, with the financing of servers by the Wikimedia Foundation, without the right of editorial gaze, and within each project a hierarchy of statutes and standards revealing the difficulty of the company .

A new publishing sector

These three aspects allow authors to draw up a table of new trades and new skills necessary for publishing. They thus highlight five pillars of digital publishing:

• Information structuring, intended to allow its easy handling by automatic tools (indexing, citability, sustainability of addresses, etc.) as well as its regular update.

• Information documentation, which allows a human to orient themselves, which covers the ergonomics of sites as much as editorial information decisions to provide homogeneous quality.

• Optimization of reading conditions, which ensures easy consultation on all types of platforms, from the mobile phone to the wide screen, as well as to specific audiences (disabled, visually impaired, etc.)

• Appropriation by readers, who, going beyond the forum, inserts users in the content production process.

• The development of interoperabilities, which inserts each content into a tissue of links that increase its attraction and value.

These pillars show that it is no longer possible today to make publishing without advanced technical knowledge and constantly updated technologies at stake. In fact, this knowledge often lacks, even at high level, creating a Gap between the state of the art and the capacity of traditional companies in the sector to exploit the possibilities of this technology, leaving the field free to companies from the technical field itself.

With regard to all these possibilities, the challenge remains to find viable economic models for this edition. Currently, multiple forms of organization coexist: support on traditional publishing activities (historic publishers), on related fields (Google, Amazon, Apple), the use of non-public and Donations (Wikipedia). The forms of financing are also diverse: unit sales, derivative products, donations, advertisements, etc., and none seems to impose itself in the short term.

A book to follow

This book illustrates the complementarity between electronics and paper. If a large number of elements of the works were already present on the sites published by the authors, their collection and their coherence in a single work gives a recoil and an overview that can not be given, even Attentive, the same information dispersed between many tickets. Conversely, the definition of clear keywords and the structuring of the elements of the work allow the monitoring and updating of information on the authors’ blog. It is still clear that this arrangement is only halfway that electronic publishing would allow, with an updating of the text itself, which could be enriched not only from the new ideas of the authors but also of those suggested by the readers themselves.