This disseratition copes with a actual and controversly discussed topic. It is a compilation and knowledgable discussion of central analyses concerning the journals crisis with special regard to electronic publishing as well as initiatives of the open access, selfarchiving and preprint server community. It serves as a source of contributions of different actors in the market for electronic scholarly information, being commercial or uncommercial publishers, scholarly societies, libraries, etc.

The traditional print publishing industry has been faced with significant change over the past decade. Advances in technology have led to the increased digitisation of business processes, and have debatably brought e-books to the brink of the mainstream market. With the growing popularity of e-books in the trade market come several opportunities for publishers to expand, improve and differentiate their businesses. But publishers also face a very challenging time ahead to successfully implement digital publishing in their business processes. This study examines the implications of digitisation and digital publishing on publishing business processes in the traditional print publishing environment. The research considers digital publishing as a disruptive technology in the publishing industry, and draws on the context and predictive value of disruptive technology theory. Disruptive technology theory examines why, when faced with a disruptive technology, some firms succeed in the marketplace, and others fail. The research applied the principles and predictions of disruptive technology theory to the publishing industry to develop a set of recommendations for publishers implementing digital publishing processes. The research employed a mixed methodology design that included an extensive literature review and an online survey of South African book publishers. The literature provided an overview of the issues surrounding digital publishing, and the opportunities and challenges that publishers are faced with. Literature on disruptive technology theory served to establish trends in industries faced with disruptive technology, and uncovered recommendations for its successful implementation. The researcher made use of an online survey that was sent to South African trade publishers that had already started experimenting with digital publishing in 2010 or 2011, or had plans to do so during the course of 2011 and 2012. The survey was designed to uncover the current state of digital publishing in the South African trade publishing industry, to discover the approaches that publishers are currently taking, and the barriers to implementation that they are experiencing. The research confirmed that the current state of digital publishing in South Africa, and the problems that publishers are experiencing, are characteristic of industries faced with disruptive technology. The principles of disruptive technology can therefore be applied to develop recommendations and suggest strategies for publishers planning to venture into digital publishing. Although the focus of the research was on South African trade publishers, the results and recommendations that emerged from the research can be applied to the wider international publishing industry. / Dissertation (MIS)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / gm2013 / Information Science / unrestricted

The aim of this study was to investigate factors affecting the adoption of open access in research activities within Tanzanian public universities in order to device mechanisms of enhancing the use of this mode of scholarly communication. The study adopted the UTAUT model to formulate an open access research model comprising of six constructs and five moderators for guidance of this investigation. A triangulation approach for data gathering was adopted. In the first instance, a semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 398 respondents selected using the stratified random sampling from a population of 1088 university researchers from six public universities in Tanzania. The interview involving 63 policy makers and structured records review were also conducted to complement the questionnaire survey. The descriptive and binary logistic regression statistics of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) were used for data analysis. The study established that majority of the policy makers (90.5%) and researchers (72.1%) were aware of open access. Attitude, awareness, effort expectancy, and performance expectancy were established as the key determinants for researchers’ behavioural intention of open access usage while age, awareness, behavioural intention, facilitating conditions and social influence were found to significantly affect researchers’ actual usage of open access. It was concluded that researchers’ and policy makers’ general perceptions about open access were very positive signifying the acceptance of this mode of scholarly communication in the study area. Current poor research conditions and researchers’ low Internet self-efficacy such as inadequate information search and online publishing skills were cited as the main hindrances for researchers to use open access in scholarly communication. The study recommends institutionalisation of open access publishing in Tanzanian public universities and other similar research institutions so as to improve the dissemination of research output emanating from such institutions. Six areas for further research to establish more insights regarding the feasibility for open access development in the country are also recommended. / Information Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Information Science)

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1959 M57

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1963 J33 / Master of Science

This thesis uses a multidisciplinary approach drawing primarily on archival and bibliographical research as well as the fields of children’s literature, book history and translation to explore British translation of Nordic children’s fiction since 1950. Which works of Nordic children’s literature have been published in the UK during the period in question? And how were Nordic children’s authors and texts selected by British publishers, along with British translators and illustrators? Chapter One gives an overview of limited past research in this area, focusing on publishing and book history and Translation Studies (particularly Polysystem Theory). Chapter Two considers bibliographical research already undertaken in Children’s Literature Translation Studies and is followed by a detailed study of the British National Bibliography (1950-2000). This methodological approach has documented for the first time the depth and breadth of the corpus of British translations of Nordic children’s fiction since 1950, enabling key authors, publishers, translators and genres to be identified. A brief analysis is given of the Golden Age of Nordic children’s literature in British translation up to 1975, followed by a decline into the twenty first century. The thesis then goes on to examine the principles and practices of text and translator selection as its second major research element, with extensive use made here of archival sources. Chapter Three explores publishing archives as a research resource and details issues in their distribution and potential use. Chapter Four gives an overview of the key role of the editor as a centre pin in the process of publishing works in translation, drawing on a wide range of publishing archives as well as introducing the case study part of the thesis which examines an independent press and a major international academic publishing house. Chapter Five looks in detail at the role of author-educator-publisher Aidan Chambers in publishing Nordic children’s literature in the early 1990s through small press Turton & Chambers. Chapter Six examines the role of Oxford University Press in publishing Nordic authors from the 1950s to the 2010s, in particular Astrid Lindgren. This thesis aims to make a significant and unique scholarly contribution to the hitherto neglected study of the translation of children’s literature into British English, offering a methodological framework (bibliographical and archival) which has potential for use with other language systems and with adult literature in translation.

The thesis is mainly a substantial part of a crime novel, the title of which is 6, Vermillion Crescent. In that novel, a girl of 14 is murdered by her foster brother. On his release from prison, the former foster child goes in search of his victim’s mother with the intention of murdering her for betraying and abandoning him. The idea for the novel was sparked by events that occurred over 18 years ago, and coincided with the publication of my first novel. There have been a number of changes within the publishing industry since then, and in the critical piece accompanying the novel extract, I explain the most significant of these changes. The critical piece includes a detailed synopsis of 6, Vermillion Crescent.

Written, edited and published in a networked environment, the networked book makes the process of collaboration between its authors and readers visible. This collaboration is recorded in the peripheries of the text through a record of interactions, shared ideas, conversations and annotations and becomes part of the book. The presence of this documentation of the collaborative process challenges the traditionally held positions of author and reader and produces a new form of collaborative work. The divisions between the author, reader and the text become blurred as the book in the networked environment moves from being a physical product and the process of its creation becomes a collaborative experience. Authorship becomes an activity of exchange as the networked book champions the idea that multiple authors can take part in textual production. This thesis uses Gerard Genette’s theory of paratextual analysis to examine in depth the peripheries of three networked books; A Million Penguins, The Golden Notebook Project and Paddlesworth Press. It argues that the paratexts of the networked book are where the dialogues between authors and readers are located and an in depth examination of these is crucial for an understanding of how the process of their collaboration is made visible. Using this approach, the thesis examines and identifies the thresholds between author, reader and text. The text of each of the three case studies is examined as a space where authors and readers communicate through an analysis of behaviour, an identification of roles and a consideration of hierarchies in the collaborative process. The thresholds, boundaries, freedoms and restrictions of both the author and reader positions are explored. The collaborative experience of textual production is one of multiplicity; there is no one author, reader or text and the thesis concludes that a networked book is a book about the dialogue between author and reader and that these dialogues become part of the book.

This thesis examines the problems engendered by ongoing Western dominance in the field of francophone African publishing, with specific reference to Guinea and Senegal. This dominance raises complex issues of power, authority and voice that are familiar tropes in postcolonial analyses, but this thesis seeks to re-place such questions in a wider context, looking at the current material circumstances of the publishing industry and “socially contaminated” instances such as international donor funding and national language policy as a perspective. This allows the links between the two rather distinct fields of the cultural and the commercial to be explored.  The guiding theme is a critique of the argument for full indigenisation or africanisation of African publishing, a debate which is based on questions of language, critical authority and identity.  The thesis seeks to cut through the inevitable polemics raised by the dominance of Western publishers in African publishing, to clearly identify the problems thrown up by this imbalance, and to explore the ramifications for ‘African literature’.

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), headquartered in Seattle, Washington, is the world’s largest online retailer (Jopson, 1). The company’s website launched in the United States in 1994 by Jeffrey Bezos as an online bookstore, later diversified to offer a broad line of products in multiple warehouses across the US. With successful expansion, Amazon.com is now available worldwide in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil and China (SECdatabase, 50). The company directly sells or acts as a third – party to deliver the products to customers. As of the first quarter in 2011, Amazon has approximately 137 million active customers worldwide (Szkutak, 1). In 2007, CEO Jeff Bezos lead Amazon in a new direction by introducing the eReaderKindle, offering a new platform for digital books and other e-print media. The Kindle allows users to read, shop for, download and browse eBooks, newspaper, magazines, blogs and websites using Wi-Fi. The 3G Kindle uses Sprint’s 3G cellular services to allow immediate customer purchase and download from the Amazon Kindle store, with no connectivity charges. The base model e-ink Kindle features a 6” screen, while the Kindle DX has a 10” screen and the newly introduced Kindle Fire has 7” multi-touch colored screen. The Kindle is designed for people who favor a small, compact electronic device to carry in their pockets or bags. The purpose of this paper is to detail the development, technology, opportunities as well as challenges associated with Amazon Kindle in relate to the publishing industry. The paper also discusses whether the 6” eReader device will change reading habits and its impact on hardcopy publishing businesses worldwide.