customers,” says Emily Taylor Gregory, head of marketing
and communications.
Rebranding activities aside, Ingenta has been busy adding
new clients and extending existing contracts in recent months.
The American Society for Microbiology, for instance, has
extended its online hosting contract with Ingenta. Its ASM-science digital platform now hosts more than 250 titles
along with the monthly membership magazine Microbe, the
education-based journal JMBE, the new journals EcoSal
Plus and Microbiology Spectrum, and a growing selection of
supplementary research content.
Sabinet, a South African electronic publication aggregator,
has signed an agreement to launch the packaged Web
solution CMS Go! on Ingenta. “This partnership allows
Sabinet to host its major journal service, the Sabinet African
ePublications, on our out-of-the-box solution, which was
launched late last year,” Taylor Gregory says.
Meanwhile, Ingenta’s sales and marketing consulting
company, Publishers Communication Group (PCG), has
signed a deal with Henry Stewart Publications to represent
the publisher’s 16 journals, primarily at an institutional level,
across major international markets, including China, Europe,
MPS on Rights and
Permissions
Ever-changing technology and consumer demand for
instant content access have tremendous implications on
rights and permissions. “As recently as four years ago,
rights were secured for speci;c products, territories, and
user quantities,” says Jill Dougan, director of rights and
permissions at MPS Ltd. “Today,
publishers are not only requesting
permission for products they have
planned, but also for those that are
yet to be conceptualized, and sometimes for technologies that are still
unavailable commercially. On the
other hand, you have copyright
owners who want to protect their IPs and require transparency when reviewing requests to use their content.”
Meanwhile, U.S. and European copyright laws are
undergoing progressive reforms as lines are drawn
bet ween content creators, providers, and users. Navigating
dynamic rights and permissions regulations thus requires
a systematic approach by a dedicated team.
The ;rst step involves meticulous content examination
to identify third-party material and careful license review
to determine which rights have already been secured and
which still need to be. “Negotiating license terms and
associated fees is the next step,” Dougan says, adding
that “securing rights has become more challenging as
publishers’ production cycles accelerate further while
copyright holders’ reviews for requested usage become
even more thorough.”
Unsuccessful rights negotiations can be very disappointing to authors. In such cases, MPS’s rights and
permissions team is adept in researching alternative
options, or replacing the selection with content that is
created by its illustrators or subject matter experts.
“Fair use is a defense, not a right,” Dougan says. “Our
team uses their experience, understanding of copyright
laws, and expert judgment whenever considering
materials for fair use.”
The team relies on the Internet as the ;rst source in
researching copyright owners. “Simple Google searches
often retrieve missing source information,” Dougan
says. “Social media sites such as
LinkedIn, Facebook, and Flickr are
invaluable tools to locate individuals and estates controlling rights to
copyrighted materials. As for Amazon,
Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine,
and TinEye, these are great for reverse
researching content and photos. So,
in today’s computer-centric world, savvy online research
is essential.”
Dougan’s team manages image and art development
programs for an online learning and assessments publisher and the entire rights and permissions function for
a well-known publisher of medical texts. “We have also
been involved in extensive rights analysis projects
where we examine backlists to evaluate the costs and
complexities of repurposing titles for new formats
and markets,” Dougan says. “We have examined over
300,000 book pages and licenses, documenting permissions and shortfalls, and secured the necessary rights for
over 100,000 text and image assets.”
MPS’s rights and permissions management system
maintains a robust copyright owner database, generates
customized correspondence and reports, and analyzes
and stores granular data—all within the same platform.
“Our clients manage their projects via direct access to
the system, as well, while authors and editors use our
Lightbox feature to access, review, and approve images.”
For more information on MPS’s rights and permissions
capabilities and suites of platforms, including DigiCore,
head over to booth 7H48.
Go to http://www.adi-mps.com