I realized 2019 is the 25th anniversary of the start of the Internet as people think of it today. It all started with Mozilla in early 1994 (Thank you Marc Andreessen). I can remember sitting in an office with other people at the publishing company I worked at and seeing the first rudimentary websites. It seems quaint now. We started to discuss all the possibilities; missing many obvious ones that would come our way in relatively quick succession.
Then the publishing world move onto other content delivery developments: the online only journal, eBooks, aggregation, smart phones, search, podcasts, apps, interactive learning, and the list could go on and on. This doesn’t even address adding the components of video and audio to content delivery, and now virtual reality and artificial intelligence.
And that is just 25 years; relatively speaking.
What will the next 25 years bring? The year 2044 may sound like saying the year 2444, but it is well within reach. People are planning for time periods much longer than 25 years. Interstate 95 runs from Maine to Florida. A 40-year revitalization project was just announced for just the Philadelphia section.
What can scholarly publishing do to ensure as much innovation takes place in the next 25 as in the last 25? How will accessibility, privacy, interactivity, and many other important issues be addressed?
If this time period seems insurmountable, how about 10 years? Or 5 years? Or just this year? How are you working to keep your publishing organization apace with change?