In our talk about the not (yet) used potential of e-books at the Inetbib conference (www.inetbib.de) in Berlin, Bruno Wenk – my colleague at HTW Chur – and I outlined some characteristics of an ideal academic e-book. We invite you to join the discussion!
The ideal e-book
- is based on the standard EPUB3 and is also published as a complete PDF
- contains the necessary metadata for direct import into a catalog or a reference management system
- contains markers of paragraphs to allow citation in scientific articles
- Example: 10.1007/978-3-8349-8027-4_3/0012
- restricts the use not with a „hard“ DRM. Unauthorized use or alteration of the content is prevented by watermark or digital signature.
- can be integrated in work environments (highlighting, annotation, collaboration etc.)
- is automatically updated when a new version is available
- is published under open access or accessible for everybody by a national license
Do you have ideas and suggestions for additional ideal characteristics or comments to these suggestions? Feel free to use the comment feature of the blog!
Rudolf Mumenthaler 