Now Publishers is an international, academic press that has built a reputation among readers, authors, editors, and librarians as a source of excellent peer-reviewed publications in Business, Economics, Computer Science and Engineering. As such, they provide metadata to third-party library systems suppliers and were experiencing problems in confirming with these suppliers that their data were being used both in their entirety and correctly. The purpose of the audit was to confirm that Now’s content was as discoverable as possible by users of library discovery systems and, if not, make recommendations on how to improve its discoverability.
The content scope of the audit was limited to Now’s major journals and books and three major library discovery services. Regional representations Maverick provided for library discovery performance included North and South America, Europe and Australia. The scope for Maverick’s market analysis of library discovery systems and A&I databases comprised all services currently available across all academic libraries worldwide.
Conducting a series of qualitative and quantitative tests, and drawing on Maverick’s existing academic library market knowledge, Maverick prepared an overview of library discovery services and analysis of Now’s publications’ performance in these systems, and evaluated the current state of Now metadata and its indexing in academic library discovery systems. Maverick considered library user experience, standards compliance, and completeness of publication metadata.
A full written report with discoverability scores and analysis, market intelligence, and recommended strategic and tactical actions was provided. Recommendations covered metadata strategy, i.e., attending to numerous opportunities to enrich Now publication metadata, and a comprehensive indexing strategy that could increase reach via extended or additional indexing partnerships.
“The whole Maverick team took time to fully understand our needs, showed flexibility in designing the project scope and methodology, and produced an outcome that was quickly actionable. They executed a project that met all our stated goals within agreed time frames and budget. I thoroughly recommend this Maverick team.
Mike Casey, COO, Now Publishers