The Future of Academic Books

Author: Niels-Peter Thomas

Springer Nature Chief Book Strategist

I am often asked whether there will be books in the future? Are printed scholarly books doomed to disappear in the years to come? Will a ‘disruptor’ appear which makes books obsolete?

The answer to all of these questions is both yes and no, depending on your definition of the book. Undoubtedly, the essence of the book is changing and will continue to change. If you stick to an old definition of what a book is, then books will disappear.

However, if you define a book according to its future needs, I think books have a bright future. Therefore, the much more appropriate and productive question is: how and why will books change and how will publishers need to adapt to this?

The age of algorithms

Books serve very different purposes, are read for different reasons, and in different situations. The needs of undergraduate students, PhD candidates, young researchers or professors are very different and this needs to be reflected in the book’s format and the publisher’s business model.

“We will then see purely machine-generated content, even complete books that do not have an author any more but an algorithm as their creator”

This is why we have seen in recent years a massive growth in formats and business models and is something we expect to continue. This trend is likely to be accelerated when we see the first machine-generated content modifications, such as automatic translation, auto-generated abstracts, or different context-sensitive adaptations depending on the reader’s language, time, and knowledge.

These technologies already exist, they just need to be applied to academic publishing. We will then see purely machine-generated content, even complete books that do not have an author any more but an algorithm as their creator. The faster the growth in published content across more diverse formats, the more difficult it will become for human researchers to read all that is relevant for their own research. This will make discovery services much more important, and it will increase the transformation to OA books, since both will help content to be found more easily and more often by potential readers.

“They will look for an answer to a specific research question, and may find it in a journal article, in a book chapter, or in a machine generated or machine-augmented piece of content.”

In combination with a continuously growing number of business models, ‘books’ will eventually be much more ambiguous than today with a large number of readers not knowing and probably not caring if the piece of information they have found is a book, or any other form of publication. They will look for an answer to a specific research question, and may find it in a journal article, in a book chapter, or in a machine generated or machine-augmented piece of content.

Adding value to books

We do not know when this situation will occur, but we may assume that it will happen in the next five to 15 years. By that time, some will argue books do not exist anymore, because they do not see them as such, seeing instead a large content database in a much more diverse form than anything today.

From the perspective of authors however, books will still exist and be more interactive, adaptive, and context-sensitive. Still, publishers will need to show to authors why it is important to stick to the concept of books. One possibility to do so is providing specific data about the performance of books with regards to readership, citations, social media mentions, or any other impact that a book has on society and science.

Adding an additional communication channel within eBooks allowing for interaction between the reader and the author and even between readers, sometimes referred to as “social reading”, also adds to the value of the “integrity” of books. Adding value and services will be important in making authors and readers aware that downloading pirated book content will eventually lead to a lower level of services and quality.

Finally, the business models of today – like an exchange of a PDF document for money – will not be sustainable business models in the future. Authors will stick with those publishers who enrich their books with additional services, who advance discovery, who will understand the necessity of machine-readable platforms, who will embrace OA and who will find the business models that will make sure the requirements for all kinds of readers will be met. Springer Nature is ready to be that publisher.