KNOWLEDGEWISE - Summer 2005
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Content, Publishing and Knowledge Management Trends in Context
In This Issue
Welcome
Welcome to the inaugural issue of KNOWLEDGEWISE, a bi-monthly report on content and knowledge management trends, knowledge services and publishing technologies from the work process and technology experts at Innodata Isogen.
Our aim is to keep you current on significant developments in the commercial and enterprise publishing space and to deliver news you can use to improve economic and performance outcomes – in everything from authoring to production to classification and search and retrieval.
To kick things off, we have a terrific issue for you. First, we have an interview with Karl Best (Executive Director of XBRL.org US) on the impact that this emerging standard will have on all public companies as they report financial results. We look at the Google Library initiative – do you think it’s a great leap forward or a threat to copyright laws? Finally, this issue also discusses the latest developments in DITA – just accepted by OASIS as an official standard – a move that we believe will have a significant benefit for all companies seeking to deploy new content management systems.
That's it for now. Hope you enjoy the first issue. Please let us know what you think and if there are any topics you'd like us to cover in future issues.
Warm regards,
Jack Abuhoff
Chairman & CEO
Google Library: “Great Leap Forward” or threat to publishers?
Google’s announcement that it would digitize as many as 15 million books from five prestigious libraries rocked the publishing world. Reactions from librarians around the world ranged from “stunned” and “brilliant” to “transformational” and “a great leap forward.”
But once the smoke cleared from that December announcement, a more measured response from publishers began to surface on the impact of what that initiative could mean to their revenue and spawned a broader debate on whether the Internet will eventually trump traditional copyright laws.
An article in the June issue of E-Commerce News reported that the Association of American Publishers has written to Google asking that the company voluntarily agree to a six-month moratorium on scanning, digitizing and posting books from major libraries around the world. Google has agreed to meet with representatives from the publishing industry, but appears to be ready to continue moving forward. Over the course of the 10-year project, Google will digitize as many as 15 million books from five major public libraries: University of Michigan, Stanford University, New York Public, Harvard and Oxford.
Some of the most vocal protests have come from Europe, where national librarians fear that the virtual library will be biased in favor of books published in English and overlook great literary works published in other languages. In fact, 19 national European libraries have joined forces to launch a competing project to put European literature on-line.
Google Library also raises questions about copyright issues, with some observers believing that Google might be planning commercial uses of the books. So far, Google has said that copyrighted material (most books published after 1926) will only have an excerpt on-line, with a link that will show readers where to buy or borrow a copy. Books printed prior to 1926 will be on the Web cover to cover.
Obviously, the controversy over the Google Library project will continue to remain in the public eye, at least for the near future. We're interested in hearing your opinion, participate in our on-line survey and let us know what you think.
Financial Reporting with XBRL: Voluntary for now, but for how much longer?
Conversation with Karl Best, Executive Director of XBRL-US
With the SEC’s recent decision to accept EDGAR filings created in XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), the XML-based language appears to be gathering critical mass in the U.S. for reporting corporate business results. Even so, adoption in the U.S. is lagging somewhat behind some countries of Europe and Asia. KNOWLEDGE WISE asked Karl Best, Executive Director of XBRL-US, to shed some light on XBRL’s adoption rate and what his group is doing to promote its use in the United States.
What is XBRL and what are the major benefits?
As an XML language, XBRL enables users to add intelligence to financial reporting information, which makes that information more useful. Financial information can flow through the reporting “supply chain” without the need for manual re-keying at various stages, and can be gathered and developed, submitted, processed and analyzed by automated systems.
From the viewpoint of the consumers of the information – analysts, investors or regulatory agencies – the financial reports are delivered electronically to them in a way that enables them to manipulate, review, and analyze the data much more efficiently. Given the extensive reporting requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley, that’s a major benefit the SEC and other government bodies are not going to overlook. And it gives analysts the ability to look at a larger number of companies, in much greater detail than previously possible.
What are the greatest challenges in getting more companies to voluntarily adopt XBRL?
Our main challenge right now is showing business decision makers the benefits of using XBRL. The technical community already understands XBRL’s benefits as an information standard, but business leaders need to see the financial and other benefits spelled out in black and white. The members of the XBRL consortium have spent the past five years developing the technology, and member companies have been developing tools to create and process XBRL information. Now that XBRL is ready for use, we need to educate potential users about its benefits.
Why have U.S. companies been slower to adopt XBRL than other countries?
I think it’s primarily a cultural issue. In Europe and Asia, government regulatory agencies are much more comfortable with the top-down approach of regulation. If they believe a new standard like XBRL will deliver benefits, they will require companies to use it for their regulatory filings.
In the United States, federal and local government agencies follow a more bottom-up approach in allowing input from regulated entities before mandating the use of a new technology. The SEC first had a public comment period before announcing a voluntary filing period. This voluntary program gives both the SEC and public companies a chance to test the waters with XBRL and learn its benefits firsthand before making its use for regulatory filings a requirement.
So you do expect XBRL to eventually become a mandatory standard in the United States. When do you expect that to happen?
It’s already happening, in small steps. This fall, for example, the FDIC will require its member banks to report in XBRL. And while the SEC has not set a hard deadline, many expect that after a year or two of voluntary filings of annual 10K reports they will become mandatory. They’re going to have to – with the SEC required by Sarbanes-Oxley to review every company’s filings every three years, and some more often than that – there’s no way they can comply without some sort of automated processing of financial reports. For that, they need the filings to provide intelligent data through XBRL.
Where can our readers learn more about XBRL?
The XBRL.org consortium’s Web site at www.xbrl.org and the Web site of XBRL-US at www.xbrl.org/us both provide resources for those interested in learning more about XBRL.
XBRL-US is planning a series of awareness and technical training events later this fall, which will be announced as soon as we have the dates finalized; please keep an eye on our site at www.xbrl.org/us/events. Coming up on July 19 in Washington D.C. will be a one-day event, free to the public, on the use of XBRL in government and in industry.
Event information and registration materials are available.
It's Official: OASIS Accepts DITA as official standard
The decision by OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) to formally approve DITA as an industry standard reaffirms what many technology and industry observers have known for years; that the architecture would ultimately gain widespread acceptance as the preferred specification for deploying XML-based content management systems.
Short for Darwin Information Typing Architecture, DITA enables controlled local specialization of XML document types in a way that preserves the ability to interchange information objects with other DITA users and with different DITA-aware applications and processors. The standard thus provides clear and proven techniques and facilities for authoring, maintaining and publishing modular information.
DITA version 1.0 was developed by member companies, including Innodata Isogen, as a common template for XML architecture.
Creating a common template means that companies seeking to deploy XML-based systems will no longer have to build separate document type definition (DTD) schemas and develop other customized tools, says Eliot Kimber of Innodata Isogen.
"By finding a common ground with DITA, we significantly ease the process of managing and publishing information within individual companies," Kimber notes. "This will also streamline the task of exchanging data with business partners and vendors."
DITA does not directly provide any content management features, which users must develop for themselves as they would for any XML application. That’s because DITA's public tool kit does not provide all the features and functions that organizations need to implement a complete DITA-based information management system.
Instead, DITA allows topic-oriented, information-typed content to be created and reused in a variety of ways. As a result, DITA enables organizations to deliver content as closely as possible to the point-of-use, which makes it ideal for applications such as integrated help systems, Web sites, and how-to instruction pages. In addition, DITA's topic-oriented content can be used to exploit new features or delivery channels as they become available.
DITA also performs checks during processing to ensure that replacement elements are valid in their new contexts. Reused content is validated at the authoring level rather than at reuse time, allowing problems to be caught at the source. Topic-type specialization provides DITA with the benefits of the object-oriented model to information sets. The designer of the topic type needs only to address a specific manageable problem domain, while the author needs only to learn the elements specific to the topic type. The individual responsible for deploying the architecture only needs to process those elements that are special.
The establishment of this industry standard will shorten the time and lower the costs of implementing XML-based single-source publishing systems. DITA is the crystallization of an XML system that IBM started developing in 2000 to manage its own internal documents. It was further refined by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee, which includes representatives of Innodata Isogen, Arbortext, Idiom Technologies and Nokia.
Innodata Isogen News
One in Five publishers use digital technology on 100% of operations
While many publishers have made significant strides in converting their content to digital formats, a recent survey by Innodata Isogen reveals that many publishers are still performing critical content supply chain activities on paper.
According to a survey of more than 100 U.S. and Canadian publishing executives, fewer than one in five publishers - 19.3 percent - have fully converted their publishing operations to digital content. A slightly higher percentage - 30.1 percent indicated that they used digital technology to create, store or manage between half to three-fourths of their content. About 15 percent of the publishers surveyed said that they had converted more than three-fourths, but not all, their content to digital platforms.
More than half (50.5 percent) said they spend 10 percent or more of annual revenues on creating or acquiring content. Companies polled included publishers of books, e-books, educational, commercial, newspaper, magazine, scientific, technical, financial, consumer and directory/reference publications.
Digitizing content allows it to be marked up and sorted as components, rather than entire articles, enabling publishers to create output for a variety of formats, from hard copy and PDF to CD-ROMs or html.
SPL compliance requires careful, strategic approach
An article in Pharmaceutical Formulation & Quality magazine outlines how organizations that adopt a careful, strategic approach to SPL compliance will seize a competitive advantage and drive significant improvements throughout their organization. Innodata Isogen is helping leading pharmaceutical companies shift to the structured product labeling (SPL) standard required by the Food and Drug Administration for prescription drugs this fall, and for all FDA regulated products in 2006.
Unlike the current portable document format, SPL is built on XML, which will enable pharmaceuticals to reuse information as they create, manage and distribute information throughout the lifecycle of bringing drugs from the research lab to the marketplace. It will also ease delivering critical information to doctors, pharmacists and patients on instructions for taking medicines, chemical composition, potential side effects or other contra-indications.
Innodata Isogen In KMWorld's Top 100 Companies
KMWorld magazine named Innodata Isogen as one of the top 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management for 2005. The KMWorld Magazine honor recognizes companies for exemplifying the ideals of true knowledge management and offering products and services that fundamentally transform the way organizations operate. A unifying quality for all companies selected is that they listen to their customers.
KMWorld, with more than 51,000 subscribers, is the leading information provider to the knowledge management systems market. It covers component and processes that offer solutions for improving business performance.
Five Steps Publishers Need to Take to Develop Successful Rich Data Products
A publisher of a legal trade paper, for example, could deep tag verdicts, settlements, jury compositions, expert witnesses and lawyers cited in its stories. Such a database would be invaluable to lawyers and paralegals researching their own cases, and could be made available on-line for a fee. The publisher then would gain a new revenue stream from reusing its content. The key is to be aware of the potential value of seemingly insignificant bits of data such as charts, maps, digital images, lists, statistics or raw numbers. Properly packaged and marketed, all data has resale value.
Learn more about Rich Data Products
Don't Get Caught Offshore... Innodata Isogen Webinar set for July 13
Register for Don't Get Caught Offshore with the Wrong Partner: Seven Tips for Selecting the Best Outsourcing Partner
Hosted by George Kondrach, EVP of Innodata Isogen, this informative webinar will describe the challenges of business process outsourcing for financial services firms, identify key processes that are good candidates for outsourcing, and help organizations decide on a cogent strategy for contracting services with a trusted offshore partner.
Innodata Isogen Launches new Composition Offering
Innodata Isogen is gearing up to launch a new Batch Composition and Prepress service through our offshore production centers.
This new service will help publishers produce multiple output versions of content deliverables such as high-resolution, pre-press PDF. The hosted technology platform will enable clients to better manage content assets, including intellectual property, and minimize the costs associated with switching composition vendors or changing technologies.
By using XML-based composition systems, the production facility can offer high-value outcomes, high-quality output at lower costs per page, with a reusable set of style assets that minimize set-up charges for individual jobs. The production facility will also be geared to streamline the production of multiple output versions of content deliverables, such as high-resolution and web-based PDF versions.
Partner Corner
Blast Radius
From time to time, KNOWLEDGE WISE will feature articles written by one of our partners, along with other news related to our partner program. This article on the Content Rich Workplace from Bruce Sharpe of Blast Radius appeared in the March issue of Line 56.
Innodata Isogen and Blast Radius partner to help clients reduce the time and cost of authoring and editing processes, by creating content in XML as well as collaborative review enablement.
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