Medical Online Content Sales to Surpass Books in 2018

Steep declines in medical books and the rise of dynamic online content combine for a sea change in medical publishing — original online content in the form of products like electronic clinical references, drug databases and training tools will overtake books as the No. 2 sales producing publishing activity in 2018. Global Medical Publishing 2017-2021, the most recent report from media and publishing intelligence firm Simba Information, concludes that online content continues to grow faster than all other channels — faster than the largest category journals and much faster than books. At the publisher level, medical online content grew 5.5% to $1.8 billion in 2016 or $1.6 billion at the market level (after the elimination of double counted revenue). Simba forecasts it will pass the shrinking, but still significant, health science book market in 2018. “This change is emblematic of a market and major publishers moving away from doctors owning print books to one where institutions provide databases, tools and platforms to connect members of their professional community,” said Dan Strempel, senior analyst, business professional group, Simba Information. The next phase in this transition is a movement towards a new vision for “dynamic content” — content that will provide answers, not just search results, from a variety of sources whether publisher owned, licensed or open data. Dynamic publishing relies on content in interoperable form to be extracted and combined in w...
Source: News from STM - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: Featured World Source Type: news