Digital Solutions in India 2019
16 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ AUGUST 5, 2019
Content creation and
rewriting is another area
in which the Lapiz
Digital team has been
doing very well in recent
months. “We are basi-
cally ghostwriting blogs
and books, and most of
these projects involve
technical research con-
tent in areas such as engi-
neering, technology, and
the internet of things,
which require web
mining and are quite
straightforward. We also
work on tests and assess-
ments, create question banks for various subjects, and write
alternate texts for accessibility content,” Bharathram says.
The team has been working on auditing other vendors’
works for many years. The auditing projects, Bharathram adds,
“revealed common content errors related to spacing and entity
issues as well as formatting errors and missing links. The con-
cept of ‘first time right’ is yet to sink in with the younger
workforce, and so there is an urgent need for more training to
overcome negligence and to provide error-free products and
content.”
Meanwhile, publishers are becoming more focused on cap-
turing the correct metadata. Bharathram explains, “We know
the importance of having the correct metadata, which are
extensively used to search, identify, collect, and trace resources
of all kinds. Publishers are increasingly going for semantic
metadata, which describes the resources or objects at a gran-
ular level and makes the content search more effective and
efficient.” The metadata input and output are validated
through automation tools that collect data based on client
requirements. For some customers, the team uses a purpose-
built web engine that utilizes crawlers to search for all meta-
data and generate the raw output. Specific algorithms are then
used to index and validate the metadata.
Going forward, Lapiz will focus on two new business initia-
tives involving e-commerce and analytics. “Though we started
working on these two last year, there will be a lot more push
in terms of investment in technology and resources in the
coming months. An aggressive push in e-learning is also on
the table,” Bharathram adds.Lumina Datamatics
Among the latest solutions from Lumina Datamatic are MARS
(Manuscript Assessment & Reporting System), Rights
Platform (enhanced with blockchain technology), ExpertSource
Pro (powered by Smart Test Technology), and the
RightsPlatform Marketplace. “Our custom solutions addressspecific publishing issues, while our new solutions, such as
MARS, help to improve the overall efficiencies of the journal
peer-review process,” vice chairman Vidur Bhogilal says.
Its market-leading RightsPlatform tool, for instance, has
been upgraded to automate the rights-acquisition process. “It
is the chief source of auditable transactional details for dozens
of clients. RapidRightsChain, backed by blockchain, now
enables instant transactions,” Bhogilal adds. “Authors, edi-
tors, and designers can quickly and easily approve their image,
send their rights requests with one click, and receive licensing
grants without leaving the system or performing additional
data entry. This dramatically lowers acquisition costs and
increases creators’ control in the process.”
Two of the world’s largest STM/scholarly publishers now
have all their visual assets on Lumina Datamatics’
RightsPlatform Marketplace. “We are currently facilitating
access to collections of materials and implementing taxono-
mies that help drive more targeted searches in specialty areas,”
Bhogilal says, pointing out that the platform manages more
than two million assets.
Meanwhile, the latest ver-
sion of ExpertSource now
matches clients with free-
lancers on tens of thousands
of tasks, including complex
math and science writing as
well as editing, proof-
reading, indexing, and fact
checking. “When free-
lancers sign up, we use
LightPayCoin to reward
their activities. Clients are
also rewarded for rating
freelancers and their
ongoing participation on
the platform,” Bhogilal
explains, adding that clients
“can exchange LightPayCoin rewards for freelance services,
award bonuses to high-performing freelancers, or bank their
rewards for more speculative projects that are harder to fund.”
Now that publishers are busy reorganizing not just their
business models but also cost structures and the way services
are delivered, Lumina Datamatics is focused on under-
standing the shifts and reinventing itself to fit evolving client
needs. “Our goal is to leverage technology to solve client’s pain
points. For instance, we are developing platforms for pre-
manuscript screening to enhance peer-review efficiencies,
improving copyediting capabilities via contextualized pro-
cesses, and supporting publishers’ new Open Access eco-
system,” says Bhogilal, who is establishing Lumina Datamatics
as a core supplier for educational publishers and collabo-
rating with them across their businesses in different
geographies.Vidur Bhogilal, vice-chairman of
Lumina DatamaticsV. Bharathram, president of Lapiz
Digital Services