well-versed in “born accessible” content, Groth adds, “but

journal publishers are still waking up to the notion that properly

structured and tagged content and metadata—the foundation

of accessible content—provide a better product experience,

improve rendering for multiple formats, and increase discover-

ability.” (Groth chaired a panel discussion at the SSP annual

meeting in May on the importance of accessibility in scholarly

publishing.)

Moreover, making content accessible provides a competitive

edge over other products or companies, and it protects against

having to (re-)convert static formats in the future. “The market

is large. According to the U.S. Government Accountability

Office, over 10% of students enrolled in higher education have

a disability, and this includes a large and growing number of

students with visual and cognitive impairments and print-based

disabilities,” Groth says.

Further Improving Metadata

Metadata management is key to creating better visibility,

searchability, and discoverability across the digital landscape.

“The same metadata is often used multiple times to generate

revenues,” says Vinay Kumar Singh, executive director and CEO

of Thomson Digital. He adds, “The speed of managing content

simultaneously on multiple platforms becomes essential for

making content ready for all types of users at every digital plat-

Much has been said about discoverability and monetization,

but real-world applications remain slow and erratic

BY TERI TAN

C

ontent is everywhere. In fact, there is an overabun-
dance of content out there at the click of a button
or the swipe of the screen. Now more than ever,
with digital content on the rise, it is imperative
for publishers (and their digital solutions part-
ners) to connect content and users. That means
having to understand consumer behavior, viewer engagement,
and user experience to ensure targeted and successful (read:
monetized) content dissemination.
And all this involves ensuring content—specifically articles,
books, journals, and media assets—that is meta-tagged and
enriched, made agile and adaptive for multichannel distribu-
tion, and kept future-ready for transformation and retooling
into new products through different delivery formats. That is
quite a tall order.

Ensuring Accessible Content
Content that is “born accessible” enhances discoverability and
usability, says Mike Groth, marketing director at Cenveo
Publisher Services, which has long been a champion of digital
equality.
Accessible content, for instance, plays better in the Siri and
Alexa era. Voice searching is exploding, and content with high-
quality metadata is perfectly optimized for this phenomenon,
while content that meets accessibility standards can avoid
being penalized in search rank-
ings. Groth adds that “acces-
sibility also involves adding
meaning to content via
alternate text descriptions
to images and non-text
items, and semantic tag-
ging—both of which cap-
ture more discoverable
information than keyword
searches alone.”
K–12 publishers who
must comply with gov-
ernment mandates are

WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 21

Enriching Content for

Discoverability

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