Creative Users, Social Networking, and New Models of Publishing

This paper reviews the changing landscape of the publishing industry, which is being reshaped by dynamics of user co-creation, social networking and open licencing. It briefly touches on possible research themes associated with disruptive changes in the world’s oldest media/creative industry, particularly under the umbrella of “Cultural Science”. Two new models of publishing are discussed: literary self-publishing in China and open innovations in academic publishing. It argues that evolution in the publishing industry goes beyond “digital publishing” towards “new publishing in a digital world”, demanding new models serving population-wide creativity and open knowledge communication. 1 Dr Xiang Ren is a research fellow at Australian Digital Futures Institute, USQ. He can be reached at xiang.ren@usq.edu.au. More information is available at http://www.usq.edu.au/adfi/team/xiangren

Everyone had become both a distributor and a gatekeeper. Amazon's Goodreads is a type of "social network market" (Potts, Cunningham et al. 2008) for published content, allowing readers to collectively select and socially recommend the best titles; social reference management sites like Mendeley could be understood as a counterpart in academic publishing. Emerging digital curation tools like Scoop are further empowering readers and transforming them into editors.
The boundaries between content creators and consumers and the distinction between professionals and amateurs are increasingly blurred (Mandiberg 2012). Two crucial values added by traditional publishing are being disrupted: the traditional gatekeeping function of publishing firms is being replaced by the collective intelligence of readers; and publishing industry intermediaries are being replaced by direct interaction between content creators and consumers.
Copyright industries are evolving to cope with increasingly open creation and distribution systems. Free content is being enabled through licensing frameworks like Creative Commons, and through new approaches to the monetisation of content. Freemium models and cross-subsidisation are taking on a much more prominent role in the creative economy. These models are making free content both legal and sustainable.
Many traditional publishers regard these disruptive changes as a crisis and have adopted defensive strategies, attempting to lock down content and restrict free access. However, I would argue that what we are seeing is a process of creative destruction. The innovations of digital publishing players like Amazon, iBooks, Lulu, Plos, PeerJ and other digital initiatives are making the publishing business more efficient, transparent, productive and innovative. They are making the publishing world a better one. Publishers are being presented with both a "crisis" they have seen and "opportunities" they might not see.
There is little choice but to evolve in order to survive.

New Research Themes on New Publishing
All of this places new models of publishing at the epicentre of the most important developments in landscapes of media and communication. Perhaps the first question we should ask is what the new value propositions of publishing industry business models might be? Population wide creativity and the democratisation of technologies for mass communication mean that content is no longer scarce. As a result, there is shift from markets in content to markets in services that either make content useful or which make processes of cultural creation more productive and efficient. Selling information and service along with or about content is becoming more profitable than selling the content itself.
Demand for new kinds of services is being created accordingly. For example, in scholarly publishing, content overlay and data-mining tools are becoming big business for publishers. Instead of seeking out talent and selecting manuscripts for readers, many literary agencies and publishers are providing editing and marketing services to self- Step" is an interesting example of this challenge, and commercial opportunity.

Startled by Each
Step was widely circulated via unuathorised distribution (pirate) networks; Its wide dissemination allowed the series to gather a very large number of fans and played a key role in the growth of its popularity. This strong fan following in turn helped to ensure that the TV adaptation of the story was a hit. The print version of the story also became a super bestseller (Ren and Montgomery 2012).
There are inherent tensions between the highly dynamic, decentralised structure of can actively improve practices (Griffiths, 1998: 21) by using their expertise to encourage positive change. Action research involves a cyclic process in which research, action and evaluation are interlinked, and in which those involved are participants in the change process (Hart & Bond, 1995: 37-38  How can academic rigor be achieved by crowdsourcing, social networking, and autonomous user creativity instead of institutionalised quality control and publishermediated certification? Emerging initiatives like open peer review and alternative metrics remain in their infancy and require more work to transform them into acceptable and practical models. Under such an institutional context, the co-evolution between digital technologies, business innovations, and policies is essential for the future of academic publishing. Research is a bridge connecting these aspects.

Conclusion
Publishing studies needs to co-evolve with the digital transformation of the publishing industry. Employing new theoretical approaches like Cultural Science is useful, but not enough. University-based researchers need closer connections with, and deeper involvement in, processes of publishing evolution. I keep my connections with front line digital publishers in China after I left publishing industry for an academic career. Over 20 publications in China's leading journals and press media and a few popular columns in digital publishing portals are derived from our communication. The exchange of insightful ideas between researchers and practitioners is inspiring for both sides with regard to publishing evolution. On the other hand, publishers and publishing researchers need a broader vision beyond the traditional territory of "publishing". The future of publishing is not "digitised traditional publishing" or simply "digital publishing", but "new publishing in a digital world", which means a wide variety of publishing models serving populationwide creativity and open knowledge communication.