Branded Content: The Fateful Merging of Media and Marketing

This is a critical study of the changing relationship between media and marketing communications in the digital age. It examines the growth of content funded by brands, including brands’ own media, native advertising and the integration of branded content across film, television, journalism and publishing, online, mobile and social media. With a focus on key issues in industry, policy and academic contexts this is essential reading for students of media industries, advertising, marketing and digital media. This ambitious historical, empirical, and theoretical study examines industry practices, policies, and ‘problems’, advancing a framework for analysis of communications governance. Featuring examples from the UK, US, EU, Asia, and other regions, it illustrates and explains industry practices, forms, and formats and their relationship with changing market conditions, policies, and regulation. The book provides a wide-ranging and incisive guide to contemporary advertising and media practices, to different arguments and perspectives on these practices arising in industry, policy, and academic contexts, and to the contribution made by critical scholarship, past and present. It also offers a critical review of industry, regulatory, societal, and academic literatures

Publishing: A guide to finding information

A Library guide to print and electronic resources relevant to Publishin

Provision of information on organic soft fruit production OF0306

Although there is a demand for organic soft fruit in the UK, especially from processors, these crops are only grown on a very small scale at present. As the demand for organic fruit continues to grow much of this is therefore currently met by imports. Lack of technical knowledge, information and advice for growers, together with uncertainties over the economics of production are at present major barriers preventing growers becoming involved in this area. The purpose of this project is to address this problem, by collating the knowledge gained on this topic in previous projects (OF0150), updating it with new developments and produce a technical guide on organic soft fruit production for growers. The content of the booklet is likely to be based on a booklet on the same topic that has been published by FiBL and this has already been translated to English as part of a previous DEFRA project (OF0150). The collated information will be available in a user-friendly format as a published booklet and over the Internet. The findings of the project will also be disseminated to growers and other stakeholders within the industry at a seminar dedicated to the topic of Organic Soft Fruit Production and through articles in the horticultural press. The dissemination of this knowledge should have a beneficial effect by contributing to increasing the interest in organic soft fruit production and giving growers greater confidence to convert to organic production and thus eventually increase the domestic production of organic soft fruit. The project is relevant to DEFRA as it fits in with its overall policy of assisting UK organic farmers to meet the growing demand for organic produce and provide the necessary information to enable farmers to assess whether they should convert to organic production. Objective The overall aim of this project is to provide information for growers on organic soft fruit production (raspberry, currants and gooseberry). The specific objectives will be to: 1) to update, collect and review information on existing knowledge on, current practice and best practice techniques for organic production of raspberry, currants and gooseberry, building on the findings of OF0150. 2) to produce a published technical booklet for growers - Organic soft fruit production (title to be confirmed) 3) to disseminate the information to growers and other stakeholders in the organic fruit industr

Report on the Third Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE3)

This report records and discusses the Third Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE3). The report includes a description of the keynote presentation of the workshop, which served as an overview of sustainable scientific software. It also summarizes a set of lightning talks in which speakers highlighted to-the-point lessons and challenges pertaining to sustaining scientific software. The final and main contribution of the report is a summary of the discussions, future steps, and future organization for a set of self-organized working groups on topics including developing pathways to funding scientific software; constructing useful common metrics for crediting software stakeholders; identifying principles for sustainable software engineering design; reaching out to research software organizations around the world; and building communities for software sustainability. For each group, we include a point of contact and a landing page that can be used by those who want to join that group's future activities. The main challenge left by the workshop is to see if the groups will execute these activities that they have scheduled, and how the WSSSPE community can encourage this to happen

General cost analysis for scholarly communication in Germany : results of the "Houghton Report" for Germany

Management Summary: Conducted within the project “Economic Implications of New Models for Information Supply for Science and Research in Germany”, the Houghton Report for Germany provides a general cost and benefit analysis for scientific communication in Germany comparing different scenarios according to their specific costs and explicitly including the German National License Program (NLP). Basing on the scholarly lifecycle process model outlined by Björk (2007), the study compared the following scenarios according to their accounted costs: - Traditional subscription publishing, - Open access publishing (Gold Open Access; refers primarily to journal publishing where access is free of charge to readers, while the authors or funding organisations pay for publication) - Open Access self-archiving (authors deposit their work in online open access institutional or subject-based repositories, making it freely available to anyone with Internet access; further divided into (i) CGreen Open Access’ self-archiving operating in parallel with subscription publishing; and (ii) the ‘overlay services’ model in which self-archiving provides the foundation for overlay services (e.g. peer review, branding and quality control services)) - the NLP. Within all scenarios, five core activity elements (Fund research and research communication; perform research and communicate the results; publish scientific and scholarly works; facilitate dissemination, retrieval and preservation; study publications and apply the knowledge) were modeled and priced with all their including activities. Modelling the impacts of an increase in accessibility and efficiency resulting from more open access on returns to R&D over a 20 year period and then comparing costs and benefits, we find that the benefits of open access publishing models are likely to substantially outweigh the costs and, while smaller, the benefits of the German NLP also exceed the costs. This analysis of the potential benefits of more open access to research findings suggests that different publishing models can make a material difference to the benefits realised, as well as the costs faced. It seems likely that more Open Access would have substantial net benefits in the longer term and, while net benefits may be lower during a transitional period, they are likely to be positive for both ‘author-pays’ Open Access publishing and the ‘over-lay journals’ alternatives (‘Gold Open Access’), and for parallel subscription publishing and self-archiving (‘Green Open Access’). The NLP returns substantial benefits and savings at a modest cost, returning one of the highest benefit/cost ratios available from unilateral national policies during a transitional period (second to that of ‘Green Open Access’ self-archiving). Whether ‘Green Open Access’ self-archiving in parallel with subscriptions is a sustainable model over the longer term is debateable, and what impact the NLP may have on the take up of Open Access alternatives is also an important consideration. So too is the potential for developments in Open Access or other scholarly publishing business models to significantly change the relative cost-benefit of the NLP over time. The results are comparable to those of previous studies from the UK and Netherlands. Green Open Access in parallel with the traditional model yields the best benefits/cost ratio. Beside its benefits/cost ratio, the meaningfulness of the NLP is given by its enforceability. The true costs of toll access publishing (beside the buyback” of information) is the prohibition of access to research and knowledge for society

Knowledge transfer to organic fruit industry

Although consumer demand for organic fruit is strong, it is currently the least developed sector of the UK organic industry, represented by only a small number of commercial growers. One of the main constraints preventing growers becoming more involved in this sector has been the lack of technical information and guidance, resulting in very few growers having the knowhow and confidence to convert. The aim of this project was to produce technical guides for growers on two of the more important commercial fruit crops in the UK, one entitled ‘Organic Apple Production – pest and disease management’ and the other, ‘Organic Strawberry Production – a grower’s guide.’ These have now been published and the information contained within the two booklets should go a long way to meet the current lack of information on organic fruit growing for apple and strawberry crops. The guides will provide valuable information and advice for current and potential growers, researchers, advisors and colleges. The two guides are based on previous DEFRA funded studies, ‘Organic Fruit Production; a review of current practice and knowledge’ (OF0150) and ‘Economics of Organic Fruit Production in the UK’ (OF0151). During these studies, advisory material published by the Swiss Organic Agriculture Research Institute (FiBL) was identified as a useful source of information and extensively revised and updated with relevance to UK conditions. Much additional information for this project was obtained through discussion with growers, advisors and researchers. These included fruit researchers at HRI East Malling, ADAS Fruit Team, Farm Advisory Services Team (FAST Ltd), The Soil Association, The Organic Advisory Service at Elm Farm and The Organic Soft Fruit Working Group. Upon completion, the guides were extensively peer reviewed by organic growers, researchers and advisors both in the UK and abroad. The booklets have now been published as full colour, user-friendly guides (36 pages per guide) priced £8 each. The information contained in the booklets will also become accessible over the internet on the HDRA website. The booklets themselves will be publicised through relevant trade press and horticultural magazines together with relevant forthcoming horticultural / fruit shows. Through the production of these fruit booklets, HDRA has established good contacts and expertise within the organic fruit industry and is well placed to continue to provide growers with further information on organic fruit crops through future collaborative projects. Following successful collaboration with the Organic Soft Fruit Working Group on the strawberry technical guide, the opportunity exists to do similar information provision for other soft fruit crops and a proposal for a further booklet on organic cane and bush fruit production has now been accepted by DEFRA (OF0311)