Search results

The aim of this paper is to detail the innovative campaign co‐developed by Words&Pictures and Specsavers to raise the caliber of Specsavers' profile in the optics profession among university optometry graduates, to produce a continuous flow of talent within the company, and to give customers the best service.

Adopting a collaborative approach, Specsavers' canvassed the opinions of its employees and joint venture partners to develop a new HR strategy to attract and nurture outstanding talent. In order to implement the new strategy, Specsavers turned to Words&Pictures, which created a high‐end internal brand, INsight, to showcase the new five‐part recruitment and development program.

Organizations that face similar recruitment challenges would do well to re‐assess the needs of the business, including the inter‐personal and communication skills required by their employees.

Working together, Specsavers and Words&Pictures combined their unique strengths to create a visually stunning, professional, practical, aspirational and fun suite of training materials for pre‐registration optometrists. This has helped to elevate Specsavers' pre‐registration optometrists' program above its competitors and positioned the company as unrivalled in its attitude towards employee acquisition, development and retention.

Economic aspects of digital journal production and delivery were explored using Ithink Analyst, a modelling software package. Three models were developed and simulations were used to monitor the effect of variations in the values of key model elements. The results suggest that scholarly journals can be produced and distributed for a modest fee as long as there are at least 500 subscribers. Alternative models such as author‐funded production are also viable. While a model that shares costs between authors and subscribers is viable, administration of two sets of fees would increase costs.

This article explores recent developments in the production and delivery of scholarly journal articles in digital form. It identifies the key stakeholders as authors, publishers, librarians and end users. It explores their concerns with regard to the digital journal production and delivery chain. It also explores the interrelationships of different stakeholder groups and considers how their concerns accord or conflict. The paper goes on to review cost and pricing developments. There appears to be no relationship between production costs and subscription prices of scholarly journals. Journals are priced according to what the market will bear, but, at the same time, the market is inelastic. As a result, prices have consistently increased annually at a rate well above the general inflation rate for the last two decades. Digital publishing by publishers has done nothing to relieve this problem. The ‘serials crisis’ has been the impetus for a number of developments that aim to use digital technology to reduce costs for the HE sector. These include alternative models of journal production such as that proposed by Harnad, and initiatives that aim to influence the structure of the market for scholarly journals with a view to driving prices down such as SPARC and HighWire Press. These developments are reviewed.

This paper presents the results of an international and interdisciplinary Delphi survey on the future development of electronic journals. The expert panel comprised 45 scientists, publishers, librarians, journal agents and consultants. The survey covered five areas of interest regarding e‐journals: future role of scholarly journal literature; scenarios for the journal of the future; serials crisis; archiving of e‐journals; and new pricing and access models. The Delphi survey studied changes expected within the next five to ten years. The results are discussed and indicate that, throughout their 300‐year history, journals have never been faced with as many changes as we are experiencing now, or expect to see within the next five to ten years.