DocuRights FAQ for Publishers
How does DocuRights create new incremental revenue for Publishers?
With DocuRights a publisher retains control of a document even when the
document is not physically
located on the publisher's Web site. This means you can take advantage of
new distribution opportunities
such as collaborations with portal sites, email distribution, etc. without
jeopardizing existing
revenue models. In other words, DocuRights allows publishers to place
content where new potential customers
already are, rather than spending marketing resources to bring new
customers to them.
Why should I consider DocuRights, rather than other protection
technologies?
DocuRights is designed specifically to meet the needs of STM (Scientific,
Technical and Medical) Publishers.
Other protection technologies are aimed at more general consumer markets
and therefore do not contain the
feature-set or commercial format needed for successful electronic STM
publishing.
For example, DocuRights is the only product that supports the notion of
"fair-use"
and subscription access
- essential requirements for successful academic publishing. Also,
DocuRights comes from a company
(Aries Systems Corporation) that has a 14 year track-record
of delivering powerful and reliable ePublishing solutions to STM publishers.
Is a DocuRight-protected PDF "locked" to a particular hardware
configuration or software application?
No. Many protection technologies control access by "binding" to specific
hardware configuration or software application.
The drawback of this approach is that legitimate document access by a user
may be compromised when the reader/user changes their hardware
or software environment. DocuRights' patent-pending technology avoids these
problems by creating a unique DocuRights "key"
on the reader's computer, thereby ensuring maximum flexibility and user
convenience.
What about watermarking technology?
Documents distributed in DocuRights format are inherently tamper-proof.
This means
that DocuRights documents are de facto authentic. However,
DocuRights also preserves
any watermark injected into the PDF by the publisher.
Can I use DocuRights to administer Course Packs, Bulk Reprints, Author
Reprints etc.?
Yes. DocuRights "fair-use" capabilities are ideally suited to these
applications. Further, DocuRights
substantially reduces the publisher's overhead costs traditionally
associated with administering these
activities.
Where is the document price information stored?
All the publisher's business rules (such as pricing, fair-use counts, duration of free preview etc.)
are stored on the DocuRights server.
This means that business parameters can be modified even after the PDF has
been released into free circulation. DocuRights servers are currently
located at Aries, but the option for publishers to deploy their own
DocuRights servers will be available in 2002.
How much effort will it take to implement DocuRights?
Assuming that a publisher already has PDF and appropriate "header" files,
the documents can be DocuRights "wrapped"
within a matter of days. PDFs can be either pre-wrapped or wrapped "on the
fly" in response to user document requests. The benefit
of wrapping "on the fly" is that publishers do not need to store multiple
instances of the PDFs.
Is anyone currently using DocuRights?
Yes! DocuRights was launched at the 1999 Frankfurt Book Fair and is already
being used by the following publications for "pay-go"
Internet document delivery applications: The New England Journal of
Medicine (Massachusetts Medical Society), Neurosurgery (Lippincott Williams
& Wilkins),
Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (American Edition, Journal of Bone and
Joint Surgery, Inc.), and The Journal of Bone and Mineral
Research (American Society for Bone and Mineral Research).
Who is Aries?
Aries is a privately held company headquartered in North Andover, MA with
offices in Langenfeld, Germany and distributors throughout the world.
Since 1986 the company has pioneered electronic publishing technologies
when it launched Knowledge Finder, a leading edge natural language
search engine. Knowledge Finder has been used by tens of thousands
of end-users to
access the biomedical literature on CD-ROM and the Internet; and has been
recently adopted by leading medical portal Web sites. Aries also
develops and maintains e-journal Web sites for professional societies and
publishers. The company began to develop DocuRights two
years ago when it became clear that the Internet would offer new
distribution opportunities for publishers provided that they could
safeguard
their content in a distributed environment.
OK - You convinced me! What's the next step?
Please contact our marketing department by calling 978-975-7570, or sending
an email to marketing@docurights.com