The survey for this project closed a little more than a week ago. We’re continuing the analysis now, and we’ll do a full briefing in early November, but here are some highlights:
- 165 publishing professionals responded
- the majority (60%) work in trade or consumer publishing, with a healthy cross-section of professional, school and academic publishers also represented
- almost half of those responding work at smaller firms (fewer than 100 employees)
- of those responding, about a third currently maintain digital files in an XML format that supports content re-use and reformatting
- while a quarter of the respondents reporting using their own (proprietary) DTD or schema, the majority of those responding are still thinking through what they want to do in this area
Our initial review suggests that many publishers are making progress in the use of XML as a content management tool, and many more have an interest in learning more about current and best practice before committing to greater use of XML or an alternative. While we feel that the research paper and the forum in January will address practice and future use, it’s clear from the survey that publishers are already looking at this topic.