PANO Directive – Citable e-books
Introduction
E-books are not regarded as academic valid; yet they are convenient and modern and do not use up paper or transport so are better for the environment. Therefore I have issued as a PANO Directive on e-books (se below): this ia a compromise solution which hopefully to some degree resolves this. Russia WW3? is the first such book to be issued as an e-book on the basis of this Directive. Any questions should be directed to marek.laskiewicz@pwwb.co.uk. A PANO conference will eventually be held about this.
Dr Marek Laskiewicz, PANO Head, London, May 2014
PANO Citable e-book Directive
- The printed edition of any book is the definitive version of any book; it need not note any details about any linked e-book; an e-book without a linked printed edition is not citable.
- An e-book that is textually identical to a printed edition of a book is citable; this is to be regarded as a convenience and also a way of economising on paper and transport; such an e-book is termed a linked e-book.
- Any e-book following this Directive must state this Directive in full in the e-book Addition chapter part / subsection in order to inform the reader.
- Such an e-book must have the same text in the same chapter/section order as the printed version.
- It must have also in the e-book Addition state with which printed book it is compatible, noting all the publisher and book details, in particular which edition, date and ISBN; however different e-book formats, which have a different ISBN, need not note each other.
- Each e-book chapter part / subsection can be typeset as in effect a separate chapter/section for ease of reader access, so each chapter/section introduction can also contain the chapter part / subsection headings which are not present in the printed book; moreover the chapter headings together with tables, graphs and figures can be noted in the Book Structure front matter, superscripts can be in curly brackets, and paragraphs need not be separated exactly as in the printed book so it may look slightly different.
- The words used in the printed book index can be noted in the e-book as well as the number of such entries or even the chapter part / subsection they are in, but not the page numbers.
- There must be a Colophon at the end of the book that should contain a cross-link between each chapter part / subsection noting the page number of the paper printed book together with the paper size details so that it is possible to cite this book with page numbers without having to obtain a paper printed version; e-book publishing data may also be noted there, notably the format used.
- All changes to the e-book must be noted so that the printed edition and the e-book edition remain traceably textually identical; the changes in the e-book are not citable until there is a new printed edition containing them; a new edition can be published at any time, even after minor changes.
- Major changes are defined as those which require the colophon pages cross-link to be altered, whereupon a new paper printed edition must be published in order for this e-book to be citable; the e-book must then be itself termed a new edition, e.g. 2nd edition, and must cross-link to the new printed edition,i.e. 2nd edition, so any previous minor changes need no longer be noted.
- Minor changes should be noted in the e-book Addition; they must note in which chapter part/ subsection they appear; they must be only small error corrections, e.g. a misspelt name or incorrect date; the new version of this edition should then be noted, e.g. 2nd edition version 2 or edition 2.2.
- An e-book may be registered with PANO, but if it ceases to be textually traceably identical, then it will be de-registered if the publisher does not re-align the e-book to the printed version.