Apps & Codes: Making Profiles for Fluid Publishing Contents

Apps are one of the most used digital publishing tools and convey intellectual contents for innumerable functionalities. App programs present technical characteristics different from each other, depending on the intellectual content for which they are profiled and made available. In publishing field, apps that convey traditional editorial products disclose the maximum of their innovative potential in representing the interface of continuously updating products (such as newsletters, magazines, newspapers, guides and tourist maps, blogs, open/e-gov/research data systems and related data-bases, clinical trials, forums and websites with specific matter or content, etc.). If apps are the interface software - thus, the communication interface - of publishing products, could it be possible to make them identifiable (and manageable) through the same bibliographic codes used for the corresponding traditional publishing products (e.g., ISBN, ISSN, DOI, etc.)? We think that when apps show and preserve the essential bibliographic identifying data, the answer could be no less than positive. The goal of this study is to show, through a comparative analysis of National and European case-studies and best practices examples, how the potential public usefulness (not only commercial but also informative) of a bibliographic identification for apps is similar to the usefulness recognized in case of traditional publishing products, opening new scenarios and results also for grey products: a new traceability skill could be established for apps containing permanent references, traditionally considered necessary for the identification of editorial objects (title, publisher, year, updating mode or frequency, etc.); traceability through numerical codes would allow also easier dissemination, marketing, indexing processes by search engines, portals and sales store, up to make indexing tools for bibliographic services and librarians more specific and professional.