Marketing is not all about selling or making profit. It is a mix of pricing, promotion, development of markets, selling as well as distribution and one most important term that has been added in recently is after sales service and most successful marketing is considered to have a feedback mechanism. Feedback, not for the sake of getting the feedback, but careful analysis of the requirements of the clients, analysis of the feedback and then taking appropriate action on that. Marketing is all about creating awareness, making the customer delight and satisfaction with product/service. It is true for all be it design, product development, or service. Defence Scientific Information & Documentation Centre (DESIDOC), on behalf of DRDO brings out a journal—DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology (DJLIT). It is a well known journal in the field of Library & Information Science. DESIDOC has taken certain initiatives for DJLIT in terms of tools and techniques applied for online and offline marketing of the Journal. The study points out the initiatives taken for marketing of the Journal for its all stakeholders and plans for the future. The study has provided some recommendations also. The article will help the LIS professionals to explore various forums to market their products and services.

Keywords:   marketing mix   DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology  journal  marketing

Marketing is derived from the word ‘market’ which refers to a group of sellers and buyers that co-operate to exchange goods and services. A market consists of all the potential customers sharing a particular need or want who might be willing and able to engage in exchange to satisfy that need or want. Marketing¹ is the management process which identifies, anticipates, and supplies customer requirements efficiently and profitably. As per American Marketing Association: “Marketing Management is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives.” As per Philip Kotler, “Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process is marketing”. Marketing aims at: (i) identification of the client base; (ii) determination of the needs, wants, and demands of this client base; and (iii) fulfilment of the same through designing and delivering appropriate products and/or services, more effectively than competitors².

The ultimate purpose of marketing is to achieve the objectives of an organisation. The objective can be purely making profit, or promotion of products or services without keeping the profit in terms of money in mind. It could be to gain reputation, image building, creating awareness, create credibility, etc. There is difference in marketing and selling. Selling is a promotional effort which focuses mainly on the sales f the company. It is more like pushing strategy for a product into the market. It focuses on the needs of a seller. It has an objective of profit. The customer has to be compelled by certain strategies to buy the product. Marketing is to achieve organisational goals by being more effective creating, delivering and communicating customer value. It is pulling strategy where the product is sought by the customer himself. It focuses on the needs of a buyer.

DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology (DJLIT)³, is a peer-reviewed, open access journal. It is a bimonthly journal that publishes original research and review articles related to IT applied to library activities, services, and products and is brought out by Defence Scientific Information & Documentation Centre (DESIDOC). It is meant for librarians, documentation and information professionals, researchers, students and all others interested in the field. It was formerly known as 'DESIDOC Bulletin of Information Technology (DBIT)'. It was started in 1981. Year 2016 is to be its 36th year of continued publishing.

DeMers⁴ has provided top seven online marketing trends that will dominate 2014 which are: (a) content marketing will be bigger than ever. He mentioned that according to the Content Marketing Institute, the top B2B content marketing strategies are social media, articles on a business’s website, e-newsletters, case studies, videos and articles on other websites; (b) diverse social media i.e., apart from the established social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., other new emerging social media sites such as Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr and Instagram can be explored which may provide more options and features to be used; (c) image-centric content, i.e., incorporating images is beneficial to a marketing campaign; (d) less will be more, i.e., consumer preference to be towards simplistic marketing messages instead of in-depth messages; (e) mobile-friendly content i.e., due to the widespread (and quickly growing) use of smartphones and tablets, it’s necessary for companies to create content that’s accessible to mobile users; (f) advertisements retargeting will grow in effectiveness, i.e., to increase the overall conversion rate by reminding consumers of the product or service they viewed; and (g) New marketing avenues can be explored search engine optimisation (SEO) and social signals will become even more intertwined.

Greg⁵ has given four printiples of marketing strategy in the digital age which are: (a) Clarify business objectives— most businesses can be adequately captured by evaluating just three metrics: Awareness, sales, and advocacy (i.e. customer referral); (b) use innovation teams to identify, evaluate and activate emerging opportunities; (c) decouple strategy and innovation; and (d) build open assets in the marketplace, i.e., participation of the consumer is very necessary so marketer should think in terms of application programming interfaces and software development kits. According to an article on promotion of open access journal⁶, promoting journals across and beyond the scholarly world (scientists, prospective authors, journalists and wider public) is a key to a successful launch of a journal. Content is king, many might say–but having the contents reach the scientists poses a challenge in the increasingly scattered scientific publishing landscape. Some suggested tips to achieve it are: (a) Networking to encourage prospective authors to publish in a chosen journal; (b) editors of the journal should network in their communities to attract new authors and to endorse publishing in open access in general (c) direct marketing to reach the scientists with the message about call for papers; (d) building a database of researchers; (e) abstracting and indexing—This services are the backbone of marketing for all scientific journals; (f) online visibility or article level publicity to educate public of these research findings in a direct and timely manner; and (g) conference and event marketing to market journal in a very targeted way⁶. Green⁷ in her article gave tips for SEO and journal article through keywords. She has given clues on how best to choose keywords for SEO.

It is essential for any organisation engaged in product development or service sector to use marketing to reach its customers. The DJLIT caters to large readership across the globe which includes information scientists, LIS professionals, academicians, researchers, and students. The objective of this paper is to know what marketing efforts are being initiated by the Journal management for its stakeholders and the potential areas in which more work can be done. Through this article various forums have been explored where the LIS professionals can see a journal’s presence and the various features against which a journal can be evaluated before subscribing it.

As per Zeithaml & Bitner⁸, the elements of marketing programme are conceptualized in terms of 7 Ps–product, place, price, promotion, people, physical evidence, and process. To understand the marketing activities done regarding DJLIT in this area, the following approach has been taken: (a) All the print issues of the Journal were scrutinised to understand about the marketing activities adopted in last ten years, i.e., since 2005; (b) contents and features available at the Journal site (http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/) and (c) Annaul reports of DESIDOC regarding marketing activities of DJLIT are studied. The study was done along the lines of 7Ps mentioned by Zeithaml & Bitner. Systematic analysis of the case study is done and presented.

If a product is produced, packaged and delivered at the right time in the effective and efficient manner then its chance to be successful and adopted by clients will definitely increase. Each element of marketing programme as described by Zeithaml & Bitner⁸ is studied and the measures taken against each of these elements for DJLIT are analysed and are presented as follows:

The product include physical goods, services, features, accessories, warranty, brands, packages, design, etc.2 The DJLIT publishes original research and review articles related to information technology as applied to library activities, services and products covering trends, development and issues. It is a bi-monthly journal and six issues are brought out each year. It is available in print format as well as online. To maintain the quality following special measures have been taken:

Eminent professionals in the field of LIS are invited to bring out special issues of DJLIT to have an overall view about a current topic or to know about the trends in the field. The guest editors invite peers in the field and highlight about DJLIT. The full text of all special issues is available on internet. A list is also provided on the website and the list contains hyperlinks to respective special issues. More than 55 special issues have been brought out on various topics3. Guest editors were specially invited to bring out theme-based issues covering topics like scientometrics, online exhibitions, knowledge organisation, corporate social responsibility, intellectual property rights, digital preservation and many more.

• All authors are given a hardcopy of the issue in which his/her article is published.

• Each article has a DOI to have wider availability of their articles.

• Each article is provided with a metadata, article's discipline, subject, coverage, etc.

• Impact measurement through citations received by each article (Google Scholar) is available on Journal site. Author can know how many citations his/her article, published in the Journal, has received.

• Readers can sign up for e-mail notification.

• Readers can post comments on articles to Editor

• Can make contact with the authors with open journal system managed by DJLIT

• Indexing is adheres to the OAI Initiative protocol for metadata harvesting

Place include channels, reach, storage, logistics, transportation, inventory, location of output2 of products/services. The DJLIT is available in two formats—Print and online. The bound volumes of the Journal are also kept in DESIDOC.

As the publishing world is transforming from print to digital and the readers are more engaged in e-reading, hence the content of the journal should be digital and the articles should be provided in various formats (pdf, html, epub, etc) to enable the readers to access articles in different format and through different media (desktop/tablet/laptop/e-book reader/mobile, etc) and compatible at all platforms. All the articles are available in pdf format on internet 24X7 through DESIDOC servers. Backup of all the issues are regularly updated and safely kept. From 2015 all the articles are available in html and e-pub format also. To make the contents visible across the globe, the Journal is registered with the many subject-related indexing/abstracting/full-text databases. These efforts provide greater visibility and reach to DJLIT. It also provides wider international publicity to the Journal as well as in receiving quality papers from India and abroad. Some of them are: Scopus, LISA, LISTA, EBSCO Abstracts/Full-text, Library Literature and Information Science Index/Full-text, The Informed Librarian Online, DOAJ, OpenJ-Gate, Indian Science Abstracts, Indian Citation Index, Full text Sources Online, WorldCat, Proquest, Google Scholar, Ulrich's International Periodical Directory, Index Copernicus, and OCLC.

Price means consumer price, trade price, discount, credit policy, payment policy, etc.,² regarding the products and services. The aim of DJLIT is not profit making. It is meant to disseminate current research results to the readers. The annual subscription price for print copy of DJLIT is very nominal (Rs 100/- for individuals and Rs 450/- for institutions). The full text of all the volumes of DJLIT is available free of cost on internet.

Promotion includes advertising, communication channels, sale promotion, personal selling, and publicity² of prodcts/services. For development of any industry advertising is essential. For national and social development, advertisements play extremely important role. They fulfill the needs and desires of the consumers by providing information and increase competition. Advertising9 is done with following aims:

• Introduction—No product can gain visibility, recognition, acceptance of its existence without being introduced to consumers. Introduction makes a base for initial foundation of any idea, product or subject.

• Draw Attraction—It draws attraction of masses and eventually generate curiosity to utilise the service or products. This is done by providing the suitable and catchy title (heading), tagline, colour, photographs, expression, context, and a mix of all.

• Create Interest—Qualities, characteristics and users are elaborated in extensive manner to create interest.

• Faith Generation—Various product-related people such as doctors, actors, sports persons, etc., are engaged in the advertisements to give an impression that they are using these products and getting benefits.

• Image Building—Increases brand value, long standing, credibility, product utilisation, etc., of an organisation. It helps to launch even other new products of the organisation and gain easy acceptance in the market.

• Developing Need—Features of products and services are presented in such a way that the customer feels that it is most important for them to buy.

• Sale Promotion—The ultimate objective of a business organisation is to generate and increase in its sale and make profits.

For promotion of DJLIT, a large no. of steps are taken. Some of them are highlighted in Fig. 1.

The following tools and techniques are used:

The DJLIT has syndicated its content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. It allows readers to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the site and saves time by not needing to visit the site.

This facility is provided on the webpage of the Journal. One can subscribe to these notifications. It shows important updates associated with this journal such as new issues or announcements.

Various brochures, leaflets, etc., are created for DJLIT and regularly distributed. DJLIT also is advertised in inhouse journal, and newsletters, etc.

Many authors have written articles regarding DJLIT covering its impact factor, content analysis, citation analysis, bibliometric study, comparative studies, etc., in various national as well as international journals and conferences which has created awareness about the Journal. Articles in Hindi language on study regarding DJLIT are also presented and published at various conferences such as SIS conference, International Bilingual conference, etc.

The Call for Papers is a regular feature of DJLIT through which students, academicians and professionals in the field are made aware about the Journal and quality articles are sought through it. They are published in DJLIT and on its website also. Papers are sought through professional forums also.

Regular announcements are created to communicate with readers of DJLIT and keep them abreast about the current happenings in the Journal, publication of a new issue, forthcoming issues, new facilities created, etc. and are made available on internet site of DJLIT.

DESIDOC exhibits DRDO publications in various book fairs, and Defence exhibitions. The DJLIT is displayed there and brochures and catalogues are distributed. Subscription for DJLIT is also sought.

A list of Frequently Asked Questions along with answers is provided on the DJLIT site to enable potential authors/readers/reviewers to know about the policies and procedures of the Journal and get answers to their queries. For more queries, they can contact the Editor of the Journal.

The Journal is available in open access domain. Print copies of the journal are provided as complimentary subscription to DRDO labs, members of Editorial Board, I&A agencies, authors, and many others.

Annual Report is an important tool to publicise an organisation. It is annually brought out by DESIDOC covering the activities and achievements of DESIDOC during last one year. Publishing about DJLIT and its yearly achievements is a regular feature.

The DJLIT has exchange agreements with other publishers in the LIS field as well as allied field also.

If a reader is interested in an article of the Journal, mechanism should be provided that all possible related topics articles be made simultaneously available. Keeping this in view a ‘Related Articles’ service is added with each article so that every reader of the journal can have the feeling that the content is being created keeping in mind his/her needs.

The DJLIT provides monthly feature like ‘Most Downloads of the Month’. Monthwise statistics of the downloads of the articles in a month is analysed and the metadata of top 50 articles which received maximum downloads in that month is provided. As per data of DJLIT OJS, more than 1.5 Lakh downloads of articles published in DJLIT per year by authors are recorded. The data is increasing every year.

People encompass employees, recruitment, selection, training, culture, and attitudes. DESIDOC is in regular communication with the readers, reviewers, and authors. The people working for the Journal are competent in the subject as well as publishing field and have large experience. They are regularly trained about the new technologies in publishing field as well as soft skills. The Journal has an Editorial Board with eminent professionals of the LIS field. The Journal has a database of eminent reviewers in diverse areas of library and information science. It has registration of more than 200 reviewers. While assigning a submission to a reviewer, the database is regularly consulted. There are more than 3000 registered readers of DJLIT.

Physical evidence includes interior design, equipments, aesthetics, functionality, and layout, etc. As DJLIT is a scholarly journal so its layout is conventional. It follows a journal format and strictly adheres to it. The authors are required to follow the journal’s guidelines. The Journal follows strict format and style in all its published articles. Standardisation is maintained throughout the issue and volumes. The cover design of the journal is changed in regular intervals to make the issue more attractive. Each issue is printed on high quality article. The online issue is published in the scheduled month.

Processes cover procedures, activity flow, consumer involvement, etc. It is said that a chain is as strong as its weakest link. It is important that all the components and their connections of a system are strong, and are connected rightly. DJLIT has strong view towards quality control of its processes and content. It has implemented the following processes:

DESIDOC is an ISO 9001: 2008 certified establishment and has documented and established a Quality Management System (QMS) as per ISO 9001:2008 and is implementing and maintaining the same since 2011. DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology is also certified under this. For this, the sequence of the processes and their interaction has been identified. This has been further supplemented by organisation structure. All methods and criteria have been determined and documented under respective clauses for effective operation and control. Quality objectives have been defined. Necessary resources and documents containing information are provided for proper operation. Systems have been established for monitoring, measuring and analysing the processes. All actions required to achieve planned results and enhancing the effectiveness of all processes have been taken. Steps are taken for effective and continual improvement of the system. It has led to significant improvement in the publishing of the Journal.

An Editorial Board of the Journal directs journal’s progress through suitable advice; review the progress of the journal and to suggest necessary steps for its healthy progress; identify the gaps, in the areas to be covered by the Journal and also authors for approaching them for obtaining the articles; and commissioning state-of the-art articles and identifies referees for various areas. The first Editorial Board was constituted in 1997. The last Editorial Board was constituted in 2013. There are 11 members in the present Editorial Board.

No journal can survive if authors don’t submit their research finding to a journal. They are to be made comfortable with the publishing system and encourage more and more submissions from them. Following steps are taken for benefits to authors:

• Authors have to submit only word file of manuscripts, figures, and appendices. All the formatting, editing and final setting is done by DESIDOC.

• They can track the progress of their article throughout editorial process.

• Strict reviewing process for each article is followed to ensure best quality.

• Final proofs are sent to authors for clearance before sending for printing.

The manuscripts submitted to DJLIT are reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that they are being submitted to one journal at a time and have not been published, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The Editor reviews all submitted manuscripts initially. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific flaws, absence of importance of message, weak analysis, or problems in presentation are rejected. The Journal follows double blind reviewing policy. The primary aim of the peer review process is to maintain quality control.

Regular feedback is sought from readers to improve the quality of the content and form (print and digital)through its website, e-mails and in print.

A journal publishing is successful if its contents’ reach is global so that all the research community get benefit of it. Receiving large citations is one of the mechanisms for a journal to measure the impact. Authors like to publish in journals with high impact factor. It is now a trend for journals to provide value addition to articles published in the journal and provide maximum support to the readers as well as potential authors.

• DJLIT is keeping track on various metrics about it through google citations, google analytics, science citation index, Scopus, Publish or perish and many more. Statistics including altmetrics regarding articles such as ‘abstract views’, ‘full-text views’, usage of articles, ‘likes’, ‘share’, ‘citations received measured by various agencies’ can be made available.

• More venues and innovative ways can be explored to reach to wider readership. More print, e-media as well as direct contacts can be used to create awareness about the Journal.

• Quality content should always be the focus. Current areas of research should be explored and more specialists should be invited to write invited articles or bring special issues.

• The Editorial Board members, special issues’ editors, authors, readers, and editorial and production teams are contributing towards creating awareness about the journal. More efforts are to be done to bring the Journal to the notice of all in their contacts in the field.

• Authors can also help in promoting and increase the visibility of their articles published in the Journal such as adding article in reading list, essential readings; department website or personal webpage, discussion lists; through own blogs; recommendation to library; etc.

• Authors can use social media such as Twitter and Facebook (metadata and link to the site); professional as well as academic social networking sites

• Reference management application as well as online social network such as CiteULike and Mendelay can be used by authors to add articles and also share with others, which helps them discover literature which is relevant to their field

• Articles of the back issues can be made available in digital format so that they can be accessed through various platforms.

• It is essential that the authors remain connected to a journal and efforts should be done to engage them for improvement. Regular feedback is a must for improving any journal. So it should be taken from all readers, authors, reviewers and others.

In marketing, the focus should be on customer needs and wants. It is not one time process; it is continuous and ever evolving. Now with such a rapid generation of information and innovations in IT, mere publishing a journal is not enough. Marketing of a journal is important to create awareness about the content, ways to access them in variety of formats and understand readers’ expectations. DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, that has 35 years of long standing, is continuously working towards its marketing in terms of creating awareness and increasing the visibility. Over the years many tools have been adopted for making its content available across the globe as well as seeking international and national quality contributions in the field of LIS.

Quality improvement has been done in timely publishing, improved layout and designing, and availability at different platforms in different formats and by proving various additional features in the Journal’s website smeeting the international trends. Reviewers, guest editors and authors all have played highly significant role in bringing out the Journal effectively. Publishing is dynamic in nature so still continuous efforts are needed to be done by the Journal management to bridge the gap between the ever changing needs of the readers and the satisfaction of those needs. Value addition is required as per the desire of reader. For marketing of a journal, all the stakeholders have to work together and make its presence felt and available across the globe.

1. Narantuya, Tuul. Basic concepts of marketing. http://www.slideshare.net/tuulbna/basic-conceptsofmarketing (accessed on 1 October 2015).

2. Raina, Roshan. Marketing in the library & information context. DESIDOC Bulletin of Information Technology, 1998, 18(3). http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/3394

3. DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology. http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit (accessed on 1 October 2015).

4. DeMers, Jayson.The Top 7 Online Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2013/09/17/the-top-7-online-marketing-trends-that-will-dominate-2014/2/#4955428174d2 (accessed on 1 January 2016)

5. Satell, Greg. 4 Principles of Marketing Strategy In The Digital Age. http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/04/16/4-principles-of-marketing-strategy-in-the-digital-age/#5404d5c7495c (accessed on 1 January 2016)

6. To promote an open access journal. http://openscience.com/how-to-promote-an-open-access-journal-2/

7. Anne-Marie Green. More on SEO for publishing: trying on keywords and Lady Gaga’s sunglasses. http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/2013/10/29/seo-part-ii-keywords-and-lady-gagas-sunglasses/

8. Zeithaml, V.A. & Bitner, M.J. Services marketing. McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. 1996.

9. Narwal, Kavita; Gupta, Shivali & Bansal, Alka. Application of information technology for advertising: Case study of DESIDOC. In Bilingual Intenational Conference on Information Technology: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, 19-21 February 2015, Delhi.

Mrs Alka Bansal obtained her MSc (Mathematics) from University of Delhi. She obtained her BLISc and MLISc both from Dept. of Library & Information Science, University of Delhi. Presently, she is working as Scientist ‘E’, DESIDOC, Delhi. She is UGC-Net qualified. She has many papers published in various journals/conference proceedings to her credit. Her areas of interests include: Editing and publishing, digital libraries development, web-base applications, library automation, information management and dissemination, multimedia development, etc.