E-book vendors as platform intermediaries for academic libraries and scholarly publishers: a critical discourse analysis of e-book vendors' webpages

This study investigates the intermediary roles of e-book vendors when connecting academic libraries as customers and scholarly publishers as content providers through the lens of platform theories. As the first step of a larger project on e-book vendors' platform governance strategies, it conducts a critical discourse analysis of webpages from six vendors in the humanities and social sciences. The analysis reveals the similarities and differences in vendors' self-identifications towards different audiences and their strategies to attract libraries and publishers. It discusses potential reasons for explaining the unbalanced number of webpages for the library audiences and for the publisher audience, and argues that e-book vendors adopt various strategies to balance control with empowerment of libraries/publishers. This study further identifies that two main commercial e-book vendors- ProQuest and EBSCO- are moving from content providers to information service providers, therefore impacting a wider range of scholarly communication activities. Theoretically, this study brings new perspectives from the library and information science to the broader platform literature. Practically, it helps academic libraries and scholarly publishers better understand e-book vendors' digital marketing strategies, which will assist them in making well-informed decisions when selecting vendors to obtain/provide access to e-books.