Welcome to the Publishing Technology Group website

The Publishing Technology Group (PTG) is a working party set up by the Society of Indexers (SI) in 2011. Its remit is to advise SI members, publishers and authors on reconciling powerful text retrieval techniques with emerging delivery technologies in publishing.

Our website provides detailed information for everyone but now also offers dedicated introductory pages for publishers and for authors. Incidentally, if you don't know about the Society or wish to commission an indexer, you'll want to visit the main Society of Indexers website.

The rest of this site covers topics like linked and embedded indexes for use on devices with fluid pagination, embedded indexing to cut turnaround times and to facilitate multiplatform delivery and the promise that standards like EPUB3 offer for an enriched reader experience.

The site addresses widespread misunderstandings about ebook indexing and embedding; explains why many non-fiction ebooks are barely usable and looks forward to a maturing of retrieval technologies that builds on but goes beyond tested techniques.

Everyone who commissions an index, makes their own or decides to do without one needs to understand what it does. These days, few do. Do read the basic search vs index page to make sure we're starting from a shared understanding.