Each year, the Research & Academic Relations team at Elsevier strives to ensure that journal editors are kept informed about how Elsevier is managing processes and services to assist the editing role. We continually ask ourselves: what are the challenges we faced yesterday, and what have we learned from them? Which leads naturally into thoughts on what challenges we will face tomorrow, and how we should prepare for them.

Senior Elsevier staff often reflect on these questions and we would like to share the past year’s highlights with you. For example, Youngsuk ‘YS’ Chi, Vice Chairman and CEO of Science & Technology of Elsevier, spoke in 2010 about new technology and how Elsevier is using it to improve support for the communities we serve. Below is a summary of his remarks:
Chi proposed that many of us struggle to keep up with new technology due to the trends that define the scholarly research community. However none of us can ignore these developments because of the fact that inability to adapt to new technology limits progress.

Chi spoke about two main trends that we are facing today. The first is the enormous amount of available content. Virtually all countries experience an increase in research output year after year thanks to technological advances. Ironically this increase in output is restricting as researchers are challenged to process more information than ever before. The second issue comes with determining which new media channels researchers prefer to use. Researchers and scientists are communicating in different ways and the way knowledge is shared is changing radically.

The power of smart content

These new challenges can present opportunities for change. Failing to recognize opportunities will put progress at risk. Elsevier is utilizing smart content to improve existing flagship tools. For example, we have partnered with NextBio to develop a new feature on ScienceDirect. Datasets for chemistry, life science and biomedical articles are identified and linked to, using this feature. This is accomplished through ontology-based semantic tools, or in other words, through smart content. NextBio has contextualized the ScienceDirect search experience to enable knowledge discovery. Researchers now spend less time finding information they need, thanks to advanced ontology technology.

We constantly think about how we can leverage our rich information to meet the needs of the researchers we serve.

Elsevier is also leveraging technology to produce vertical-specific multimedia solutions. BrainNavigator is one such solution. BrainNavigator helps neuroscientists to view 3-D images of the brain. Previously, researchers were forced to manually sift through atlases to analyze 2-D images of the brain. Researchers can now use BrainNavigator to locate, visualize, and analyze specific parts of the brain. With this technology, they harness an understanding never known before.

We are also using smart content to produce increasingly targeted solutions, like GeoFacets. We constantly think about how we can leverage our rich information to meet the specific needs of each of the individual researchers we serve. By talking with the geosciences community, we’ve discovered that compiling the requisite data needed to provide a comprehensive, accurate geological assessment is quite difficult. So we’ve decided to combine geo-referenced data, peer-reviewed content, and powerful search functionality into a web-based tool to solve this problem.

Choosing the right media

But in terms of how we communicate with each other, we ask ourselves what new media outlets are most important to the research community? In what ways do researchers want information delivered to them? We are exploring how to make information more interactive and more useful for researchers. The Journal of Catalysis is using Twitter to connect with researchers in new ways. Publishers ‘tweet’ to keep followers updated about new research developments and its content stream is regularly updated to keep interested users clued in. It is changing the way heterogeneous and homogenous catalysis information is communicated to interested parties.

We are aware of the ever-growing number of innovative mobile devices in the market. We know that researchers will increasingly require information delivered to these devices to effectively do their jobs. The health community faces pressure to have on-the-job access to information. In response to this, we’ve developed some of the latest mobile applications for the iPhone and iPad. Users can now access applications for Netter’s Anatomy Flash Cards and Mosby’s medical terminology flash cards. These applications enable users to better prepare for exams. Nurses can prepare for their exams too with Saunder’s Q&A application.

In November 2010 we launched the JACC iPad application for the Journal of American College of Cardiology. The JACC iPad app offers everything users have come to expect from the weekly issue, but now it’s enhanced with editor-selected resources from CardioSource and users can quickly navigate journal articles, related video, audio, slide sets and commentary with just a few simple strokes.

However, mobile applications represent one solution to the problem. In addition, many Elsevier books are available for the Amazon Kindle. We know that toting large reference materials can be a burden. Kindle compatibility allows users to access these books in mobile form. We will continue identifying tools like the Kindle and the iPad that customers want to use and we will help them access information wherever they need it.

Editors’ Update is looking forward to an ongoing dialogue about this topic. If you have questions or feedback, please send them to editorsupdate2@elsevier.com.

To cite this article, please use: Hannah Foreman, “Technology in Publishing; Friend or Foe?” , Elsevier Editors’ Update, issue 31, December 2010

Useful links

Press release announcing BrainNavigator 3.0, the updated version

Press release announcing Geofacets’ launch

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