Tagged:  Author support

"While everyone has the possibility to submit a paper and become an author, editors are selected by their networks..." — David Clark, Senior Vice President, Physical Sciences

There is no doubt the number of papers submitted by Asia-based authors is increasing, and increasing fast.

But what are the possible consequences of this influx, not only for editors, but for journals and the scientific community at large?

Philippe Terheggen, Elsevier Senior Vice President of Physical Sciences II, is confident this sea-change bodes well for the future of publishing.

He explains: “The birth of new internet technologies and the growth in these countries are two of the biggest trends in science and scientific publishing; they have transformed the landscape. Global collaboration with Asian scientists is rife and academics are regularly travelling. We are witnessing the emergence of one single academic community and that is fantastic.”

According to Terheggen, Elsevier has an obligation to ensure these prospective authors can fully participate in the publishing process. An obligation it shares with the authors’ parent institutions.

He acknowledges: “Yes, that brings challenges. Right now the rejection rate needs to be high and there are language problems that require editors and reviewers to spend too long on their evaluations. However, the papers that are published are often highly-cited and the overall quality is good. We know reviewers are doing some fantastic filtering and are choosing the right articles.”

He adds: “The danger is that poor language and presentation could be a recipe for under-publishing with good quality research lost. However, I see this as a temporary problem because the English language skills of the younger researchers are often really strong and improving fast.”

The importance of training

Concerns have been raised that the rate of duplicate submissions is higher in some Asian countries than those of more established scientific communities. Terheggen responds: “All countries have authors who show that sort of behavior. It’s probably more apparent in Asia because of the relatively large numbers of eager, early-career researchers who are not familiar with international codes of conduct. Don’t forget, a professor in China may have 100 PhD students, while in Germany that figure could be as low as 10. That makes it more challenging for the Chinese professor to get important messages across.

“But even if eagerness is to blame, duplicate submissions are highly undesirable as they double the workload for peer reviewers.

“We try to explain that to prospective authors and the initiative CrossCheck is also proving useful.  It makes it relatively simple to pick up researchers who engage in plagiarism or multiple submissions.”

He adds: “Sometimes the duplicate submission is deliberate, just a couple of items are changed before the second submission. That is the worst form of ‘salami slicing’ but it’s not typical.”

Terheggen says Elsevier is continuing to build its presence in Asia, both in publishing and support roles.

“Nothing can replace that on-the-spot contact. We are therefore investing in the relocation of senior publishers to our Beijing office for periods of one month or six weeks. While our China-based professional expertise is growing, the visiting publishers gain deeper Asian knowledge. That two-way learning curve is also created by extended stays of Asian staff in Europe and the US.”

Disciplines witnessing an Asian boom

Asia’s expansion has closely followed a pattern established in other emerging countries. Subject areas such as chemistry, material sciences and engineering typically experience the first growth. This is usually followed by life sciences, social sciences and some of the inter-disciplinary sciences.

How Elsevier can help

David Clark, Elsevier Senior Vice President of Physical Sciences, agrees that Elsevier has an important support role to play in Asia.

“We have seen a significant increase in the number of submissions from emerging countries and a larger universe of authors brings its own set of problems. We know the new authors are not necessarily up to date with the ‘dos and don’ts’ of publishing so it is up to us to help them.”

Clark has some practical tips for editors swamped by papers from Asia.

“Talk to your publisher. Ask them how other journals are coping and about the services we have in place to help.

“For example, we run author workshops*, which are often visited by hundreds of early career researchers. These can be hosted by an editor and publisher, or by an editor alone and there is material available for use.

“It is not the editor’s job to rewrite a paper and there is a danger errors can creep in during the process. We encourage authors to ask a native English speaker to read their article prior to submission so they can make the corrections themselves. We certainly don’t feel that editors should be spending time on papers that they struggle to understand or follow – it is the author's job to get that right.”

Closing the gap

According to Clark, while the spread of countries represented on the editorial boards of Elsevier journals is ‘reasonable’, countries such as India and China are under-represented in comparison with their share of published articles. For example, the percentage of Elsevier editors from China is 3.3% while nearly 13% of published articles originate there.

Figure 1 - percentage share of Elsevier S&T articles by country. Source: Elsevier Operations Reporting, 2010.

Clark admits: “Some countries are also significantly over-represented, for example, 40% of our editors come from the US while only 18% of published articles originate there.

“This discrepancy can partly be explained by market shifts that are not reflected yet in editor representation, e.g. China has gained more article share in Elsevier journals at the cost of the US, UK, Japan, and Germany.

“Culture and politics also play an important role. While everyone has the possibility to submit a paper and become an author, editors are selected by their networks and people tend to turn to those they know.

“Levels of appropriate expertise can also be a stumbling block.

“I know some editors worry communication will prove problematic. This concern stems from a time when we dealt with paper but new communication technologies make international boards easier to run.

“Sometimes it is simply a case of hesitating to make changes to the current board.”

He adds: “This gap needs to be addressed, not for reasons of political correctness, but because of the practical advantages. It eases the burden on traditional academic communities and it offers access to good new people coming up through the system. Just look at the high standard of work already coming out of some institutes in China.

“However, the quality of a journal rests with the people editing it. We know that means that in some fields there will not be board members from emerging countries, while in other fields they might comprise half the editorial board.

“Many journals have already appointed editors in Asia and there are clear benefits for doing so. For example, the editors we do have from China do seem to accept, on average, better-cited papers than those from other countries. That suggests they do a good job and my own experience supports that.”

Practical steps

Clark has advice for editors keen to attract an Asia-based editor onboard.

“As I’ve mentioned, there can be concern about changing the current board. Remember, board members aren’t permanent and your publisher can announce member changes on your behalf.

“And if you want to identify potential Asian editorial board members we can help with that too. Using Scopus we can identify the best authors to approach. We can also give suggestions based on our experience with Asia-based guest editors. Our network can help...publishers can help, so please use us.”

* Asian countries are not the only venues to play host to our growing workshop programs. Learn more about recent successful events held in Brazil.

Seeking the solutions – Elsevier-supported initiatives that can help

Elsevier Language Editing Services
We will ensure that your manuscript is free of grammatical and spelling errors within four business days.

Elsevier Author Workshops
Training authors and research students in emerging academic communities to write world class papers. Modules on ethical and copyright issues are included.

Elsevier Reviewer Workshops and Mentorship Program
Together with the editorial community, journal publishers at Elsevier have created a number of programs to develop and nurture the pool of future reviewers.

CrossCheck
Cross-publisher initiative with CrossRef to screen published and submitted content for originality.

Author Biographies

Philippe Terheggen

Philippe Terheggen
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT PHYSICAL SCIENCES II
Originally a medical scientist and author, Philippe has an international background in book and journal publishing, marketing, production, and product innovation. In an earlier role, he was responsible for implementing the online article submission system to Elsevier journals. His current role is focused on chemistry and chemical engineering, engineering, energy and renewable resources, environmental sciences, agricultural and water management, as well as oil & gas and geological sciences.

Elizabeth Przybysz | Project Manager, Journal Development, Elsevier

Challenging publishing dogmas in the e-leading era

According to the National Information Standards Organization¹, references perform two essential functions in research and publishing: they ensure that credit is given to the people and organizations whose previous works have contributed to that research, and they enable users of the references to uniquely identify and locate the original data and source the materials used.

What does this mean in today’s world? Fewer and fewer libraries and individuals subscribe to a print version of a journal. Even when libraries maintain a print version, readers access journals electronically. Some may still consult the source cited by visiting a local library, but the vast majority expect to have instant access to cited sources via linking services (such as CrossRef, PubMed, Scopus, or Web of Science) from the journal content platform provided through their institute.

The importance of these linking services does not end there. They monitor and analyze the online traffic, providing information on how many citations an article or an author has received. This not only ensures that the appropriate credit is given to an author of the cited material, but can also measure the importance of that research using various metrics (e.g. total citations, h-index). To provide an accurate picture, it is vital that all references can be tracked and that all sources are accounted for. This can only be guaranteed if an author, preparing the references, provides all the relevant metadata required by the linking services.

Reference formatting becomes irrelevant

Elsevier titles currently follow one of 10 standard styles, conforming to either the numbered or name/date master style; except for approximately 300 titles that follow their own non-standard style. All of these are legacy styles from the print era. Journals follow a particular style used within a scientific community or as a result of an editor’s personal choice. A non-standard reference style can certainly make the journal visually distinctive. However, none of these styles provides the optimal information for the linking services, with negative consequences on the discoverability of articles and authors in the online world. Elsevier has decided it is time to review the references styles from the point of view of meeting linking services requirements.

Reference styles in journals published by Elsevier

We discovered that some of the formatting requirements may work against effective linking, or are completely irrelevant. Nevertheless, the reader experience may call for their continued inclusion.

For example:

• the Vancouver style presents authors’ initials without a full stop, whereas a full stop is required by linking services to distinguish between multiple authors of an article;
• journal titles are not used to match references across databases, however, this information helps the reader put the reference in context; the various abbreviations models may be confusing to the authors and the readers;
• 1a Numbered & 1c Alphanumeric styles forbid the use of the article titles. This solution was designed in order to reduce the space consumed by the references, a factor irrelevant in virtual reality; and
• none of the styles emphasise the importance of DOIs, e-identifiers or URLs – a metadata type which on its own is sufficient to create a link.

A new approach to references will make our authors’ lives easier

According to E C Friedberg writing in Nature in 2005², most authors perceive “coping with the multitude of formats imposed by academic journals for citing references to the literature as aggravating and labour-intensive experience (...) What difference can it possibly make if an author’s initials are placed before or after his/her surname, or where exactly in the citation the date of a publication is situated— not to mention the myriad variations of required fonts, italics, colons, commas and full stops?”.

At Elsevier, we have already agreed that we should never return a manuscript for amendments on the basis of the references not following a particular style. We would prefer to focus authors’ attention on providing and checking the key metadata for linking rather than prompt them to check the correct abbreviation of the journal title.

The challenge in this case is: as long as the author provides the basic information needed to hyperlink the references, and does so consistently throughout their article, why don’t we instigate across all (Elsevier) titles, just two standard reference styles, one numbered and one name/date?

In some cases, a unique reference style may be required for the journal to be a part of a closed research community or scholarly society, and these exceptions will be honored. The reference style may be one of the features that render the journal’s visual style distinctive, but should it take precedence over article discoverability and author visibility?

Creating a more modern reference style is just one of the projects Elsevier is undertaking to make the publishing experience more author-friendly. Several other projects are underway to review the range of journal-specific style requirements currently in place at the different stages of publication. They are being challenged for their added value to the presented research, their relevance in the e-leading era, and their effect on publication times.

Back in 2005, when Friedberg - at the time Editor of the journal DNA Repair - raised a “Call for a cull of pointlessly different reference styles” ², to his disappointment there was not much reaction from other editors.

We are asking you now, as editors, to enter into the discussion – please post your thoughts or comments here, we would really like your feedback.

References:

¹ National Information Standard Organization, 09 June 2005 (cited 20 February2012) available:  http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/6545/Bibliographic%20References.pdf

² E C Friedberg, Call for a cull of pointlessly different reference styles, Nature (2005) 1232

Kelvin J A Davies, PhD, DSc | Editor-in-Chief, Free Radical Biology & Medicine

Imagine if contributors could submit their papers to a journal without worrying about formatting the manuscript, including those pesky references, to exacting specifications? Well that’s precisely what we at Free Radical Biology & Medicine have invited authors to do. Since July of 2011, we have encouraged contributors to submit ‘Your Paper, Your Way.’

As fellow scientists, I and my associate editors of Free Radical Biology & Medicine wondered why journals make people spend so much time and effort formatting their entire paper for submission, especially when it’s a journal with extremely high rejection rates. Although standard formats do make it just that little bit easier for editors and reviewers to see everything in the correct style, the reality is that the advantage is very small, and we should really be focusing on the quality of science and not the format. For authors the difference is very significant. Just think of all the time contributors spend doing secretarial formatting work on a paper, only to have it rejected immediately and be forced to repeat the whole process again for the next journal to which they submit their paper. An easier submission process not only saves time and effort but may also allow authors to achieve faster publication speeds.

In initiating ‘Your Paper, Your Way,’  Free Radical Biology & Medicine decided to invite all authors to submit their manuscripts as single PDF files, including all figures, figure legends, and references.  Of course, all scientific papers need to include the following key elements: title, abstract, introduction, materials & methods, results, discussion (or results and discussion combined), references, and figures and figure legends. Contributors can use whatever layout style suits them best, however, including references.  All we ask is that the paper has all the key elements, is legible, and that all figures are of sufficiently high quality to permit proper review.  If we don’t accept a paper, the authors will have saved valuable time and effort. If we do accept a paper we then have the authors format their work to fit the Free Radical Biology & Medicine style, but they really don’t mind at that point. Elsevier automatically actually converts any reference style to that of our journal at the time of acceptance, as long as the references contain all the normal information, including the paper title.

In addition to creating a ‘friendlier’ journal for scientists, ‘Your Paper, Your Way’ also allows us to capture scientifically excellent papers that almost made it into one of the top flight generalist journals, but were considered too specialist to be accepted; the authors don’t have to re-format their paper to then submit it to our specialist Free Radical Biology & Medicine journal.

As of January 2012, half a year after initiating ‘Your Paper, Your Way,’ approximately 50% of all the papers we receive now take advantage of this simplified submission system. We have not had any complaints from reviewers about the new system, and many authors have sent us letters of thanks and praise for the ease and simplicity of Your Paper, Your Way.’ The editors of Free Radical Biology & Medicine think that ‘Your Paper, Your Way’ represents a return to common sense and a genuine renewed focus on the rights and needs of authors. It also benefits our journal in numerous ways.  We look forward to seeing others try the ‘Your Paper, Your Way’ approach.

Kuan Juan | Biggerbrains Program Manager / Sr Segment Marketing Manager, A&G Research Markets, Elsevier

Biggerbrains is a campaign created for the benefit of early-career researchers. That is, those who have recently earned a PhD, are on their way to completing one, or have been in a research career for less than five years.
 
The new Biggerbrains website provides career guidance and advice for early-career researchers who want to build their career more effectively. It has important sections on Search and Discovery, Writing and Publishing, Networking, Funding and Career Planning. Featuring interviews with professors, Biggerbrains represents the collective knowledge of the research community.

The site provides a broad mix of inspiring video interviews with professors, career-planning tools, featured skill development articles and materials, a game and job alerts. The knowledge provided here is of benefit to all research areas, across all disciplines. There's also a deeper section with a range of online tools and solutions.

The campaign reaches young researchers by using various communication vehicles such as print and online advertising, email communications, social media, conferences, events and author workshops. The site has been visited by researchers globally.

We invite you to visit www.biggerbrains.com and share this with the early-career researchers in your institution to help them to build and accelerate their research career. You are welcome to contribute to Biggerbrains by providing guidance and advice to young researchers in the related areas, to do this please contact Kuan Juan at k.juan@elsevier.com

In 2006, Elsevier embarked on a series of external outreach workshops under the name ‘Publishing Connect’. Aimed at early career researchers – PhD students, postdoctoral students and junior faculty – these events are held at universities and institutes around the world.

The need to train these authors and reviewers of the future on specific aspects of the publishing cycle has become increasingly important as the number of manuscript submissions from non-native English speaking countries continues to rise.

In 2010, we recorded about 150 workshops on how to write and submit research but, in 2011, that number rose to 220 and the number of attendees topped 15,000. Encouragingly, countries like China, India and Brazil had some of the highest attendance figures. In fact, Brazil was the venue for an ambitious 10-day roadshow tour by Elsevier’s Publishing and Sales teams. The feedback from both the participants and the institutes involved in all these events continues to be positive. Not only do the attendees receive ‘golden tips and tricks’ to publishing at an early stage in their career, the institutes know they have helped to nurture their own researchers to be the best authors and reviewers in their disciplines.

Chris Pringle

The content for these presentations is created by Elsevier’s publishers, who draw extensively on their own experiences and expertise. They also work closely with you to develop workshop opportunities, and travel extensively to present at these events, giving them vital opportunities to expand their networks and hear directly from the scientific community. “Talks given at one event have led to invitations to give further talks. Each time, I get to meet and interact with new people,” says Chris Pringle, Executive Publisher of Social Sciences.

Clare Lehane

Clare Lehane, Executive Publisher for Physical Sciences II, adds: “The events show that Elsevier is as interested in the start of the publishing process as we are with the final product, and we are here to help, not to hinder.”

If you haven’t already considered such an event at your institute then why not contact your publisher to explore the possibility?

Some of the most popular workshops focus on topics like ‘How to get published in research journals’ which addresses how to prepare and submit a manuscript, using correct manuscript language, and how to structure an article. Additionally, we host workshops on ‘Author rights and responsibilities’ which discuss in detail ethics and plagiarism pain points and solutions.

“Elsevier gave a workshop at Brunel University in 2011 to doctoral students from multidisciplinary academic backgrounds. Their workshops covered journal publishing, how to write a scientific paper, and publishing ethics. Over 100 students attended this event and their feedback about the workshop content and presentations were very positive: over 95% of respondents to our survey said that the content of the workshop was either good or excellent. It is a great opportunity for students to interact with experts from the field of publishing and to learn from their experience. Highly recommended for early career researchers as well.” Dr Senthila Quirke, Graduate School Tutor, Brunel Graduate School, Brunel University

Jaap van Harten

“If publishers are the antennas of Elsevier, then they should pick up the signals as close to the broadcasting station as possible.” Jaap van Harten, Executive Publisher for Life Sciences

At the start of 2012, the Academic Relations team – which facilitates this program in close association with Publishing – embarked on translating some of the workshop content into free-to-view, bite-sized training webcasts. Lasting up to 10 minutes each, these give the potential author quick hands-on tips and tricks on a number of different topics. Working with our global offices we ensure these webcasts are available to everyone who is interested in submitting a paper and getting published. Since the launch of the ‘How to Get Published’ series in January, the webcasts have received more than 129,500 views.  An author training webcast library has been created on www.elsevier.com/trainingwebcasts to host the series and new topics such as rights and responsibilities, ethics and plagiarism, and how to review a paper will be added in the near future. Clearly this is a resource that authors are keen to tap into and we hope that it will ensure valuable training is freely available to early career researchers across the globe.

The new Elsevier Biggerbrains website, launched in March this year, provides career guidance and advice for early career researchers who want to build their career more effectively. It has important sections on Search and Discovery, Writing and Publishing, Networking, Funding and Career Planning. Featuring interviews with professors, Biggerbrains represents the collective knowledge of the research community.

The site provides a broad mixture of inspiring video interviews with professors, career-planning tools, featured skill development articles and materials, a game and job alerts. The knowledge provided is of benefit to all research areas, across all disciplines. There's also a deeper section with a range of online tools and solutions.

The campaign reaches young researchers by using various communication vehicles such as print and online advertising, email communications, social media, conferences, events and author workshops. The site has been visited by researchers globally.

We invite you to visit www.biggerbrains.com and share this with the early career researchers in your institution to help them to build and accelerate their research career. You are welcome to contribute to Biggerbrains by providing guidance and advice to young researchers in the related areas. To do this please contact Kuan Juan at k.juan@elsevier.com.

We have also created a section dedicated to early career researchers on elsevier.com, offering a range of information and resources. The new Early Career Researcher page contains an overview of all the Elsevier support available, including links to our new Authors’ Update newsletter, research veteran Professor Alan Johnson’s valuable Charting a Course for a Successful Research Career booklet, and a useful interactive PDF called Understanding the Publishing Process.

If you have ideas for how we could be helping early career researchers, please let us know by posting your comments below.

Also in this issue:  Early Career Researchers Share their Thoughts on the Future.

Author Biographies

Julia Wilson | Development Manager, Sense About Science
Sense About Science is a UK charity that equips people to make sense of science and evidence

A desire to understand the inner workings of the peer-review system has led a group of early career researchers to publish a new guide on the topic.

Peer review: The nuts and bolts

Members of Sense About Science’s Voice of Young Science (VoYS) network, an active group of early career researchers who stand up for science in public debates and inspire their peers to do the same, were behind the guide. They were keen to discover how to get involved in peer review and what is being done to address some of the criticisms of the system, such as bias from reviewers. So, armed with a collection of concerns raised by their peers, they set off to interview scientists, journal editors, grant body representatives, patient group workers and journalists worldwide. The end result is the new guide, Peer review: the nuts and bolts, which is aimed at early career researchers. It received its official launch at the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) in Dublin this July.

In 2009, Sense About Science partnered with Elsevier to conduct one of the largest surveys of international authors and reviewers which highlighted how dedicated the scientific community is to peer review. 90% of respondents review articles because they like playing their part as a member of the academic community; 85% enjoy seeing papers and being able to improve them; and 91% believe their own last paper was improved through the peer-review process.

Just as a washing machine has a quality kite mark, peer review is a kind of quality mark for science. It tells you that the research has been conducted and presented to a standard that other scientists accept. At the same time, peer review is not saying that the research is perfect (nor that a washing machine will never break down). I’m surprised that such an integral and valuable contribution from scientists is often given little recognition in academia or training in how to do it for early career researchers.*

In writing the guide, the authors of Peer review: the nuts and bolts have not avoided criticisms of the peer-review process. They have asked journal editors and reviewers some challenging questions about scientific fraud and plagiarism going undetected; issues of trust and bias; ground-breaking research taking years to publish and the system benefiting a closed group of scientists.

What became clear was that early career researchers are frustrated by the lack of formal recognition for reviewing. With so many pressures to secure grant funding and publish research, there is a risk reviewing will become marginalised and inevitably inconsistent and shoddy.

Reviewing is currently not included in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the UK (the new system for the allocation of funding to higher education institutes).  Members of the VoYS network decided to do something about this and wrote an open letter to Sir Alan Langlands, the Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council of England, calling for formal recognition of reviewing in the REF. In the letter, the early career researchers told Sir Alan: “Recognising reviewing as part of the REF would ensure that it is prioritised and safeguarded by university departments, [...] and approached professionally and seriously, enabling senior researchers to spend time mentoring early career researchers like ourselves in these activities.” A copy of their letter can be found on the Sense About Science website.

Dr Irene Hames (l)

Their call was supported by high profile editors and experts in the field including Dr Irene Hames, Editorial Consultant and author of Peer Review and Manuscript Management in Scientific Journals who spoke at our discussion on peer review at ESOF 2012 to mark the launch of our peer-review guide. Dr Hames said in support of the early career researchers’ open letter: “Peer reviewing involves a lot of time and effort by researchers [...] There is, however, currently no formal recognition of peer reviewing as a professional activity. Better recognition would be especially important for early career researchers, to demonstrate not only their contribution to this important activity, but their recognition as experts in their research areas.”

Peer review: the nuts and bolts is available to download from the Sense About Science website. For hard copies, please send requests to publications@senseaboutscience.org.

Lyndsay Scholefield | Senior Marketing Communications Manager, Elsevier

1st Place (Scope-finder)

Prize Apple® iPad 3rd Generation 16GB™, Wi-Fi model (ARV US$599)

By Dr Peter (T J) Willemsen, Research Scientist (Molecular Microbiology), Central Veterinary Institute of Wageningen University & Research centre in Lelystad, The Netherlands.

"Scope-finder" is an application allowing users to select keywords and then apply different weights (with a slider) to find the best fitting journal for submitting a paper.

Paul Andrewes

Runner up (Heat-map - Citations and Article Downloads)

Prize Amazon.com® Gift Card (US$100)

By Dr Paul Andrewes, Senior Research Scientist, Fonterra Cooperative Group Limited, Palmerston North, New Zealand.

There are few tools available for scientists to understand the trends in their fields. This application is an idea for a "heat-map" to show what articles, authors, or subjects a given field are generating the most attention (citations, and article downloads).

Of interest to: Journal editors and authors, particularly in social sciences and earth and planetary sciences fields
Archive views to date: 145+
Average feedback: 4.1 out of 5

Hylke Koers | Content Innovation Manager, Elsevier

New initiative will allow authors to create online presentations about their papers for display alongside their article on ScienceDirect. If you would like to offer this for your journal, read on...

Do you feel that too much research is being published these days? The answer to that question is usually a whole-hearted “yes” – an answer you will surely recognize. But when the same researchers are asked whether they feel they have published too much lately, that “yes” often becomes a “no”.

What is this telling us? I take this as an indication that researchers are increasingly struggling to keep up with the literature available but, at the same time, want to make sure that their paper gets the attention it deserves. Recent research by Elsevier [1] shows that scientists, on average, spend 9.3 hours per week browsing, searching and reading the literature on offer; that is a substantial portion of their time and it’s not surprising that useful papers are sometimes missed. With the volume of research output continuing to grow, this problem is only going to increase unless new tools are developed that will make it easier for researchers to find the articles most relevant to them.

We believe we can help. In 2011, Elsevier announced the Article of the Future project - a new, online article format offering better support for digital content, and a better online reading experience with a user-friendly, clean presentation.

Research has also shown that, thanks to the new format, readers are able to more efficiently determine if a paper is relevant for them. The biggest time-save (up to 34%) is in identifying and discarding irrelevant papers, which leaves more time to focus on the ones that matter [2].

We are now adding a new feature to the online article that offers a whole new dimension to this process by giving authors the possibility to explain in their own words what their paper is about: AudioSlides.

AudioSlides are brief, five-minute presentations created by the authors of the article using slides (PDF and PowerPoint) and voice-over recordings. This gives authors the opportunity to explain their paper in their own words in an appealing, easily accessible presentation format. The resulting video is displayed alongside the article on ScienceDirect. Authors can share personal insights into their research, highlight the paper’s salient points and, more importantly, explain why the paper is relevant for other researchers. This helps to make the paper stand out from the crowd and attracts readers that are interested in the subject. In particular, it can help to boost appeal to the younger generation of researchers, who have grown up with YouTube and enjoy using this format for learning.

To help authors create AudioSlides presentations, Elsevier has developed an easy-to-use, web-based tool. Authors can log in at any time to upload slides, and record a voice-over per slide. The tool works with all modern browsers, so only a computer, internet connection, and a microphone are required. Authors can make as many recordings as needed, and add, remove, or delete slides until they are happy with the result. AudioSlides is offered as a complimentary service for authors and the presentations will be made freely available on ScienceDirect.

The AudioSlides project was launched as a pilot mid-2012, and the initial response from both authors and readers has been very positive. Authors who have created a presentation tell us that they spend a few hours on it and are happy to recommend it to their peers. Based on this positive feedback, we will be rolling out the AudioSlides service to more titles throughout 2013. If you are interested in offering AudioSlides to your authors and readers, please reach out to us to nominate your journal for fast-track inclusion.

For more information and examples, please visit  www.elsevier.com/audioslides

[1] Researcher Insights Index - Reading Behaviour; Research & Academic Relations, Elsevier. More than 50,000 individuals were randomly selected from across 1.2 million authors that published in 2009 (source: Scopus). They were approached to complete the study in Jan 2012. There were 4,225 respondents. Data has not been weighted, responses are representative of the Scopus data by discipline and country. Error margin is ± 1.3%, at 90% confidence levels.

[2] IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg et al., “Elsevier's Article of the Future enhancing the user experience and integrating data through applications”, UKSG Insights 25 (1), March 2012, DOI: 10.1629/2048-7754.25.1.33