Elsevier announces the ‘Article of the Future’

July 20th, 2009

The ‘Article of the Future’ project is an ongoing collaboration between Elsevier and the scientific community to redefine how a scientific article is presented online.

The project takes full advantage of online capabilities, allowing readers individualized entry points and routes through content, while exploiting the latest advances in visualization techniques.

The first prototypes launch this week and key features include:

  • A hierarchical presentation of text and figures - readers can elect to drill down through the layers based on their current task in the scientific workflow and their level of expertise and interest.
  • Bulleted article highlights and graphical abstract - readers can quickly gain an understanding of the paper’s main message and navigate directly to specific sub-sections of the results and figures.
  • The graphical abstract encourages browsing, promotes interdisciplinary scholarship and helps readers identify more quickly which papers are most relevant to their research interests.

Using content from two previously published Cell articles, the prototypes have been developed by the editorial, production and IT teams at Cell Press in collaboration with Elsevier’s User Centered Design group.

Elsevier and Cell Press are inviting feedback from the scientific community on the concepts at: http://beta.cell.com/

Successful ideas from this project will ultimately be rolled-out across Elsevier’s portfolio of 2,000 journals available on ScienceDirect.

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Emilie Marcus, Editor in Chief, Cell Press, commented:
“The genesis of the ‘Article of the Future’ project came from a challenge to redesign from scratch how to most effectively structure and present the content of a traditional scientific article in an online environment. The rapid pace of technological advancements means this will undoubtedly be an evolving design, but we are happy to be able to address some key reader and author pain points such as the integration of supplemental data with these initial prototypes. We are tremendously excited that authors contributing to Cell Press journals will have the opportunity to pioneer this new concept and make a significant contribution to its development.”

IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, Vice President of Content Innovation for Elsevier Science & Technology Journal Publishing, said:
“Together with the 2009 Elsevier Grand Challenge, the ‘Article of the Future’ project forms part of Elsevier’s commitment to collaborating with our scientific community on Content Innovation. Sharing these prototypes and inviting feedback is the next step. We are confident that these tools will enhance the presentation of scientific results and improve the interpretation and speed of results analysis. They are central to driving innovation in scientific publishing and represent our investment in the future of research, enabling scientists all over the world to access, interpret, and create better science more efficiently.”