Article of the Future prototypes at Cell Press
Martin Fenner
Tuesday, 21 July 2009 07:15 UTC
Cell Press and Elsevier have started a project Article of the Future where they look at new ways to present articles online. Two article prototypes are displayed on the website (here and here). This project touches many aspects of science publishing, but it is also relevant to this forum. Are new article formats that move away from the traditional print format better suited to communicate the message of the paper? Examples include the use of audio and video, and different versions (basic and extended) of the materials and methods section.
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Replies
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Anyone interested in this might also like to take a look at Scientific findings in a digital world: What is the genuine article?.
One of the advantages of having things in print is being able to have two different and not consecutive pages in front of you so that you can see the text and the figure being discussed at the same time. They seem to have tried to address this by having the figures open within the same window but it’s still not ideal. Perhaps if it was possible to move the insert or maybe open it as a split screen.
The idea of author interviews being inserted would only work if there was peer review or at least some editorial control over this as well.
As to whether these are better suited to communicate science…I don’t think they are substantially different from traditional papers being put online.
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From a reading-experience perspective, I think the “new article” format is easier to read (except for the figures page where the jumping about of the figures as I scrolled over them was distressing). I don’t know whether it contributes anything “more” to the communication of science (though it could be argued that better reading formats mean more readers are more likely to use your stuff). I very much agree with Samantha’s take on being able to read non-consecutive pages at the same time — there is a software program called Xplorer2 (has a freeware and pro version) that creates 2 screens for the Windows Explorer function. I use it all the time, and have wondered why there wasn’t something similar for digital text. I suppose you could have multiple browser tabs open and get the same effect, but for some reason, that seems clunkier.
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Thanks for the info on xplorer2, looks good. I haven’t come across it before but I’m thinking about downloading the free trial.
I thought about the multiple tabs option but like you think it is a bit clunky.
With some thought I definitely think someone could come up with something better than these prototypes but this is a place to start. Hopefully other publishers or organizations will produce some prototypes and then we’ll get the ball rolling…
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