Spotlight on Wiley ChemPlanner - shortlisted for the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing

This is the final post in a series of interviews with the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing finalists. Dave Flanagan, Director of Lab Solutions  talks about Wiley ChemPlanner.

Tell us a bit about your company.

Wiley is a global provider of knowledge and knowledge-enabled services that improve outcomes in areas of research, professional practice and education. We partner with over 800 societies representing two million members. We’ve been around for more than 200 years, and you probably know us for our high-quality books and journals. In chemistry, we publish books, journals, and databases, including databases of chemical reactions and different kinds of spectroscopy.

What is the project you submitted for the Awards?

Wiley ChemPlanner. ChemPlanner is a tool organic chemists can use to plan the synthesis of a new molecule. You draw a molecule, and ChemPlanner uses its state-of-the-art cheminformatics and high-quality data to predict the shortest, fastest, cheapest route to your target.

You can think of ChemPlanner as being analogous to IBM’s chess playing computer Deep Blue. Deep Blue learned all the potential moves in chess by parsing historical chess matches move-by-move and extracting rules that would help it win any game of chess. ChemPlanner has “learned” organic chemistry from the last 30 years of chemical reactions.

In this example, the user has drawn a target molecule (far left). ChemPlanner has predicted a two-step synthesis. Starting from the right, the first step has been predicted by ChemPlanner based on what it has “learned” about organic chemistry (light bulb icon). The second step is through a known, literature reaction (book icon). Prices under the molecules come from linked databases from commercial providers, giving you an idea of how much the synthesis will cost.

This is important because ChemPlanner can help speed up the process of making new molecules. For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, teams of organic chemists synthesize thousands of molecules that could potentially become a drug. But, most of the candidates will fail in pre-clinical or clinical testing, so a team might have to synthesize up to 10,000 candidate molecules to find the one that will eventually become an FDA-approved drug. Cutting synthesis time out of the process means drug candidates get off the whiteboard and into the clinic faster.

Tell us more about how it works and the team behind it.

Today, chemists rely on a combination of their own chemistry knowledge and searching the literature for reactions similar to what they think they need. But, this can be inefficient: database search tools require that a chemist have an idea of what they are looking for. And then, the chemist needs to piece the individual steps in a synthetic route together manually, trying to keep track of lots of variables like the availability of starting materials, the number of steps in the route, how common or exotic the individual reactions are, the yields of each reaction, and the overall synthetic strategy.

When we uncovered this in our workflow research, we saw an opportunity. We could accelerate the process with an easy-to-use tool that used promising cheminformatics technology to design optimized overall routes, including through novel molecules and reactions that are not indexed in any databases. Rather than searching the literature for similar molecules, the chemist could instead use a software application that automatically designs the optimal route for any molecule. The chemist could then fine-tune the route and decide on a solution in a matter of minutes instead of hours; this is computer-aided synthesis design.

In this approach, the software helps the chemist be more creative, by suggesting routes and reactions they may not have thought of on their own, and be more productive, by keeping track of all the variables (yield, cost, number of steps, literature support, etc.) that the chemist would have to keep track of in their head.

Delivering a sophisticated product like ChemPlanner has been the work of a talented team. Colleagues in Technology, Product Management, Marketing, Editorial, Sales, and more from multiple Wiley locations around the world have contributed to the development of ChemPlanner.

Why do you think it demonstrates publishing innovation?

We’re seeing the evolution of publishing, from the distribution of results in books and journals, to indexing those results in databases, to now being able to make predictions based on machine learning from those databases. It’s a real workflow tool in that a chemist working at the bench can input a question and get an answer to their problem, a real actionable answer that measurably helps our users be more creative and efficient.

What are your plans for the future?

We have a robust product roadmap for ChemPlanner with some exciting features planned for later this year. We’re not quite ready to talk about them publically yet, but if your readers are interested in what we have coming up or would like to schedule a demo, please get in touch by visiting ChemPlanner.com.


Dave Flanagan is Director, Lab Solutions at Wiley. He will present at the ALPSP Conference session for Awards finalists. The winner of the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing will be announced at the conference dinner on Thursday 15 September. www.alpspconference.org

The ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2016 are sponsored by MPS Limited.

Fast Track Content from Author to Reader: Collaborative workflow management systems that work

Rahul Arora, Chief Executive Officer at MPS Limited, draws on many years’ experience, including the development of MPSTrak, a core component of their flagship cloud-based Digital Publishing Platform – DigiCore – that streamlines, automates, and optimizes the publishing process.

In this guest post he considers the need to implement a collaborative workflow management system to manage the complete author-to-reader value chain, and the associated benefits for publishers.

"A publishing workflow is a sequence of activities performed by individuals or groups to make the content available to the reader. Participation is required from the author, editorial team, reviewers, and production staff; with the publisher managing and owning the complete process in near real time.

In the past seven to eight years, much has changed in publishing workflow management. New technology, publishing models, workflows, demand from authors, and growing competition have created a demand for increased automation, efficiency, standardization, faster publishing, global visibility, and cost savings.

Publishers need a flexible and adaptable publishing workflow management system that deals with any existing multiplicity in publishing processes without creating any echo, supports future business workflow requirements, provides global visibility, and allows the business to make any required changes with no or minimum dependency on the technology team.

We have seen publishers struggling with various challenges in their workflows: repetitive data entry in different systems, inadequate data validation, no control on processes, challenges in managing user notifications and reminders, tracking work from author and providing visibility on work status, article-based or custom publishing, issue make-up, schedule management, managing payments, and integrating different internal and external components.

In some cases, publishers had over 30 production workflows, with more than 80% repetition in data entry. The resultant issues and productivity inhibitors with apparently simple looking processes would see staff doing something in a far more complex way than was necessary.

When we start to work with clients, we always carry out a “workflow discovery” workshop at the start of each system implementation. Invariably we find that many times staff don’t have a strong rationale behind following the existing process steps. The response to most of questions turns out to be “Someone asked us to do this way and we never thought too deeply about it”. In addition, there are always loose boundaries between editorial and production work and different teams doing the same things in different ways.

We recommend publishers adopt an automated workflow system through a capable and experienced partner without waiting for the struggle to peak and creating barriers in growth.

Because one thing remains true: successful organizations, the ones that ‘disrupt’ the old guard, are the ones that have figured out an end-to-end creative process that enables them to beat their competition.

The major things to consider are the platform’s flexibility to incorporate changes and a knowledgeable team that can lead and drive change. We advise clients to expect:

• Intuitive user interface with global visibility across the publishing process 
• Faster time to market 
• Increased transparency between publishing process stakeholders 
• Support for flexible business models 
• Increase in staff work handling capacity.

We were delighted to hear from one of our customers who reported absorption of three year growth in production volume without adding any production staff when they implemented MPSTrak. Another reported a 46% increase in article-handling capacity of a production editor. Whichever system you work with, make sure it helps you deliver the capacity, flexibility and adaptability to deal with an increasingly complex publishing workflow."

Rahul Arora is the Chief Executive Officer at MPS Limited. He graduated from Babson College, Massachusetts and has a MBA from the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. Rahul led the transformation of his family’s print-focused publishing business to a larger, professionally-driven B2B media enterprise. He has led and grown some of Gallup’s most innovative consulting partnerships in the APAC region. As CEO of MPS, he manages the current operations in India and the United States, while continuing to actively engage with their client base.

MPS Limited has provided platforms and services for content creation, full-service production, and distribution for over 46 years. The business division, MPS Technologies, is a leading partner for global publishers and caters to the rapidly changing technological requirements of the publishing workflow. MPSTrak is a core component of their flagship cloud-based Digital Publishing Platform – DigiCore – that streamlines, automates, and optimizes the publishing process.

MPS Limited are sponsoring the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing. The winners will be announced at the ALPSP Conference 14-16 September. Book now and follow #alpsp16 #alpspawards for details.

Spotlight on SAGE Publishing's An Adventure in Statistics by Andy Field - shortlisted for the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing

This is the penultimate post in a series of interviews with the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing finalists.

Mark Kavanagh from SAGE Publishing talks about An Adventure in Statistics.

What is the project you submitted for the Awards?

Traditional methods of teaching and learning are in flux, partly because attention in the digital age is a scarce resource and engaging students is an increasing challenge. When Andy Field presented his ideas for a new approach to writing a textbook, we saw the opportunity to promote innovation within our textbook programme, specifically using Research Methods as our sandpit to play with pedagogy and better understand student engagement and learning styles.

A reinvention of the classic textbook model, An Adventure in Statistics demonstrates SAGE’s commitment to putting the authorial voice, ideas and talents at the heart of what we do, and to responding to the changing needs of students today.

Tell us more about how it works and the team behind it.

It is designed to work in the same way any textbook would. There are chapters on all the key areas covered on typical introductory statistics courses, there are pedagogical features throughout, and there is an online website offering complementary teaching and learning resources.

Where it departs from the traditional textbook model is in conveying statistical concepts through the interactions of characters in a novel length story – a science fiction love story in which Zach searches for his beloved Alice in a futuristic world, where every character he meets in his quest wants to teach him stats!

Great focus was placed both on the visual and story elements of the text to ensure that it worked as ‘academic fiction’. Andy always had the student reader firmly in mind from the beginning, but when he delivered the script, the SAGE product development team adopted a “bottom up”, user focused review process to better learn how this unique approach worked in practice, to build up student testimonials, and to help create more innovative sales and marketing strategies.

Andy engaged an Illustrator – James Iles, of Doctor Who fame – who helped initiate bringing the story to life. In house, Ian Antcliff worked on creating a design consistent with the artwork, adding value to the visual experience.


The array of illustrations bring another dimension to the figures, tables and pedagogy scattered throughout the book, fully immersing students into Zach’s world and making a one of a kind reading and learning experience.

In addition Andy worked with fiction editor, Gillian Stern, who provided feedback on the story elements of the text, helping to release Andy’s hitherto latent literary talents.

Why do you think it demonstrates publishing innovation?

An Adventure in Statistics rethinks the way that knowledge can be acquired, embedding statistical concepts into a highly illustrated, fictional narrative to motivate student learning. Using the medium of a science fiction love-story – not explored within teaching before – Andy have taken a creative approach to a long established model to create a more effective learning experience.

We’ve invested significantly in adapting a traditional model and format of dissemination to appeal both to changing learning styles and the ways in which students want to engage with educational content. It puts the reader at the centre, challenging their preconceptions about style and learning habits, appealing to their creative nature, demystifying content and teaching through a novel format.

In addition the story element of the product gives us much more scope to play with new ways of engaging students via social media, fostering and sustaining “fandom” and product discoverability.

An Adventure in Statistics is the expression of Andy’s vision for better engaging students and symbolises our willingness to invest significantly in the ideas of those at the forefront of HE teaching.

What are your plans for the future?

An Adventure in Statistics represents our most far reaching foray into understanding better student engagement, but we’re undertaking a range of innovation in pedagogy initiatives of varying scale throughout our textbook publishing programme. Adopting the “digital” mind-set of learning by doing and iterating, we’re conducting a series meaningful experiments across print and digital to learn more about how to be as relevant as possible to students at a time when they are increasingly influential in what teaching material they use.

Tell us a bit about your company.

SAGE Publishing is a leading independent academic and professional publisher founded in 1965 by Sara Miller McCune. SAGE is widely credited with helping to found early fields in Research Methods, and over its 50 year history has developed to further support the field in academic content, teaching resources, and innovative new products (e.g. SAGE Video Research Methods). We are committed to continuing our tradition of innovation within the Research Methods sphere, and the new textbook by award winning author Andy Field is a key example of how SAGE’s textbooks are breaking the mould of pedagogy, research methods and teaching.

This post was updated 5 September 2016.

Mark Kavanagh is Executive Publisher at SAGE Publishing. You can watch Mark present during the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing lightning sessions at the Conference in September, where the winners will be announced. Further information and booking available online.

The ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2016 are sponsored by MPS Ltd.

Spotlight on the Crossref Metadata API - shortlisted for the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing

This is the third in a series of interviews with the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing shortlist. Ginny Hendricks from Crossref tells us more about their Metadata API.

Tell us a bit about your company.

Crossref is a not-for-profit membership organization for scholarly publishing working to make content easy to find, cite, link, assess, and re-use. We do it in five ways: rallying the community; tagging metadata; running a shared infrastructure; playing with new technology; and making tools and services to improve research communications.

We’ve been around for sixteen years primarily for storing and registering identifiers that enable persistent linking between research articles. We’ve since grown to almost 6000 publisher members. This makes us not so much a Start-up as a ‘Scale-up’. We are seeing over 150 new publishers joining every month, international in scope and location, and many of these are library publishers, scholar publishers, and organizations exploring new publishing models.

What is the project you submitted for the Awards?

It’s the Crossref Metadata API, which is becoming a significant focus for us. We always describe APIs as machine-to-machine interfaces, but as more of us, including researchers, grow our developer mind-set, more of the services that we and others build need a dynamic way to integrate and use the cross-publisher metadata registered by Crossref. Put simply, the API lets anyone search, filter, facet and sample Crossref metadata related to over 80 million content items with unique Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs).

Tell us more about how it works and the team behind it.

We’re a small team of fewer than thirty people total, about a third in Oxford, UK and two thirds in Boston, USA. This, like most Crossref initiatives, started with the R&D team led by Geoffrey Bilder and has been extensively developed by Karl Ward.

The API was initially conceived to support funders who wanted to be able to find and report on the outputs of the research they funded. This was information publishers had started to provide Crossref, but to make best use of it, funders need to be able to access the most up-to-date information from publishers to be able to filter and facet their searches to look for specific subsets of information to report on the KPIs they were interested in.

Then it grew - with the introduction of funding data we started to see the API being used extensively. Coupled with that, the increased breadth of the metadata that publishers can provide Crossref with has also been growing - letting it be interrogated and used in lots of interesting ways. As such, the API has been developed to support the different information that users might ask of the metadata: asking for things like licence information, ORCID iDs, full-text links, clinical trial numbers and being able to filter on and combine these to get the specific sub-set of data they’re looking for.

Why do you think it demonstrates publishing innovation?

For its openness, its wide applicability, and it’s growing user base. Also because it’s used solely by developers who are looking to innovate themselves. As a communications person it’s been really interesting to see how the developer community has engaged with the API. The kind of use cases we’re seeing include text-mining, simple reporting and tracking, notification services, search interfaces (including our own) and integration in online editing and blogging tools.

What are your plans for the future?

Robustness! We have plans to scale up the technology to handle the growing usage the API is experiencing and make sure we can wholeheartedly support and grow the community that is using it. Of course, the API is only as valuable as the information that publishers provide Crossref with, and we’ll also be encouraging publishers to deposit the best, most complete metadata they can to improve the discoverability and usability of the research they publish.

Ginny Hendricks is Director of Member & Community Outreach at Crossref.

You can watch Crossref present during the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing lightning sessions at the Conference in September, where the winners will be announced. Further information and booking available online.

The ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2016 are sponsored by MPS Ltd.

Spotlight on Cartoon Abstracts - shortlisted for the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing

Ben Hudson, at work, visualising research

In this, the second in a series of interviews with the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing shortlist, we talk to Ben Hudson from Taylor & Francis about Cartoon Abstracts.

Tell us a bit about your company

I work as a marketer in the journals division of Taylor & Francis. We’ve been cultivating knowledge since 1798.

What is the project you submitted for the Awards?

Cartoon Abstracts, which are a fun new way of visualising academic research. These act primarily as a marketing tool, and are making a big impact on social media as well as having other applications.

See the cartoons for yourself at www.cartoonabstracts.com.

Tell us more about how it works and the team behind it.

Marketers are already using many different ways to promote individual research articles, and attracting the attention of an audience is an ever-evolving challenge.

I wanted to create something that stands out from the crowd, so I worked with a number of illustrators to combine the storytelling of a good press release with the highly visual nature of infographics. The end result is both concise and engaging – perfect for today’s marketing environment.

Once created, individual cartoon abstracts are promoted by T&F through social media, online, and via email. In addition, printed comics are proving very popular as a conference giveaway.

The original authors are provided with printed posters of their cartoon. These can be used at the authors’ place of work, at conferences, or even in poster sessions. Authors are also encouraged to self-promote their cartoon abstract through blogs and social media.

This combined promotion generates significant downloads and fantastic PR for the original research articles. This also increases the potential for citations.

Why do you think it demonstrates publishing innovation?

Each individual cartoon abstract summarises the original authors’ work through illustration, harnessing the overwhelming power of images over text.

Illustrations can aid the understanding of difficult concepts, broaden the appeal of niche topics, and transcend language barriers.

Authors enjoy being included as characters, which encourages them to share their cartoon via their own networks, thus increasing our communications reach. The author characters also resonate with the audience.

Elements of humour, intrigue, and parody can be found throughout many of the cartoons, which further increases audience engagement.

Cartoon Abstracts truly has gone viral, winning resounding organic praise from the academic community and beyond.

What are your plans for the future?

Cartoon Abstracts continues to gain exposure and awareness in the wider community, bringing written research to new audiences. I would like the concept to inspire not only current academics, but also the academics of tomorrow. As stated in the cartoon abstract Are Comics a Good Medium for Science Communication?, “Science comics have the potential to develop lay people’s ongoing interest and enjoyment for science”.

Ben Hudson is Associate Marketing Manager at Taylor & Francis and Founding Editor of Cartoon Abstracts. Watch him present during the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing lightning sessions at the Conference in September, where the winners will be announced. Further information and booking available online.

The ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2016 are sponsored by MPS Ltd. 

In a turbulent world, this is why I love the #alpspawards

It's that time of year again. We gather together a panel of experts in a dark room in the bowels of a building, and don't let them out until they have considered, debated, and scored some of the best innovations in the scholarly publishing world.

I love this moment; the point at which we announce the shortlist. While there's disappointment for those who didn't make it (and trust me, it was a close run thing, the standard was high) the excitement and anticipation of who might win ratchets up a level.

For those on the shortlist, the work has only just begun. A face to face presentation with the judges awaits. With 15 minutes each to wow, amaze and convince, they'll be preparing and perfecting their pitches. And then there's the lightning sessions at the Conference. (What do you mean you haven't booked yet? Never mind, here's the link.)

Perhaps the best part is the public debate the shortlist creates. Go on, admit it, you've got your favourite. That's OK. Some whooping and cheering from the sidelines is what the shortlisters need. And there really is something for everyone. The range, scale and quality is quite breathtaking. The full shortlist is below. Take a look. Pick your favourite. Set up an office sweepstake.

The world is a challenging place right now. I personally take great comfort in the dedication and hardwork of colleagues in scholarly communications. They are striving to improve tools for - and access to - research for a global community of researchers and beyond.

And have a care for our poor judges, locked away, deliberating. They won't have an easy decision. It'll be one hell of a ride. We hope you'll join us for it.

Follow #alpspawards and #alpsp16 for updates. The shortlisted entries for the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing are:

An Adventure in Statistics: The Reality Enigma from SAGE Publishing

Traditional methods of teaching and learning are in flux, partly because attention in the digital age is a scarce resource and engagement is ever harder to create. With the scholarly community demanding more, the nature of the transaction between material and student has changed. Coupled alongside a drive in academia to bridge the UK’s quantitative skills gap, a shakeup both in teaching and focus on research methods has been founded. From this, the concept of the latest Andy Field textbook was born – teaching students statistics through a science fiction love story with graphic illustrations. The project rethinks the way that knowledge can be disseminated – embedding theoretical approaches into a narrative to engage the mind of the reader. In a medium, love-story science fiction, not explored within teaching before, SAGE and Andy have taken a creative approach to better understand the needs of and engage students in teaching and learning.

Cartoon Abstracts from Taylor & Francis

Cartoon Abstracts are a fun new way of visualising academic research. They act as a marketing tool, and are making a big impact on social media as well as having other applications. Each individual cartoon abstract summarises the original authors' work through illustration, harnessing the overwhelming power of images over text. Illustrations can aid the understanding of difficult concepts, or broaden the appeal of niche topics. They can also help transcend language barriers, where that is an issue. Authors enjoy being included as characters, and this encourages them to share their cartoon via their networks – increasing communications reach. The author characters also enhance engagement with the audience.

The Crossref Metadata API

The Crossref Metadata API lets anyone search, filter, facet and sample Crossref metadata related to over 80 million content items with unique Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). It's free to use, the code is publically available and end-users can do whatever they want with the data. In exposing the authoritative cross-publisher metadata to the community in this way, it becomes more accessible, functional and much simpler to integrate with third party systems and services (from the publisher and the end-user side). It provides smoother workflows and increased discoverability using existing publisher processes.

Knowledge Unlatched

Knowledge Unlatched (KU) is a quiet innovation with revolutionary potential for not only changing the way the publishing costs of scholarly output are financed but also radically bringing down costs to those who fund it. The KU model is the only one that takes into account the global nature of scholarship and the globalisation of publishing. Because it mirrors these two worlds that are inextricably interwoven it avoids many issues associated with other programmes that serve national or institutional priorities. The service has found a way of making the publishing of specialist long-form content sustainable in a world where monographs, especially, are under severe pressure.

ORCID

ORCID's vision is a world in which all who contribute to research, scholarship, and innovation are uniquely identified and connected with their contributions and affiliations across disciplines, borders, and time. We maintain an open Registry where individuals may obtain a unique and persistent identifier (an iD) - a lifelong digital name they control - and services for the community to collect and connect these iDs in research workflows. Individuals may use their iD through their entire career, to ensure that they are reliably connected with their contributions and affiliations, even if they change their name, organization, discipline, or country.

Wiley ChemPlanner

The global pharmaceutical industry continually develops new drugs to cure or improve the treatment of disease. The drug creation process is extremely challenging; it takes an average of 12 years and billions of dollars of investment for one new drug to make it all the way from the lab bench to approval and into the clinic. Wiley ChemPlanner combines state-of-the-art cheminformatics technology with high-quality data to speed up the early stages of the drug creation process, saving  pharmaceutical corporations millions of dollars and getting drugs to patients faster. ChemPlanner lowers the barrier for synthesizing new molecules, thus accelerating the discovery process and allowing the exploration of an expanded region of chemical space. ChemPlanner also enables chemists to optimize synthetic routes, eliminating potentially harmful contaminating side products  and reducing manufacturing costs.


Suzanne Kavanagh is Director of Marketing & Membership Services at ALPSP.

ALPSP Awards: Where are they now? BMJ Case Reports

With the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing now open for submissions, we spoke to Janet O'Flaherty, Publisher at BMJ, to find out how BMJ Case Reports has faired since winning in 2010.

1. You won the ALPSP Award for Best New Journal. What was that like?

It was a super evening and we were all thrilled to win. The trophy sits proudly in our boardroom. I enjoyed the submission process, even doing the presentation to the panel. It was particularly gratifying that one of the reasons we won was the business model - only people with a personal or institutional Fellowship (subscription) can submit case reports - but there are no additional publication fees if the case is accepted.

2. How have you developed BMJ Case Reports since then?

We have grown immensely with nearly 13,000 cases live. The developments have been editorial rather than technical - we now have some subject specialist editors and a Global Health section with an accompanying Student Elective competition new for 2016. We have a group of medical student editors that blog for us. We've expanded into dentistry and have plans for a pharmacy section. The Editors do a lot of outreach and workshops on writing cases and getting them published which are always very well received. We have also copied the model for one of our societies with Veterinary Record Case Reports.

3. What have been the highlights?

The rapid growth and acceptance by medical schools that this is an important resource for students and trainees - and truly international as we have case reports from more than 70 countries. Adding the student board and having a workshop on getting published at the BMJ Careers fair in 2015 were personal highlights. Publishing our 5,000th and then 10,000th case reports were great milestones and we did some print mini-journals to celebrate. The journal has outperformed it's original business plan which is also gratifying.

4. What are the challenges you’ve faced?

The sheer volume of submissions and keeping turnaround times down is probably the most difficult. We also don't have an automatic way of checking that authors have the rights to submit (ie, that they or their institution has a Fellowship) so that's done manually (we do outsource that bit).
The journal is on a standard journal platform and so perhaps not optimal for discovery of the content. Also the publishing model means we don't currently have a mobile optimised site.

5. How did winning the Award help with BMJ Case Reports' development? 

It was great for marketing - in fact it's still used on our website and in our user guides/training materials.

6. What are your plans for the future?

We're exploring some technical enhancements - making the content more discoverable, e.g. if you are interested in this case then here are others that you should read. Hopefully some integration with other BMJ products that are used by medical students and junior doctors. We do hope to have a new user interface and design by 2017. As mentioned before - expansion outside medicine. We're looking at adding some interactive questions - starting with pathology and pharmacology cases. As we now have so much content - and there's no sign of it slowing down - we may offer a "read only" subscription once we have enhanced the journal's website.

Janet O'Flaherty is Publisher at BMJ. Information about BMJ Case Reports is available on their website.

Submissions for the 2016 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing are being accepted until Thursday 9 June. Full details available on the ALPSP website.

ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing - the finalists for 2015

The announcement of the winner of the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing is nearly upon us. Much anticipated and sometimes controversial, there's no denying the quality, breadth and range of the finalists.

In an intense lightning session the night before the Awards dinner, each of the shortlisted organizations presented for four minutes each to profile their submission.

The finalists were interviewed in the run up to the conference. Read each post at your leisure then debate who you think should have won on Thursday evening after the announcement!

Bookmetrix from Altmetric and Springer SBM
CHORUS - advancing public access to research
eLife Lens open-source reading tool from eLife
Impact Vizor from HighWire Press
JSTOR Daily online magazine
Kudos toolkit for researchers and their publishers
Overleaf authorship tool
RightFind XML for Mining from the Copyright Clearance Center
The Xvolution board game from NSTDA

The ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing are sponsored by Publishing Technology. Not at the Awards dinner? Check back on the ALPSP website for the results!

ALPSP Awards Spotlight on... JSTOR Daily

As the ALPSP Conference approaches (it's just under two weeks away and booking closes today) we are delighted to present the final post in the series that shines a spotlight on the finalists for the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing. Catherine Halley, Editor of JSTOR Daily, tells us what it's all about.

Tell us a bit about your company.

JSTOR is part of ITHAKA. ITHAKA (www.ithaka.org) is a not-for-profit organization that helps the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. We provide innovative services that benefit higher education, including Ithaka S+R, JSTOR, and Portico. JSTOR is a digital library of more than 2,000 academic journals, dating back to the first volume ever published, along with thousands of monographs, and other material.

What is the project that you submitted for the Awards?

JSTOR Daily is an online magazine published by JSTOR that offers a fresh way for people to understand and contextualize their world. We make historical peer-reviewed scholarly research and other library content relevant and accessible to a general audience by connecting it to the news and offering open access to the original research and other content housed in the JSTOR library. Our cheeky tagline—“where news meets its scholarly match”—encapsulates our belief that deep, substantive journalism doesn’t have to be boring. In addition to weekly feature articles, the magazine publishes daily blog posts that provide the backstory to complex issues of the day in a variety of subject areas, interviews with and profiles of scholars and their work, and much more.

Our idea of a good story is one that:

• tells thought-provoking stories that appeal to a general reader
• draws on scholarly research to provide fresh insight into the news media and current affairs
• deepens our understanding of our world
• highlights the amazing content found on JSTOR
• exposes the work of scholars who are using JSTOR to conduct their research.

Tell us more about how it works and the team behind it.

We’re an extremely small team, a micro team, really. The site has two full-time editors and two part-time contributing editors. The stories are written by freelancer writers who are paid for the content they produce. We sit in the marketing and communications department at JSTOR, and work with a part-time in-house marketing person as well as a designer.

Why do you think it demonstrates publishing innovation?

JSTOR Daily publishes high-quality, carefully researched content that provides an alternative to the listicles and clickbait that seem to dominate mainstream media.

JSTOR is home to some of the most fascinating and well-respected peer-reviewed scholarship, as well as thousands of historical documents. In fact, the sheer volume of information available in the library can be so overwhelming that much of the content remains hidden in the archive. By weaving stories around the research, primary source material, and other content in JSTOR, and relating it to current conversations in the public sphere, JSTOR Daily aspires to expose the breadth of this truly great library to a wider audience, and encourage a general reader, regardless of institutional affiliation, to discover and dive into it. The magazine appeals to the knowledge seeker and lifelong learner in each of us.

While the website publishes editorial content, rather than peer-reviewed scholarship, we hope the magazine stories will transform JSTOR from a passive repository of knowledge to an active participant—in partnership with our readers and authors—in the generation and dissemination of collective human wisdom.

What are you plans for the future?

JSTOR Daily was launched in October 2014 on a shoestring budget with just one editor. In keeping with JSTOR's commitment to testing what software developers call "minimum viable products," the site was built using an out-of-the-box WordPress theme called SimpleMag. While the live site is more technically efficient than innovative, we have long-term plans to add interactive content, data visualizations, and a podcast series in the coming year.

The winner of the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing, sponsored by Publishing Technology, will be announced at the ALPSP Conference. Book now to secure your place.

ALPSP Awards Spotlight on... Impact Vizor from HighWire Press

In this, the penultimate post from the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing finalists, John Sack, Founding Director of HighWire Press talks about how it Impact Vizor came about and their plans for the future.

"Can you answer these questions?

Do you reject quality content in one journal that you could use to start a new journal? Are the articles you published this year higher impact than last year’s?
Are you anxious about the impact of the new journal you just launched?
Has your tighter acceptance rate helped your competitors get better articles?
Are you rejecting some very high impact articles?
What topics that you publish are “trending”?  Is this a shift for your discipline?
Who publishes your rejected articles?
Are your review articles this year as good as they were the last two years?
What can you tell the new EIC about the impact of editorial changes?

(What questions are you and your editors asking along these lines?  Let us know in the comments.)

The above editorial and publishing questions have been around forever, but the answers have been based on instinct or feeling or what the EIC’s friends think.  Now we can get better answers.

Where do the better answers come from?

Almost from the start of HighWire, I have been using the tag phrase "evidence-based publishing". With its roots at Stanford University -- and in the Stanford University Library in particular -- HighWire was formed around the idea that data -- evidence -- could inform best practices and the best decisions.

Data hasn't been in short supply lately.  The challenges have been to "mill" the data into information that works for decision-makers: this often means integrating data across disparate systems, making it easy to understand, and timely to access.  We think we are on to how to do this with our "Vizor" suite of analytics products.

What are “Vizors”?

HighWire's Vizors are visualized analytics.  The first Vizor that has begun rolling out is Impact Vizor, which helps editors and publishers see the research impact of the articles they publish, and the articles they reject.

Impact Vizor includes the "Rejected-Article Tracker" (the “RAT”) which visualizes where articles an editor or publisher rejects get published, and how much they get cited.  The "RAT" has been rolled out to sixteen publishers.  Soon we will be rolling out the Section Performance Analyzer (the "SPA") and the Hot Object Tracker (the "HOT").   Following those will be the Advanced Correlator of Citation and Usage (the "ACCU") and the Cohort Comparator ("CC").

Editors get very very excited by the RAT; previously this kind of information has been hard to develop, and hard to visualize.  Impact Vizor does both.  And this information tells you important things about the potential for starting new sections, new journals, or other new products.

And in other big news:  a journal does not have to be hosted by HighWire to use Impact Vizor.  In fact, our first deployment was for a major publisher who is not hosted by HighWire.

How does it work?

Impact Vizor combines data across different systems to put together (literally) a picture of how content is being used and cited.   The key is to get the earliest possible indicators of research merit -- primarily citations -- and see what patterns there are in the data.  In addition to all the visuals, there are also full data tables for those who want to further process and investigate the data, by easily moving it into Excel for example.

How did it get developed?

The Vizor development process incorporated our "early adopter” group of sixteen publishers right from the start: this group prioritized the components to be developed, and three or four publishers are involved in creating the prototypes of each component.

We have a highly-focused team inside HighWire working on the software, and we use a number of open source and "magic quadrant" components.  Key to the software of course is the data, and here we stand on industry APIs and standards, as well as a lot of analytics data and experience at HighWire over the years.



Why should you care?

Impact Vizor solves a significant problem facing publishers and editors: they “fly blind” when making changes in policy, scope or personnel, because the feedback from current citation monitoring tools is terribly slow and painful to interpret.

We integrate varied information sources, and do it rapidly.  We visualize the information, rather than just show large data tables.   Vizors are easy for the non-data-scientist to use; but they can deliver data for the data scientist.

We built a user community to direct the development towards the highest-value business and editorial questions, and we are delivering periodic new function so that value is increasing.

What’s next for Vizors? 

We plan to roll out a half dozen components of Impact Vizor after the RAT, according to a customer-guided roadmap.   Additional data sources and visualizations will come in 2016 as we further expand the concept of impact beyond citation metrics.

HighWire also will be developing other Vizors beyond Impact Vizor, to visualize usage, metadata, use demographics and manuscript workflows."

ALPSP Awards Spotlight on… The Xvolution Game from NSTDA

The Xvolution is the first Thai commercial board game specifically created based on Thai fossilized specimens data through the ally of public and private sectors. It has been developed by the NSTDA (National Science and Technology Development Agency) Thailand, partly supported by Plan Toys (Plan Creations Co., Ltd.) and G Softbiz Co., Ltd. In this latest post from the finalists for the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing, the Xvolution team explain what it is and how it works.

Tell us a bit about your company

The National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) is an agency of the government under the Thai Ministry of Science and Technology. NSTDA is an umbrella organization that plans and executes the four mandated missions of research and development, technology transfer, human resources development and infrastructure development. NSTDA comprises four national research centers: BIOTEC (National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology), NECTEC (National Electronics and Computer Technology Center), MTEC (National Metal and Materials Technology Center), and NANOTEC (National Nanotechnology Center). NSTDA works closely with its partners from other government agencies and the private sector, both domestically and internationally, through different mechanisms to achieve these goals.

What is the project that you submitted for the Awards?

The Xvolution is an edutainment board game, partly based on Thai paleontological specimens data. All illustrations are supervised by experts in the field. Augmented Reality (AR) technology and the matched mobile application are an accompaniment to the game. Three stakeholders were involved in game development: the prototype was initiated by researchers, the AR and commercialized version improvement were supported by private companies. The Xvolution is the first Thai commercial board game, providing a new business model for Thai gamers. The game contents were also modified to be used in subway exhibition and also at the Thailand Science and Technology Fair.

Tell us more about how it works and the team behind it.

The board game is both a recreational and educational tool. Recently, board game playing has gained popularity among Thai teens and adults, especially in urban areas. But up to now all the commercial games have been imported from abroad. It is hoped that making a prototype game might be a good way to stimulate many gamers to start creating new games themselves. The Xvolution was initiated by a Ph.D. student, Mr. Peechanit Ketsuwan, and two NSTDA (National Science and Technology Development Agency) officers, Ms. Sasithorn Teth-uthapak and Dr. Namchai Chewawiwat.

The game design is based on the main idea that most of people, of any age, may enjoy playing the game, and the activity itself is a very effective way for learning. We focused on the basic evolutionary contents that were also supplemented with unique data from Thai fossilized specimens. All drawings were newly created for this project. Dr. Varavudh Suteethorn and Dr. Suravech Suteethorn supervised the accuracy of all the illustrations in the game. Both are the researchers at the Palaeotological Research and Education Centre, Mahasarakham University. Dr. Varavudh is now the Director of the Centre.

The rules for Xvolution are modified from the standard Millionaire Game. But instead of using fixed-squared big board, we designed small hexagon-shaped steps that all the players could select to combine and use as the route.




Some special command signs are added for the Battle, Mutation and Level Up. All of these either use for biological contents adding or game excitement enhancement.

When the player steps on the sign 'Battle', (s)he need to 'Battle' with another player, using specific cards obtained from the start and during the playing. The 'Battle' card shows the special environmental condition, ie. endemic, hot and draught, etc., and the player need to choose their cards to fight, with the opponent player. So, for example, if the ice age is the condition, then the animal with fur will survive better than the animals with thick and thin skin, respectively. About a dozen of environmental change conditions is included, to demonstrate the interaction between animals and physical/ biological surroundings.

The 'Mutation' sign is for the mutation concept learning. The player who steps on this sign will open the 'Mutation' card which will command some actions. This might be to exchange genetic materials: exchange your 'Skin' card with central pool. The most severe mutation condition is extinction!

Every time the player passes the 'Start' point, (s)he will gain some eggs and could use them to exchange to the upper level of evolution. The winner is the one who passes from the oldest to the most recent geological era first or who could gain more cards and eggs in the players' set-up period of time.

The game prototype was tested several times using different group of players, varying from elementary, secondary school and college students and also adults, from lay people to researchers. Most of players were satisfied and had fun with it.

AR Technology is presently merged into several products, including books. G. Softbiz Co., Ltd. and several other Thai publishers were successful in using AR technology to promote fairy tale books. Taking photographs with some dinosaur models is a very attractive idea and has the potential to make young children pay more attention to this game and the palaeontological contents. G. Softbiz Co., Ltd. developed the dinosaur models for AR and the mobile app. The Xvolution is available for free download.

Why do you think it demonstrates publishing innovation? 

A specific business model was used for the Xvolution. NSTDA absorbed all the expenses on the prototype development and also partly in final production. Plan Toys, the local expert company in children's toys and books, helped transform the prototype to the commercial version. Some material and resins were changed to be wood and paper works. A lighter and more compact box set was modified. Plan Toys also shared some expenses on production. G. Softbiz Co., Ltd., another local companies that is expert on AR design and book publishing, helped develop the AR model and mobile application and invested in this part. The revenue is shared within these three stakeholders.

What are you plans for the future? 

After more than five years of development, the Xvolution board game launched in January 2015 at Isetan Department Store, the Bangkok Central World in the downtown area of Bangkok. The opportunity to export the Xvolution abroad is now being considered. The social media of this game is at https://www.facebook.com/TheXvolution.

From the start, the monetary profit is not the major reason or target for our innovation, but the science communication to the public, including the distribution of the scientific information, and the application of a new way for public understanding of science are our concerns.

Therefore we used our information and/or products in many other ways too. The game has been simplified and used as a part in the Thailand Science and Technology Fair 2012. This Fair normally runs for two weeks with more than 1 million visitors, mostly students. We also did the Xvolution mini-exhibition at Chatuchak station of Thailand underground train during July to December 2013. Several ten thousands people transit through this station daily.

We also tried to push the Xvolution contents to be applied as a TV game show on the Thai PBS TV station. The concept of program was discussed several times and the air-time was granted but, unfortunately, we could not find sponsors for this program. We aim to distribute the simple blue-print of the game as a free download for students and teachers, to use as a study tool in schools, in the future.

The Xvolution team:
Ms. Sasithorn Teth-uthapak, sasi@nstda.or.th
 Dr. Namchai Chewawiwat, email: namchai@nstda.or.th
Mr. Peechanit Ketsuwan, email: pk.ketsuwan@gmail.com


The winner of the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing, sponsored by Publishing Technology, will be announced at the ALPSP Conference. Book now to secure your place.

ALPSP Awards Spotlight on… CHORUS: Collaboration and Innovation for the Public Benefit

In this latest post from the finalists for the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing, Susan Spilka, Marketing and Communications Director for CHORUS, tells us more about the project and why they felt it should be entered for the Awards.

"It’s an honor for CHORUS to be included among the impressive group of finalists for the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2015. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to showcase the work we are doing.

CHORUS is the outcome of successful collaboration since 2013 among publishers, funding agencies, scholarly societies, and other stakeholders. Our services and best practices provide a sustainable, scalable, cost-effective, interoperable, and transparent solution to deliver public access to published articles reporting on funded research. As a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) membership organization, CHORUS is policy-neutral and focuses on building consensus and services to advance public access in a way that recognizes and sustains the value that publishers bring to science and scholarship, for the benefit of all. The result is increased discoverability for authors’ research, enhanced accountability for funders, and accessibility to articles reporting on research, for everyone.

CHORUS is being adopted by funders to enhance their efforts to increase public access to articles based on funded research and complement their compliance procedures. CHORUS launched with a commitment from the US Department of Energy (followed by a Participation Agreement in April 2015). This week, the Smithsonian Institute released its Public Access plan, naming CHORUS as part of its solution. We expect to announce a pilot project with another federal agency very soon, and anticipate more agency agreements by early fall. CHORUS has also started discussions with a number of funders outside of the US as well as several global NGOs that fund research.

CHORUS is growing rapidly, gaining momentum as we add publisher members’ content and enter into partnerships with funders. As of early August 2015, we are monitoring over 120,000 articles associated with 24 funders for public access, with more than 30,000 already publicly accessible. Our membership roster includes publishers of all stripes and sizes (including not-for-profit societies, university presses, and commercial companies with pure OA and hybrid programs) as well as publishing service providers and organizations. Members pay modest fees to support CHORUS’ operations, while funders, researchers, university research officers, librarians, publishers and the public all benefit from CHORUS’ services at no cost. Our small staff includes myself and Howard Ratner (Executive Director) – two publishing veterans bringing multiple decades of experience – along with a Digital Analyst, Program Manager, and outsourced development, legal, and finance staff. We rely heavily on the tireless efforts of a volunteer Board of Directors and working groups.

CHORUS knits together new services and open APIs with the existing scholarly communications infrastructure to minimize effort and expense and maximize the identification, discovery, access, and preservation steps of compliance to funder public-access requirements. CHORUS utilizes CrossRef’s FundRef service to identify and keep track of papers reporting on research coming from funder grants and contracts. We promote the use of ORCID identifiers and other industry best practices. The resulting metadata (including the DOIs of the published articles) helps make articles more easily discoverable (via CHORUS’ Search service as well as agency portals and general search engines) and transparently describes their public accessibility.

Part of what makes CHORUS unique is that our distributed access approach points users directly to the best available version of articles (either the accepted author manuscript or Version of Record) on publishers’ sites, either immediately or after the prescribed embargo period, in perpetuity. CHORUS also provides freely available, downloadable dashboards with detailed reporting on public accessibility and availability of reuse license terms and preservation arrangements. Our auditing system – a hybrid system of automation and manual checking for public access – follows the DOI links for every identified article in our database. CHORUS publisher members are required to archive their content; CHORUS has special arrangements with CLOCKSS or Portico that enable perpetual public accessibility.

CHORUS is committed to evolving with the needs of the scholarly community. Recently we started to provide customized publisher dashboards as a member benefit. We’ll soon be making our open APIs widely available. Further down the pipeline we are considering some projects designed to make publicly accessible content and data more discoverable. Our recent agreement with ORCID formalizes the coordination of our efforts to promote the adoption of identifiers and standards to manage access to and reporting of research outputs. We also see the tremendous potential of providing access to data; as a result, we are participating in such Initiatives as CrossRef/DataCite, RDA/WDS-Publishing Data Services Working Group, and RMAP.

Stay tuned for new developments … it’s going to be a busy fall! Follow CHORUS on Twitter @CHORUSaccess and Linked In."


The winner of the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing, sponsored by Publishing Technology, will be announced at the ALPSP Conference. Book now to secure your place.

ALPSP Awards Spotlight on… Bookmetrix from Altmetric and Springer

Martijn Roelandse

In the fifth of the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing finalists' posts Martijn Roelandse Springer's Manager for Publishing Innovation and Euan Adie, Founder of Altmetric and fellow co-developer of Bookmetrix, talk about how they worked to launch the product.

Tell us a bit about both companies and how this collaboration came about.

As a large publisher of STM content, with a current catalogue of over 194,000 books, Springer is always keen to offer further services for our authors and editors - in particular in relation to the insight into the attention, use and impact of their titles.

Altmetric are a data science company based in London. Founded in 2011, Altmetric made it their mission to track and analyse the online activity around scholarly literature, and today supply data via their distinctive ‘donut’ badges and platforms to many of the world’s leading publishers, funders and institutions.

Euan Adie

The idea for this project was originally conceived at Springer, who wanted to find new ways to offer added value and additional feedback to the authors and readers of their extensive book content.

In addition, Springer also wanted to offer their editorial and marketing teams an easier way of tracking the reach and impact of their publishing portfolio, and were keen to offer further insight than download and citation counts alone would be able to provide.

Having first established a relationship Altmetric in 2011 with the adoption of the Altmetric API for all of their journal articles, Springer were familiar with the Altmetric team and felt there would be a shared approach and understanding of what the project was trying to achieve.

What is the project that you submitted for the Awards?

We submitted Bookmetrix - the first platform of its kind to help authors, editors, publishers and readers to track the broader impacts of a book or chapter once it’s published. The project encompassed two parts; public-facing details pages, which are now accessible via the metrics displayed on every SpringerLink book page, and the Bookmetrix search interface - a database which Springer staff can use to browse and filter the metrics across their book portfolio.

Tell us more about how it works and the team behind it.

Bookmetrix was built as a partnership between Altmetric and Springer - regular meetings between the two groups (comprising project leaders, product managers, and developers) ensured that we agreed goals and concept early on. The aim was to offer authors and readers a totally new way to see and understand the impact of their work and to help set a new standard for monitoring and reporting the activity surrounding a book post publication. To achieve this, we worked to pull in mentions and other online activity relating to each book or chapter from a variety of different sources - including downloads, citations, book reviews, public policy, mainstream media coverage and social media shares.

The data was then surfaced via the details pages - where users can see a summary of the mentions of the whole book, and dig down to view the mentions for each chapter and the original comments from each source. The details pages can be accessed via the SpringerLink platform and via the search interface (by Springer staff).

Why do you think it demonstrates publishing innovation?

Bookmetrix is the first platform of it’s kind to bring together such a valuable mixture of traditional and non-traditional indicators of broader impact and influence for books and individual chapters. Such measures are increasingly important for authors who are asked by funders or institutional management to demonstrate the influence of their work - and are particularly valuable for those who do not chose to publish journal articles (which often bring the most credit) as their main form of research output.

As well as offering this additional insight, Bookmetrix has demonstrated the value that can be found in publishers combining their objectives with the technical and domain expertise of an external partner.

What are your plans for the future?

The scope of Bookmetrix is wider than existing initiatives in the market: it covers substantially more books and goes beyond pure citation data. Bookmetrix fits in Springer’s ambition to drive more industry-wide initiatives to support the work of authors and researchers.

The winner of the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing, sponsored by Publishing Technology, will be announced at the ALPSP Conference. Book now to secure your place.

ALPSP Awards Spotlight on… Overleaf, the collaborative writing and publishing platform

John Hammersley, Founder and CEO at Overleaf (Writelatex Limited), in the fourth of ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing finalists' posts, explains what the collaborative writing and publishing platform is about and how it works.

Tell us a bit about your company

Founded in 2012, by me, John Hammersley and my friend and colleague, John Lees-Miller, Overleaf is an academic authorship tool that, in essence, allows researchers to spend more time saving the world by making it much easier for them to write and publish their work.

How do we help? Overleaf is an easy-to-use, intuitive editor that enables efficient collaboration and effortless manuscript submission on all types of research articles. So you spend less time worrying about formatting and versions, and more time doing your research.

We've seen amazing growth since we started, with over 250,000 registered users in just over 2 years – and this is something we originally built simply for our research group. We have been growing rapidly since our launch, mainly through the grassroots movement that has formed around the platform – Overleaf users are incredible.  We always say we have the best users on the planet, especially given our recent milestone!

What is the project that you submitted for the Awards?

Overleaf submitted our cloud-based, academic authorship platform for the ALPSP awards.

By providing an intuitive online collaborative writing and publishing platform, Overleaf is making the process of writing, editing and publishing scientific documents quicker and easier. Researchers and academics can now write, collaborate, and publish with a single click, directly from the Overleaf web-app. Publishers and Institutions are partnering with Overleaf to provide customized writing templates, simple reference tool linking, and one-click publishing submission links.

Overleaf brings the scientific documentation process into a Google-docs like environment, developed to seamlessly connect the academic and publishing workflows from writing-to-review-to-publication.

Tell us more about how it works and the team behind it

Overleaf’s free service allows the entire scientific documentation process to move into the cloud – from idea to writing to review to publication.

Users can collaboratively view and edit documents in either a simple word processing interface or as native LaTeX source code – from anywhere. Users can choose from multiple template options, including customized book or journal templates, which can be publisher specific. All the required components – such as chapters, sections, title pages, glossaries, references and acknowledgements – are pre-defined and ready to be populated. Authors simply open the template and start writing, safe in the knowledge that the output conforms to the editorial guidelines of their target journal or publisher. Automatic formatting significantly reduces editorial costs and reduces time to publication.

As a user types or makes changes, the environment provides an automatic preview of the fully typeset document – allowing everyone to see exactly what the finished document will look like.  Authors can link their preferred reference management tool directly to their Overleaf account – allowing fast, simple and correct in-document referencing and citation without worrying about editorial guidelines. Once the document or project is complete, there are multiple output options. Authors can submit directly to a publisher, journal or repository from within the Overleaf platform, through a simple one-click submission button, or output the file in cross-platform LaTeX or PDF formats.

Overleaf greatly reduces editorial and review turnaround times with powerful change tracking, commenting and project lifecycle management features. Publishers can quickly and easily make notes or edit a document, share those changes with other editors, peer reviewers or authors and move through the editorial and peer review process quickly and easily. No more emailing papers back and forth and manually marking up changes. 

Overleaf has also been a beneficial service for publishers and societies who are looking to simplify the LaTeX writing and submission process for their users, or to provide a powerful, value-add tool for their authors. Overleaf makes the scientific writing, review and publishing process simple – for everyone.

The new word-processing environment, allows non-LaTeX users and journals to experience the same advantages of seamless collaboration, easy templating and one-click submission.

As for the team behind it… Overleaf is really the brainchild of my colleague, John Lees-Miller –  who, while we were doing research on driverless cars and publishing papers with the Bristol University Engineering Mathematics group, saw a need for a collaborative scientific writing tool, and he built one! In the past, LaTeX, the scientific writing language required for many hard sciences, was only available as a single-user desktop writing application. As an open source application with a number of commercial distributions, LaTeX suffered from fragmentation, resulting in a lack of interoperability, undermining its cross-platform origins. In other words, the hundreds of LaTeX desktop writing application options only added to the difficulties in collaborative scientific research and writing. Researchers would usually find that collaborators used a slightly different distribution - meaning that their documents could not be read. With no good way to collaborate on individual files – authors would compile and output large typeset files, and email or FTP the read-only output back and forth. Obviously, the process was far from ideal. Thus, the idea for Overleaf was born!

Our answer was to build a cloud-based scientific writing and collaboration tool for LaTeX documents which we called ‘WriteLaTeX’.  As a cloud-based web app, WriteLaTeX did not require authors to download or install any software and allowed co-authors to collaborate in LaTeX in real time for the first time. Think Google Docs – but for complex scientific papers and formulas! As colleagues learned of this new, easy-to-use tool, word spread and WriteLaTeX grew. Soon we found ourselves dedicating more and more time to developing and growing this popular new scientific service – leading to what is now our London-based start up: Overleaf.

Why do you think it demonstrates publishing innovation?

Overleaf has had a phenomenal first two years, with close to 250,000 registered users from 180 countries worldwide who have created in excess of three million documents from over 2,000 publishers, institutions and universities across the globe.

Researchers love the innovative and easy-to-use writing and collaboration web app, and publishers love the cost savings from receiving perfectly formatted submissions first time, the groundbreaking online editing tools, automated typesetting and pagination, and clean outputs. 

This is a new tool for the scientific community that was previously unavailable – something needed and wanted by researchers across the globe and a clear win-win for authors and publishers.  It is a great fit for the ALPSP Award as it provides a crucial digital tool for scientists - advancing the scientific writing and publishing process. Overleaf supports scientific writing, editing and collaboration in the cloud better than anything available today.

What are your plans for the future?

Overleaf has been focused on growing in the Publishing and Institutional space since 2015 and has already signed with more than 10 institutions – including Stanford University – and more than 10 publishing partners – including Nature Scientific Reports and PeerJ. These publishing and institutional partnerships will be fundamental in the growth of Overleaf.

Overleaf is also partnering with organizations who help the researcher and academic writing and publishing workflows. Overleaf believes that these integrations are also crucial for expansion of the service. Providing users with a winning platform includes seamlessly integrating the tools and services that are needed by researchers, academics, publishers and institutions. Partnerships and integrations have been established with multiple organizations, such as: Mendeley (reference management), Aries Systems (peer review system), Figshare (data repository), Editage (Editing service), and more. Additional partnerships and integrations are being established monthly.

Check us out at www.Overleaf.com and sign up for a free account.