The National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) will be conducting a Half-Day Virtual Workshop, Beyond the PDF: Emerging Trends in Next Generation Articles, on March 23, 2017 from 9:00 am - 12:30 pm (EDT). This workshop will benefit scholarly researchers, publishers, discovery service providers, research librarians, government agency officials, non-profit scholarly society staff plus information services advisors and software and tool developers.
There's a change occurring in the delivery of scientific content. The development and application of virtual reality and augmented reality is changing research in nearly every field, from the life sciences to engineering. As a result, scholarly content is also changing its direction from print centric to fully submersed digital.
Historically, scientific content has been simple text and figures. To create higher quality, more intuitive and engaging content, scholarly communication has witnessed a shift to video and, most recently, researchers have begun to include data to create next generation content types that supplement and enrich their works.
Scholarly communication will continue this trend, requiring the delivery of content that is more innovative and interactive. However, in a world where the PDF has dominated the industry for years, new skills and technologies will be needed to ensure reader use and engagement remain stable as the information services industry shifts to accommodate new forms of content and articles enhanced by virtual and augmented reality.
Implementing and delivering on augmented or virtual reality supplemental material, and supporting them with the necessary tools for engagement, is no easy task. For as much as interest, discussion and innovation are occurring—as with all disruptive entrants—questions will need to be answered, issues addressed, and best practices established so that publisher, author and end-user can benefit from the results of deeper content engagement.
For publishers who work directly with scholars and researchers, this pivot means they must re-examine the needs of their customers, understand what they need delivered, where they expect to find that information, and how they want to interact with it. This will require publishers to update their current infrastructures, submission practices and guidelines, as well as develop or license software to keep pace and meet the needs of their authors and readers.
With so many platforms, channels, and formats it is more important than ever to deliver the right content, in the right format, on the right platform at the right time. During this NFAIS Half-Day Virtual Workshop an expert panel will examine why interactive content is imperative to the research community, and the different types of content and formats that are emerging as a result; how augmented reality and virtual reality can be used to increase the value of scholarly communication; the challenges of ensuring quality and reproducibility within these content types, including the application of emerging technologies to current workflow and submission guidelines; the new skills necessary for content creation, management and delivery, and consequent roles of the publisher; and implications for academic libraries, and the benefits of integrating library services to create new pedagogies, new media, new technologies, and new concepts for library engagement and learning encounters.
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