STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has introduced Genome Viewer, a new interactive feature on SciVerse ScienceDirect for applicable life sciences journals. The Genome Viewer is a SciVerse application that displays detailed gene or genomic sequence information on the genes mentioned in an article.
The Genome Viewer utilises a genome browser developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institutes of Health (NCBI). Elsevier collaborated with the NCBI as it was developing the browser, and is the first publisher to incorporate the technology into an application for viewing detailed information about the gene sequences that are mentioned in articles.
When an author of an article tags a gene sequence, Elsevier matches this gene with information in NCBI's databases and pulls this information into the article. This allows readers of the article to get specific information about each strand by hovering over it, and also offers functionality such as flipping the strands, zooming to a sequence, or going to a specific position to define a track of interest within the sequence.
The Genome Viewer also allows the user to download the complete list of genes and/or genomes referred in the article along with their respective GenBank accession numbers. This functionality was added based on recommendations of domain experts interviewed.
The Genome Viewer is one of the results of the Article of the Future project, which is designed to improve the readers' experience in all areas of presentation, and offers value-added content and interoperability with external databases. The Genome Viewer will be available for all other Elsevier applicable life sciences journals in the future.
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