Clare Shepherd, Senior Editor at Adis Rapid+ journals, provides an overview of how digital technology and enhanced features are adding value to medical publications.

Recorded 2 November 2016 at a MedComms Networking event in Oxford. Produced by NetworkPharma.tv

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ABSTRACT:

Scientific publishing has had to increasingly adapt to the digital world to keep pace with their readership. The scientific community now has more content than ever to read, and less time to read it, and with the rise of digital, researchers are increasingly accessing content via their iPads and other smart technology, and looking to dip into articles to pull out key messages rather than read content in full. A few publishers still use PDFs as a basis for tablet display, but many of the bigger publishers have moved on to more responsive design, such as HTML, and some (notably Wiley and Elsevier) are offering ‘living articles’. See, for example, The article of the future (Elsevier) at https://youtu.be/1dXkmgkYuEg

Most publishers now offer the opportunity to publish digital supplementary features alongside a main article. Such content might include video abstracts, delivered by an author, practical demonstrations of procedures, such as laser eye surgery or ECG, audio slides designed to mimic real-life presentations, and 2D or 3D animations designed to bring an article to life. Adis Rapid+ now use summary slides as standard with every article, to give a brief overview of key points. The New England Journal of Medicine offers short video summaries of articles they call ‘Quick Takes’. Infographics are increasingly used, as are augmented reality presentations, designed to link text to embedded content via an app. Besides the additional cost and time involved in commissioning digital features, publishers and agencies may need to consider the need for internal approval and peer review, along with issues of copyright and disclosure.

Written by Penny Gray, Freelance Medical Writer

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We are building a library of free webcasts, like this one, for the global MedComms Community and others at http://www.networkpharma.tv and we’d welcome your suggestions for new topics and speakers.

Full details of this MedComms Networking event are at http://medcommsnetworking.com/event80.html

Clare’s presentation (PDF format) is at http://medcommsnetworking.com/presentations/shepherd_021116.pdf

Clare’s Linkedin page is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/clare-shepherd-0049b92a/

More about Adis can be found at http://www.springer.com/adis

Filming and technical direction by Mario Crispino, Freelance Cameraman & Editor

[For the avoidance of doubt: this video is intended to be freely accessible to all. Please feel free to share and use however you like. Cheers Peter Llewellyn, Director NetworkPharma Ltd and Founder of the MedComms Networking Community activity at http://www.medcommsnetworking.com]