Amsterdam, 13 November, 2009 – Elsevier, the leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced that the innovative research tool 'Reflect', winner of Elsevier's Grand Challenge 2009, will be piloted on the research articles in the November 12th issue of Cell. The 'Reflect' tool identifies the proteins, genes and small molecules mentioned in the Cell articles, and generates pop-up windows containing relevant contextual information, with additional links, about those entities.
The Cell-Reflect pilot is the next step in Elsevier's ongoing Content Innovation effort with the scientific community to determine how a scientific article is best presented online. This follows Elsevier's recent launch of an initial 'Article of the Future' (www.articleofthefuture.com) prototype with Cell, where the traditional linear journal article is displayed in a much more useful format for life scientists.
IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, Vice President of Content Innovation for Elsevier Science & Technology Journal Publishing, commented, "Whereas the 'Article of the Future' prototype focused on the internal presentation of an article, the Cell-Reflect pilot connects the scientific article to its external scientific context. Tools like these have the potential to revolutionize the use of scientific research."
Inside an article, 'Reflect' tags and colors gene, protein, or small molecule names on any web page, usually within seconds, without affecting the article itself or its web page layout. Clicking on a tagged or colored item opens a popup, showing a concise summary of contextually important features, such as sequence (for proteins) or 2D structure (for small molecules).
Emilie Marcus, Editor in Chief, Cell Press commented, "We are pleased that the readers of Cell Press journals will have the opportunity to evaluate this new semantic enhancement tool and we look forward to hearing whether they find such annotation helpful and informative . The feedback on this pilot experiment will help in developing new functionalities that improve the presentation of scientific articles."'Reflect' was initially developed at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany.
Sean l. O'Donoghue, who is coordinating the 'Reflect' project said, "We wanted to design a system that would enhance the reading of scientific papers on the web. Reflect has already received a lot of positive user-feedback and its user-base is rapidly increasing."
Earlier this year, 'Reflect' won Elsevier's Grand Challenge 2009 (http://www.elseviergrandchallenge.com), a competition to find innovative tools to improve the process of creating, reviewing and editing scientific content; interpreting or connecting the knowledge more effectively, or measuring the impact of these improvements.
The Cell-Reflect pilot can be viewed at at http://beta.cell.com/index.php/2009/11/reflect/ where user feedback will be collected through user interviews and a survey on the Cell web site. The nature of this feedback will ultimately determine whether and when 'Reflect' will be rolled-out across Elsevier's portfolio of life sciences journals on cell.com and ScienceDirect.
Notes to Editors:
The prototype can be viewed at http://beta.cell.com/index.php/2009/11/reflect/where Elsevier and Cell Press are inviting feedback from the scientific community on the concept and implementation. A demonstration of the Cell-Reflect pilot can be viewed at http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stVUxVR0ZIR1xYRVhdXVtfXlRU .
About Reflect
Reflect (http://reflect.ws), a new, free service that can tag scientific terms in any web-page without affecting document layout. Reflect is easy-to-use and fast: a typical full-length article is tagged in less than 1 second. End-users can install Reflect as a plug-in for Firefox or Internet Explorer; publishers and content providers can access Reflect programmatically to create tagged versions of their content. Currently, Reflect tags genes, proteins, small molecules and terms from Wikipedia.
Reflect is developed and maintained at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany and at the NNF Center for Protein Research, Copenhagen, Denmark, by: Sean I. O'Donoghue, Lars J. Jensen, Michael Kuhn, Heiko Horn, Evangelos Pafilis and Reinhard Schneider.
About Cell Press
Cell Press, an imprint of Elsevier, is committed to improving scientific communication through the publication of exciting research and reviews. Each of our titles is viewed as a must-read by the scientific community it serves. Cell Press primary research journals include the flagship journal Cell, as well as Neuron, Immunity, Molecular Cell, Developmental Cell, Cancer Cell, Current Biology, Structure, Chemistry & Biology, Cell Metabolism, Cell Host & Microbe, Cell Stem Cell, and, new to Cell Press, Biophysical Journal, and The American Journal of Human Genetics. Cell Press also publishes the Trends family of reviews journals, including Trends in Cell Biology, Trends in Neurosciences, and Trends in Cognitive Sciences. (www.cell.com)
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including the Lancet (www.thelancet.com) and Cell (www.cell.com), and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect (www.sciencedirect.com), Scopus (www.scopus.com), Reaxys (www.reaxys.com), MD Consult (www.mdconsult.com) and Nursing Consult (www.nursingconsult.com), which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite (www.scival.com) and MEDai's Pinpoint Review (www.medai.com), which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.
A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier (www.elsevier.com) employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC (www.reedelsevier.com), a world-leading publisher and information provider. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).
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