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08 May 2012
The Optical Society Launches Innovative Products and Services for Digital Library Users
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Lyndsay Meyer
The Optical Society
+1.202.416.1435
lmeyer@osa.org
The Optical Society Launches Innovative Products and Services for Digital Library Users
Enhanced HTML article interface and broad-based Optics ImageBank allow for greater discoverability, accessibility, and interoperability of content on Optics InfoBase
WASHINGTON, May 8—The Optical Society (OSA) today announced the launch of several enhancements to its digital library, Optics InfoBase. Central to the new services that have launched is the reinvention of its journal article interface. With this new interface, users can more easily access and browse each article’s full-text, article-level metrics, interactive and embedded equations, and more than 200,000 images via the new Optics ImageBank product. Additionally, today’s initial launch allows OSA the opportunity to make functional adjustments to all of these innovative offerings based on user feedback. The goal is to refine each new offering over the next six months.
“Our contemporary article interface and dynamic ImageBank product are key examples of OSA’s continued focus on better meeting the needs of our user community by developing new publishing tools that enhance the discoverability, accessibility and interoperability of our journal content,” said OSA’s Chief Publishing Officer Elizabeth Nolan. “These innovative enhancements exemplify OSA’s commitment to increasing the dissemination of scientific knowledge to the global optics and photonics community in the most effective and interactive ways possible.”
All articles in OSA’s core journals from 2006 to present currently appear in the enhanced HTML article format. Over the next 24 months, OSA will be making all content from 1917 onward available as well. Specific article enhancements include:
- Crisp article-level navigation in easy-to-use tabs
- Information-rich display of content in multiple, interactive XML-based layers
- Access to article figures and related images via OSA’s comprehensive ImageBank (described below)
- Interactive MathML equations (powered by MathJax) that can be copied and pasted into calculation software or other documents
- Individual article-level metrics showing authors and their peers the number of abstract and article downloads over time
- Significantly enhanced display of citing article information
- Dynamic article reference listing with convenient sorts by year, author, and journal
Also launching today is OSA’s innovative Optics ImageBank – a new interactive way to browse and search more than 200,000 images in Optics InfoBase. The Optics ImageBank not only allows images to be downloaded easily from within each article, it also provides users with the capability to search across related images appearing in other OSA journal articles from 2006 to today and enables users to quickly and easily import images and the associated citations into PowerPoint slides for use in the classroom, industry meetings, or other types of knowledge-sharing events.
“By its very nature, optics and photonics lends itself to the incorporation of striking visual images in research being published in OSA’s journals,” Nolan said. “We are pleased to have developed and launched new technology that will allow users of OSA journals to easily discover and access a wide array of images within a particular discipline from 1917 onward.”
“With the latest advancements in publishing technology, OSA is on the forefront of a revolution in the display and use of the traditional journal article,” said Elizabeth Rogan, OSA CEO. “We are well prepared for the changes that are occurring on the publishing front, and we are continually evaluating and investing in our journal products and processes to ensure we are providing the best experience possible for optics and photonics researchers worldwide”
More information about OSA’s new article interface, including a sample article, is available on the Optics InfoBase website.
About OSA
Uniting more than 130,000 professionals from more than 175 countries, the Optical Society (OSA) brings together the global optics and photonics community through programs and initiatives. Since 1916, OSA has worked to advance the common interests of the field providing educational resources to the scientists, engineers and business leaders who work in the field by promoting the science of light and the advanced technologies made possible by optics and photonics. OSA publications, events, technical groups and programs foster optics knowledge and scientific collaboration among all those with an interest in optics and photonics. For more information visit www.osa.org.
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