QScience makes it easier to comment and share research
10 March 2013
QScience.com has made it easier than ever to comment on research articles accessed through their online platform. The Doha-based open access publisher has integrated the latest social reading software from ReadSocial, the US-based start-up founded by Travis Alber and Aaron Miller. The QScience and ReadSocial partnership makes it possible for readers of QScience journals to add commentary to any paragraph of any research article on the site, and not just at the end of the piece where the context of a comment is often lost.
This means that when other researchers come to the article they’ll see comments made by others adjacent to the relevant paragraph, and they can respond with a comment, link or image. QScience is the first academic publisher to deploy this technology.
Paul Coyne, Technical Systems Director at QScience, said, “ReadSocial fits perfectly into the QScience vision that research should be open, transparent, shareable and social. We are very excited about this new development and believe that it will demonstrate to our authors our commitment to making their works highly visible, read and cited.”
Travis Alber, co-founder of ReadSocial, said, “QScience.com was among the first publishers to pick up on the value of ReadSocial and we’re excited to be working with them. Authors and readers can now benefit from seeing all the conversations around an article anywhere that article appears. Adding a contextual, social layer will build on the community’s knowledge.”
ReadSocial is a mobile-and-web solution for publishers and developers who want to integrate universal annotations and reading groups with their content. It is also ideal for academic environments where close reading and commenting on text is essential to the user experience.
QScience is at the forefront of implementing new developments in the industry. In addition to utilising ReadSocial for all research articles, article-level metrics are now available and openly accessible to all. QScience.com’s advanced technology makes research findings readily accessible and searchable using multimedia functionalities to support text, data, audio and video formats. It is also the first scholarly research platform to make journal abstracts available in both English and Arabic.
About Qatar Foundation
Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development is a private, non-profit organization that is supporting Qatar on its journey from carbon economy to knowledge economy by unlocking human potential for the benefit of not only Qatar, but the world. www.qf.org.qa
About Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals (BQFJ)
Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals (BQFJ), founded in 2009 as a unique collaboration between Qatar Foundation and Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, focuses on fostering scholarly and research communication. BQFJ publishes a range of peer reviewed, high-quality, open access journals, databases and repositories which adhere to the highest scholarly publishing standards.
www.QScience.com
About Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc is one of the world’s leading independent publishers. BQFJ is its second partnership with Qatar Foundation, the first Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing whose book publishing program was launched in April.