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Celebrating 35 Years: A Moment for Reflection and Looking to the Future

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25 April 2022 | Carmel McNamara, IOS Press, Amsterdam, NL
To celebrate the 35th anniversary of IOS Press, a special symposium was held on March 31, 2022 that looked at science publishing developments. An additional aspect of this celebratory event is a collection of pre-recorded presentations from editors, friends, and colleagues. Focusing on key aspects of IOS Press' activities – publishing scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journals and books – the contributions feature input about impactful journals, successful editorial practices, and technical advancements, as well as personal perspectives about the future of science publishing. We share highlights in this blog post.

Investing in cutting-edge technologies to support the advancement of science

by Carmel McNamara, IOS Press, Amsterdam, NL

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of IOS Press, a special symposium was held on March 31, 2022 that looked at science publishing developments. An additional aspect of this celebratory event is a collection of pre-recorded presentations from editors, friends, and colleagues. Focusing on key aspects of IOS Press' activities – publishing scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journals and books – the contributions feature input about impactful journals, successful editorial practices, and technical advancements, as well as personal perspectives about the future of science publishing. We share highlights in this blog post.

 

IOS Press was founded in 1987 with a mission to collaborate with the global scientific community by publishing content and offering specialized, flexible services that elevate quality, accessibility, and impact of research. This still holds true today.

As a science publishing house operating in an era of digital transformation, the company has kept abreast of technical developments with continuous support and investment in innovation and initiatives, as outlined during the opening of the anniversary symposium in the introduction by the IOS Press founder and director Einar Fredriksson, PhD: “Over the course of the past 35 years we have certainly witnessed substantial change across all facets of the scholarly publishing landscape – from the transition from a print to a digital environment driven by technological advancements, only some of which were foreseen by visionaries in our field, the accelerating movement towards open access and shared data initiatives, to the mergers and acquisitions that reshaped the global STM publishing industry.”

Photo on the right: Einar Fredriksson, PhD (credit: Philip Jong Loy)

Einar Fredriksson, PhD at the IOS Press 35th anniversary symposium at De Balie in Amsterdam

Symposium

The symposium featured several speakers who shared their personal views on the future of science publishing. Topics covered technology and artificial intelligence (AI), and Editors-in-Chief of some of IOS Press’ most prominent journals spoke about their experiences guiding publications in the fields of cancer research, life sciences, and statistics (see Box 1). 

The Tech Session began with a fascinating demonstration of the IOS Press linked data portal LD Connect, with dynamic visuals covering 35 years of IOS Press’ publications (including the "Country Race" visualization of article output from 1987 to 2020 along along with other highlights of IOS Press data, which you can explore further here). The Tech Session continued with five inspiring presentations on intriguing topics such as the potential collaboration between humans and AI with regard to science publishing, the future of publishing technology, and technical advancements for the industry. A recurring theme in several presentations was “nanopublications” (read about this in our previous Labs blog post). 

The Key Editors Session, presented by Editors-in-Chief of some of IOS Press' most eminent journals, included personal perspectives that provided insights into the origins of these titles, successful editorial practices, and tips for nurturing relationships with journal communities.

IOS Press 35th anniversary symposium at De Balie in Amsterdam

Photo: Symposium at De Balie, Amsterdam; view larger here (credit: Philip Jong Loy)

Box 1: Symposium Presentations 

Presentations during the event at De Balie in central Amsterdam were delivered by (listed in order of appearance at the event):

Tech Session

Key Editors Session

 

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Digital advances impacting future of science publishing

IOS Press devotes resources into investigating and developing cutting-edge technologies to support the advancement of science, in a sustainable way. Prioritizing shared data initiatives is key and the importance of published articles and metadata being interpretable and readable by machines is without doubt. Unsiloing data is a key driver that can enable researchers to easily retrieve, communicate, and share data. The crux of open science is to make scientific research and data accessible to all, with the end result of sharing this knowledge through the publication of open scientific research, campaigning for open access, and generally making it easier to publish and communicate scientific knowledge. The implementation of guiding principles to make data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) relies on public endorsement and cooperation. Advances in these areas were presented during each of the presentations in the tech session at the symposium. 

A series of pre-recorded presentations, also part of the anniversary celebration, covered technical topics as well. The power of digital technology to advance scientific discoveries is covered in the recording by Sudeshna Das, PhD (Harvard Medical School) in her talk "Alzheimer DataLENS: Omics Analytics Portal for Alzheimer's Disease Research," and a different side of the digital world – where AI-supported tools are not used for the good of science – was highlighted by Bernhard A. Sabel, PhD (Otto-von-Guericke-University of Magdeburg) in his presentation "Fake Publications from Paper Mills: A Global Threat to the Permanent Record."

 

Watch out for posts from a number of contributors to the IOS Press anniversary celebrations appearing on this blog in the future!
 

Celebration 35 Years of IOS Press!

View contributions online

The IOS Press global audience is invited to view all the presentations for this landmark occasion via the event website page. It is intended that additional contributions will also be added throughout this anniversary year, so keep checking back! All video recordings can be viewed via the IOS Press YouTube channel and a photo montage that captures the atmosphere of the symposium can be seen here.

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