By Carmel McNamara, IOS Press, Amsterdam, NL

A highlight of 2021 for IOS Press has been the digital transformation of the company’s website. Its launch in August not only enabled the roll out of our new logo and branding, it also meant we had the opportunity to communicate about various aspects of our work. A brand new section – Initiatives – highlights how we support evolving publishing and industry developments. In this post, we take a look at our collaboration and partnerships and get a glimpse of how we devote resources into investigating and developing cutting-edge technologies.

Visiting iospress.com these days is like a breath of fresh air coupled with a bolt of renewed functionality. You are presented with a clean, modern, and inspiring design that invites you to navigate the defined sections. If you hear the phrase “website relaunch,” you might be forgiven for thinking that the new website is really just the old website dressed in brand new clothes. This is most certainly not the case. Yes, it has been brought bang up to date and is something that we can be proud of, though this was not just an on-the-surface makeover. We didn’t just lift the text from the old site and place it into the new one. Every single word that appears on the new site has been considered – we poured over all the content, reworked it, edited it (sometimes multiple times), and then had fun making it look pretty on each webpage in terms of layout. There are certain sections where not too much has changed from what was originally online (e.g., the Products section, which naturally displays the same books and journals as on the old incarnation of the site, just in a much more user-friendly manner), and then there are others that simply didn’t exist before – the prime example being the Initiatives section.

Initiatives that are integral to the delivery of our program

It was a key priority to have a place where we can share deeper insights into the work of IOS Press that perhaps didn’t always get exposure. The Initiatives section is a place where we can now communicate how we support evolving publishing and industry developments. This is probably best explained on the introductory page: “Collaboration and the development of strong partnerships are integral to the delivery of our program and we do this through various initiatives.”

Occasionally in the past, we might have been working on multiple projects that did not really go on to be shared through our networks, or perhaps the project stalled, or we went in a different direction. Still, this is all valuable work and could be useful for our audience to read about, and perhaps learn from. In the spirit of openness and transparency, we can now communicate these valuable experiences in this section of the website, consisting of four main focus areas, along with Labs – out of which, Research & Development (R&D) just so happens to be my favorite, as well as that of a few other colleagues according to our recent poll that was carried out. (OK, so to be honest, I had a tough time deciding and could have picked multiple sub-sections, which is a dilemma that a few other colleagues also faced). If you are curious to choose your favorite, take a look around! Here, we primarily focus on the R&D section.

Supporting research and development

As a technologically forward-looking organization, we support continuous investment in innovation. As a science publishing house operating in an era of digital transformation, it is imperative for us to apply best practices to all aspects of our portfolio. We develop and offer relevant content, workflow tools, and services that nurture collaboration, and we do that by supporting innovation through R&D via our network of researchers at institutions across the globe. Covering numerous fields and subject areas, we have a significant interest in addressing forward-looking topics. Current investigations include transparency and reproducibility, the incorporation of semantic entities for published metadata, and the development and application of proprietary software.

Data research connections

Below is a snapshot of the data-related projects on which we are currently collaborating with researchers:

• Open Science Research: Collaboration with Pascal Hitzler, director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science at Kansas State University, and Krzysztof Janowicz, director of the Center for Spatial Studies at the University of California, seeks to demonstrate that the open sharing of data underlying publications can be done without significant overhead and will provide significant added value.
   
• Metadata Research: Supporting a project with Tobias Kuhn from the Department of Computer Science at VU University Amsterdam, who is also the co-Editor-in-Chief of Data Science, and Cristina Bucur, researcher in semantic web and artificial intelligence at VU University Amsterdam, highlights the need for semantically-enriched articles to make publishing more transparent and machine-interpretable.
   
• Linked Data Research: Working in collaboration with STKO Lab at UC Santa Barbara and the co-reference resolution with DaSe Lab at Wright State University and Kansas State University has resulted in our linked data portal LD Connect and we continue to develop new tools for users to dive in and gain insights from content published in our portfolio by enriching and fostering the interlinking of data. 

Explore more initiatives

Our other initiatives to support the advancement of science, in a sustainable way, include:

• Open Science: At the heart of our goal to provide flexible services to elevate quality, accessibility, and impact of research is open science. Our vision is to contribute in a meaningful and innovative way to a trustworthy scientific ecosystem that furthers our understanding of the world, and to do that we provide flexible services that elevate quality, accessibility, and impact of research. 
   
• Partnerships: The external alliances and networks with which we engage support evolving publishing industry initiatives and are invested in long-term partnerships. Intrinsically linked to our deep commitment to innovation, we work together to implement best practices in emerging technology for applications in scholarly publishing, including open science and FAIR data principles, all partnerships that help drive our innovation roadmap.
   
• Sustainability: We advocate for sustainable practices in the scholarly ecosystem and act as a champion for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We are committed to developing and building on our own sustainable practices to support the SDGs, with targets and actions established through a dedicated working group.
   

We invite all users of the website to hop to this section to see the latest collaborations and ongoing projects. The Initiatives section promises to be one of the most dynamic on our site and it will receive regular updates. The page that is currently available will hopefully expand as projects develop, new ones can be communicated, or endeavors from the archives are recorded online for posterity. If you have any ideas for topics to be covered, please get in touch!