March 25, 2011 – The two premier plant biology journals published by the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) — Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell – have been completely migrated to HighWire Press’s new electronic publishing platform, H2O.
EurekAlert brought this piece of news to our attention in their article, “ASPB journals migrate to new Web platform.” HighWire has rebuilt its platform creating a standards-based hosting solution that is putting ASPB’s journals at the forefront of online publishing.
H2O embeds features and tools that use the social web to develop ideas and interest. Because the technology is standards-based, journal sites are, in HighWire’s words, essentially “future proofed.” Such standards-based content can easily appear on a variety of devices—the iPhone and other smart phones, the iPad, Kindle and other e-readers, and yet-to-be-seen new technologies. HighWire is operated by a nonprofit division of the Stanford University Libraries.
HighWire’s director, John Sack, puts it this way: “The journal is a conversation. This conversation is now taking place thru the Internet, with social networks, blogs, tagging, and taxonomy…The article is not what users want—information is. But information [has been] locked in the ‘article information box.’ H2O lets the information out of the box.”
Melody K. Smith
Many other plant biology Journals are also on Highwire H20 – Journal of Experimental Botany, and Annals of Botany to name a couple of others. I’m surprised at the emphasis in the above blog on ‘future proofing’: most current tools of Highwire such as downloads of powerpoint slides, building virtual issues on topics, commenting and community building are sadly underused by both botanists and publishers.