From the beginning of February 2007, authors publishing in RSC journals will start to see their science "come alive" thanks to an exciting new project. 

Introducing Project Prospect

The aim of Project Prospect is to make the science within journal articles machine-readable through semantic enrichment - the integration of metadata into text. RSC editors will be annotating compounds, concepts and data within the articles and linking these to additional electronic resources such as biological databases. This will transform the free text within an article to add new ways of identifying, retrieving and presenting the information within RSC publications. 

The Project is an ambitious one, and we will be releasing new features on a regular basis in the coming months. 

Who will benefit? 

The immediate consequences of Project Prospect will be increased visibility of the scientific content of papers published in RSC journals. Semantic markup allows us to expose the chemical structures and references to experimental techniques and biomedical concepts in a paper to search engines and databases. This means it will be easier for readers to find research papers relevant to them and means authors publishing in RSC journals can be assured that their research will reach a wide and appropriate audience. 

When can I see this?

The project will be launched online on the 1st February 2007, and the initial developments are only the start. This project will evolve to match the needs of our authors and readers: we welcome your feedback on this new functionality and will incorporate your ideas to develop the service further. New developments will be reported first here.