Dr Sila Pla Pueyo, Teaching Fellow in Petroleum Geosciences for the Institute of Petroleum Engineering, was voted by the Elsevier Earth and Planetary Innovation Challenge (EPIC) Judging Committee as the Third Place winner.
The challenge, which invited the Earth and Planetary Science communities to come up with original ideas for innovative web-based tools to enrich the online article, has proved very popular and we were delighted to receive an impressive 146 entries in all from across the globe! ... Congratulations to Edzer, Colton and Sila on their impressive achievements.
EPIC is a competition inviting the Earth and Planetary Science communities to come up with original ideas for innovative web-based tools to enrich the online article.
The aim of this new innovation challenge is to generate ideas that will support and enrich the Earth and Planetary Science communities by:
- helping authors to present their work in exciting ways retaining rich data and presentation formats;
- allowing readers to get more from articles through creating tools to facilitate understanding and providing additional context critical for thorough understanding.
The winning idea
When reading a scientific article, it is common to have questions about it that you would like to ask the authors and that may affect your further research. However, unless you know the author personally, it becomes quite a complicated task to communicate with them in an easy way to discuss about the article.
On the other hand, as an author, there is usually a limited space to write down and develop your ideas in a scientific article, and sometimes you would love to add some extra details or explanations.
The idea presented by Dr Pla Pueyo is an open forum aiming to make articles accessible to a broader range of scientists and even perhaps interested lay readers.
For a two-month period after the online publication of the article, the readers would be able to ask questions to the corresponding author, discuss and get clarification on points that they do not understand or disagree with, and the author would have the chance to get in touch with the readers and explain further their results and interpretations. The discussion would remain associated with the article for future reference.
The possibility of this innovation being adopted by Science Direct is currently under consideration.
About Elsevier
Elsevier is the leading provider of science and health information. Heriot-Watt University uses Elsevier's SciVal Pure online product to facilitate the research gateway. Research information is aggregated from numerous internal and external sources, and data is trusted, comprehensive and accessible in real time.