Generative AI
Throughout the year, AI (artificial intelligence) has remained a prominent specter across nearly every industry. Discussions ranged from concerns about AI potentially overshadowing humanity to excitement and at the potential of streamlining complex tasks through these intelligent machines.
Looking ahead to 2024, Morressier anticipates an even more significant role for AI in upcoming trends. In our recent Research Integrity survey, we explored the academic community's confidence in the responsible integration of AI solutions into publishing workflows. We also discovered that research misconduct is the biggest issue facing scholarly publishing, according to over two thirds of participants.
Despite diverse opinions within our community, Morressier envisions a future where AI enhances peer review. We also foresee AI playing a role in fraud detection by identifying AI-generated text and images. Generative AI has the potential to support equity for researchers writing papers in languages other than English (like the emerging tool Curie for academic editing) and predicting emerging trends through data analysis to stay ahead of industry curves.
Blockchain
In the scholarly community, workflows, processes, standards and policies are all decentralized. But is that poised to change?
Dr. Joris van Rossum says that, “Scientific information lends itself well to blockchain technology." Blockchain could be the solution for a more cohesive scholarly publishing world, resulting in better quality, integration, and efficiency.
In the current system, researchers use disconnected tools in their workflow, from capturing experiment results in spreadsheets and submitting journal articles to publishers. This fragmented process is preventing transparency and reproducibility.
Blockchain offers a solution by enhancing accessibility, speeding up communication, and creating a more efficient scholarly community. Recognizing these benefits, many are beginning to see blockchain as a key theme for the future of scholarly publishing.
Cloud computing
Cloud computing enables seamless collaboration among researchers, authors, editors, and stakeholders. Shared cloud-based platforms facilitate real-time collaboration on documents.
Cloud platforms also provide scalable storage solutions, allowing publishers to efficiently manage large volumes of data, including research datasets, articles, and multimedia content. Cloud-based publishing systems ensure universal accessibility to scholarly content, which helps both researchers and readers globally.
The flexibility of cloud services to scale computing resources based on demand is a particular benefit for publishers that face changing workloads, especially during peak submission periods.
Given the ease, flexibility, and equitable access these services offer, it's reasonable to anticipate their significant role in the coming year, aligning with the increasing focus on social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Multi-format and multimedia
In the current landscape, is traditional journal publishing sufficient?
Time and time again, journals, societies, and publications are incorporating multimedia elements and interactive data visualizations into articles. This trend will certainly progress in 2024, offering more dynamic scholarly content that goes beyond articles, enriching the research lifecycle and providing opportunities for interaction and learning.
We’re also interested to see how the use of video as a conveyer of research will expand in the next year. Good science communication through video improves research comprehension and sharing of ideas that lead to new insights, while adding a personal touch to scientific ideas. Moving forward, how can AI supercharge the power of video through providing script copy and streamlining the process in other ways?
Virtual Reality
How can we revolutionize the consumption of research?
Research indicates that videos leave a more lasting impression than reading. What if we took this a step further?
While augmented reality is often associated with gaming, it's making its way into scholarly publishing in both expected and unexpected ways. In 2019, Springer Nature experimented with this, showcasing the results at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Markus Kaindhl from Springer Nature envisions a future where reading a paper involves additional information displayed through mixed reality experiences. We agree! Like Kaindhl, we anticipate that in a few years, this will become increasingly common due to more accessible and user-friendly technology.
As we await the future, we wonder how virtual reality could impact research content discovery. Can you imagine browsing or exploring scientific content as an avatar in VR, or scientific experiments conducted in virtual reality? Let’s see what’s in store!
Conclusion
At Morressier, we are always eager to explore upcoming market trends and are excited to be a part of the evolution and advancement of technology. Keep an eye on our product workflow updates as we continue to release changes to enhance and streamline the research lifecycle.
