Need a ride? There’s an app for that. Lost a pet? There’s an app for that. Want your business to be eco-friendly? There’s also an app for that! Over the past years, mobile applications have been emerging as pivotal tools for individuals to coordinate their professional as well as personal lives. As we discussed in our previous blog, academic publishing has been following with the latest trends and tools such as social media, online education, and adapting for different platforms. Similarly, we are excited to see an emerging trend of mobile applications being utilized for academic publishing. Initiatives such as HelpMePublish are a step in the right direction!
HelpMePublish – Opening Doors and Creating Opportunities
It is extremely common for young postdoctoral researchers to face immense difficulty in landing their first academic job. Competitions from hundreds of individuals for a single position to the pressure of failure leads many to simply give up on opportunities.The app was developed at the University of Otago and is helping researchers in more than 20 countries to connect with journals which could facilitate their publishing. The app helps researchers search around 5500 journals across thirteen subjects including business, science, and arts. As a result, HelpMePublish becomes a marketplace for researchers and journals by providing information on a single platform which isn’t available elsewhere.
Publish Don’t Perish
Academic Publishing is now an industry worth up to $20 billion per year. Up to one million papers are published on an annual basis. With published papers growing 9% on an annual basis, getting published becomes an arduous and sometimes nearly impossible for young researchers. The app, as a result, becomes an essential tool for such researchers to ‘publish not perish’. In addition, the app is also an opportunity for journals aiming towards becoming established. The app has up to 1250 journal editors contributing information to the app. As a result, it becomes as a networking opportunity for journals to gain prominence and influence. However, it’s also important to note that access to mobile content is often a challenge today to scholarly publishers. From licensing to copyright issues, having mobile access is an arduous task for many academic publishers. As a result, products such as Browzine are created to access journals on mobile or tablets. Keeping these challenges in mind, it’s vital to realize that shifting academic publishing to mobile isn’t an easy transition. However, the creation of various applications and tools are getting us closer to shifting to mobile.