Abstract
Interactive Scientific Publishing (ISP) has been developed by the Optical Society of America with support from the National Library of Medicine at NIH. It allows authors to publish papers which are linked to the referenced 2D and 3D original image datasets that can then be viewed and analyzed interactively by the reader. ISP provides the software for authors to organize and publish source data while offering readers the viewing and analysis tools. The ultimate goal of ISP is to improve learning and understanding of the information being presented. The results reported here are intermediate in reaching the ultimate goals.
Goals:
Implement and evaluate online user access to interactive datasets that complement online scientific papers.
Methods:
Software development; website evaluation, including web log data monitoring, online user survey.
Results:
An expert group of respondents found the interactive data component to have positive impacts on understanding and discovery. However a significant minority reported that the software interface, instructions, and/or download presented a barrier to effective use of the interactive data functionality.
Conclusions:
This exploratory study indicates that interactive datasets offer potential benefits as a complement to published papers, but that further software improvements and more in-depth evaluation are needed to best discern future directions.