Project Prospect scoops award

RSC Project Prospect from the Royal Society of Chemistry has won the 2007 ALPSP/Charlesworth Award for Publishing Innovation.

According to the judges, ‘This project sees the introduction of semantics into chemical science publishing. RSC Project Prospect journals incorporate standard metadata within the full text of their articles and combine this with an elegant and intuitive on screen manifestation of the advantages of including this metadata. As a result, sophisticated and effective searching of the literature is greatly improved and the value gained from reading each article is significantly enhanced. RSC Project Prospect is delightfully simple to use and its benefits to authors and readers are immediately obvious.’ The award recognises a significantly innovative approach to any aspect of scholarly publication. Fifteen applications were received, from which a shortlist of four was selected to give a presentation to the judges. The panel considered the originality and innovative qualities of each, together with their utility and benefit to their community and long term development prospects.

‘RSC Publishing is proud to win the 2007 award, which is great recognition for the work our publishing staff and academic partners have put into the development and evolution of RSC Project Prospect. It demonstrates that the addition and application of standard data and terminology can add real value and increase scientific accessibility within the published literature,’ commented project manager Richard Kidd.