Publishing Technology and TBI collaborate on semantic web project

Publishing Technology has become the development partner for a pilot project being coordinated by TBI Communications into the use of the semantic web. Breathing Space is said to be the first semantic web collaboration between scholarly societies and aims to explore the value to researchers of compiling and mining a critical mass of data within a discipline. The project collates content from the European Respiratory Society and American Thoracic Society, which together account for 30 per cent of respiratory medicine citations.

‘This project is helping us to explore our members’ expectations and information habits, as the role of society publishers in disseminating research evolves,’ explained Elin Reeves, assistant publications manager for the European Respiratory Society.

Breathing Space is scheduled for launch by the end of 2009 using Publishing Technology’s pub2web platform. TBI Communications first proposed a pilot project to help society publishers test the application of semantic technologies in 2008, and has since coordinated the selection of participating societies and technology providers, and provided web design, strategic consultancy and promotional support. ‘We’re excited about how the Breathing Space pilot will be received by the respiratory medicine community, and appreciative of Publishing Technology’s support in bringing the project to life,’ commented Charlie Rapple, head of marketing development at TBI.