September 14th 2011 - Publishing Technology plc (LSE: PTO), the largest provider of software and services to the publishing industry, has been selected to build an academic publishing platform for GSE Research.

 GSE Research’s new online platform for research into governance, sustainability and the environment will be built using Publishing Technology’s innovative semantic web based publishing software, pub2web.

 The new GSE Research platform will be among the first of its kind offering the option of an open peer review model alongside the traditional peer review system. This new publishing model is aimed at speeding up the submission process and encouraging heightened engagement and collaboration amongst users.

 

 GSE Research’s prime objective is to bridge the gap between the scholarly research community, policy-makers and the corporate world by building an inclusive and interactive community that shares its views on papers and research in real time. It will be a completely digital model free of the constraints of the traditional scholarly publishing model, which has generally replicated content from print into online.

 GSE is the brainchild of one of the world’s top sustainability researchers, Professor Walter Leal, and academic publisher John Peters (former CEO, Emerald Group Publishing).

 Authors submitting content to GSE Research will be able to share research both inside and outside of the academic community with speed and efficiency. It will also be possible to discuss papers, opinions and network within the community using the site’s socially collaborative approach. All contributors will have the option to choose between an open access model and a more traditional subscription-based model when it comes to publishing their content.

 Visitors to the site will benefit from the semantic web technology native to the pub2web platform combined with a number of features driven by the newly created taxonomy which factors in all areas of GSE Research’s content. The site will be able to connect discourse from a wide, interdisciplinary academic and public policy landscape and present contextual external content resources alongside GSE content, to improve discoverability and transform the user experience.

 John Peters, Publishing Director at GSE Research Ltd, commented:

“I have worked in academic publishing for more than 25 years and this project has been my dream. It represents a totally new way for academics to collaborate and read other work, in real time, and hopefully with real results. This site will bring together academics from around the world, across environment, sustainability and governance, and allow them to share research and discuss topics with each other with greater ease. It should be an effective model for academics to share their research outside of academia – with business and government. The pub2web platform offers a high degree of interoperability and integration with external resources and systems, which was a key driver for selecting Publishing Technology to help bring our concept to life.”

 Louise Tutton, Chief Operations Officer at Publishing Technology, said:

“As a new scholarly publisher, GSE are in the position of starting their publishing activities from scratch, without the same constraints of the existing publishing model. This has allowed GSE to move away from the traditional content ‘containers’ of journals and books and create an online platform that turns the traditional business model on its head. We have also been working closely with GSE to create a cross-discipline taxonomy within this specialist area. This new taxonomy combined with pub2web’s wider functionality, including text mining capabilities, will help users discover the content they need across GSE’s platform with ease.

“We are excited to be part of this ambitious new publishing venture. We hope more traditional publishers will follow GSE’s lead and take a radical review of how to increase discoverability of their content and best meet the needs of their customers.” she concluded. 

The GSE Research model and approach has already received high praise from some leading names in the academic publishing industry. Professor Baback Yazdani, Dean of Nottingham Business School, commented: "This is an important field, and GSE Research are taking an innovative and welcome approach to scholarly publishing in the digital era," and David Worlock, noted industry commentator, referred to GSE as “a project to watch, but also a trend to be noted”.

 -ENDS-

 

For media enquiries, please contact:

Emily Taylor, Publishing Technology plc

Tel: +44 1865 397873

Email: emily.taylor[at]publishingtechnology[dot]com

 GSE Research (www.gseresearch.com) 

GSE Research Limited is a newly established online scholarly publisher in the globally important areas of Governance, Sustainability and Environment. It publishes a variety of materials including working papers, presentations, student studies, and practitioner-derived research papers, as well as traditional scholarly research papers.

GSE addresses an important need. Every large organization in the world – private and public – is under pressure to ‘do something’ about sustainability and impact on the environment. This pressure comes from governments, consumers and consumer groups, employees and students, and indeed shareholders.

GSE Research aims to collect, organizes disseminate, support and provoke research to change the world for the better by providing a valuable bridge between scholarly research and practice in its target fields through its innovative approach to funding, reviewing, community building and pricing.

 

Publishing Technology plc (www.publishingtechnology.com)

The Publishing Technology group enables publishers to focus on their core competences by providing a single, trusted partner for both technology requirements and business development services. It is one of the largest providers of software and services for the publishing industry, servicing eight out of ten of the world's largest publishers.

Publishing Technology’s products and services include advance, ingentaconnect, VISTA, author2reader, pub2web, ICS and PCG.

The group’s proposition uniquely spans front and back office systems – complemented by a range of business development services – to provide the industry's only end-to-end suite of software specifically designed to support the publishing process. Capabilities cover editorial & production, product information, billing & fulfilment, content conversion & hosting, website development, marketing programs, information commerce, customer relationship management, rights & royalties and business intelligence. All application modules can be configured independently to meet specific publishers' needs and to allow flexible integration with existing systems. Associated sales and marketing services include consultancy and research, sales representation and telemarketing. The company is listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange and has offices in the UK, US, China, Brazil, India and Australia.

 

About Walter Leal

Walter Leal is a Senior Professor at London Metropolitan University (UK), Uppsala University (Sweden) and at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany, where he heads the Research and Transfer Centre 'Applications of Life Sciences'. He is editor of the award-winning book series 'Environmental Education, Communication and Sustainability’ and founding editor of the 'International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education'.

Prof. Leal is one of the top sustainability researchers worldwide. He has written, edited or co-edited over 60 books and has nearly 200 published papers and book chapters to his credit. He is a Review Editor of Working Group II at the IPCC, which assesses the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change, and options for adapting to it.

 

About John Peters

John Peters is Publishing Director of GSE Research Ltd, based in England, providing advisory and information resources in governance, sustainability and environment. He holds visiting posts at the University Campus Suffolk, and the International Business School Kochi (Cochin) Kerala, India.

From 1999 to 2010 John was previously Publishing Director, then CEO of Emerald Group Publishing in the UK and President of Emerald Publishing Inc., based in Massachusetts, USA, leading the company through international expansion, revenue growth and a number of strategic acquisitions. He left Emerald at the end of 2010 to set up GSE Research.

 

Distributed on behalf of Publishing Technology by NeonDrum news distribution service (http://www.neondrum.com)