Interactive Publications (IP)

Project Member(s): George Thoma, Glenn Ford, Dina Demner-Fushman, Sameer Antani, Michael Chung

Interactive PublicationsImportant results of scientific studies in life sciences are traditionally communicated through journal publications. Internet provides a venue for multimedia journal articles, mostly implemented as textual documents containing hyperlinks to video clips, 3D images, etc.

We propose tools for authoring and viewing the next generation of multimedia documents: Interactive Publications (IP). An IP is a self-contained multimedia document, which, in addition to presenting a study and its results, provides access to the underlying data and a possibly to manipulate the data, thus becoming a research tool.

The authoring tool (Forge) and the viewer (Panorama) are being implemented in Java using the Eclipse Rich Client Platform, work with PDF files, and provide an opportunity to view, link, and manipulate data, as well as to customize the tool through a set of graphic controls and transparently to the user. The tool is configured internally through XML files that define the media location and the views to be presented. Panorama currently supports: charts, graphs, and built-in basic statistics as overlays on charts; video with chapters; multi-slice clinical images in the DICOM format; 3D rendering; and an integrated browser.


In collaboration with ProQuest, CEB has released interactive versions of articles in their open access journal – Sustainablity: Science, Practice and Policy (SSPP).  These interactive publications can be viewed via Panorama Lite - our visualization and analysis Web application – using a Web browser.

Using Q-methodology to identify local perspectives on wildfires in two Koyukon Athabascan communities in rural Alaska
Lily Ray, Kawerak, Inc., USA [Original SSPP Article, 2011]

A modest proposal: global rationalization of ecological footprint to eliminate ecological debt
Brian Ohl, Steven Wolf, & William Anderson, Cornell University, USA [Original SSPP Article, 2008]

In addition to Panorama Lite, you can download and install the full version of Panorama at our beta-test website.

The Elsevier Grand Challenge, 2008 - a contest created to improve the way scientific information is communicated and used.

The Interactive Publications Research Group submitted Panorama, our visualization/analysis tool to this contest, and was selected as one of 9

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