At WiLS, we want to bring valuable information to our library partners, including information about the missions and big ideas of the vendors they may already do business with. Each month, WiLS interviews a vendor partner in order to bridge the gap and open the door to valuable collaborations. This month, we are delighted to share insights from Anton Borissov, Midwest Account Manager for ACS Publications.
Tell us about your company’s background.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) began publishing chemical research with the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 1879. Today, ACS Publications, a division of the American Chemical Society, publishes over 50 peer-reviewed scholarly journals and a range of eBooks at the interface of chemistry and allied sciences, including physics and biology. Over 100,000 authors and their research teams worldwide submit their work to us for consideration every year, as our journals are among the most-cited, most-trusted, and most-read within the scientific literature.
With nearly 157,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals, and scientific conferences.
ACS has always been on the forefront of peer-reviewed research. We were one of the first publishers to post online editions of journal content, starting with The Journal of Physical Chemistry in 1996. We posted the first ASAP articles in 1998, and we accepted online the first manuscript submissions in 1999.
ACS Publications also publishes Chemical & Engineering News — our newsmagazine covering science and technology, business and industry, government and policy, education and employment aspects of the chemistry field.
Why do you, personally, choose to work with libraries?
Libraries are an integral part of the scientific and academic landscape, as they do much more than just fulfill the demand for information requested from their key constituents. All librarians that I have worked with over the course of my career have been vital partners to us as publishers, helping us set the course for developments in the industry that benefit the academic world. The most important reason I choose to work with libraries is that we share and serve the same mission–to enable and empower scholarly research for the benefit of humankind.
What do you like to know about the libraries you work with? What helps you better understand their needs?
As an essential department in an academic institution, libraries have to do their best to support their school’s overall mission, while at the same time, fulfilling their own strategic initiatives. As a publisher, it is crucial that we understand your priorities and vision for the future of your library so that we can align our solutions with your goals. In that same vein, it is important that we understand the challenges you face so that we can better serve your needs and potentially help you solve problems that you are facing.
An understanding of this interface between the institution-wide pressures and department expectations a librarian faces is critical for me, as my primary goal is to help my librarian colleagues better serve their students and faculty, while concurrently advancing their own objectives and development.
What big ideas are being worked on at your company? What problems are being solved?
ACS Publications is always working on new ideas to benefit the scientific community, while also making sure to improve our existing offerings, processes, and resources. In an effort to improve librarians’ and information specialists’ web experience, we recently redesigned our InfoCentral website; InfoCentral provides the latest information for prospective and current subscribers to ACS Publications. The redesign makes it easier for you to find the latest information on our offerings and new products, while also providing an easy solution to download data on institutional usage.
We have also refined our mobile platform, ACS2Go, which offers readers enhanced features and an improved reading experience optimized for tablets and smartphones. ACS2Go can be easily paired with an organization’s network to access full-text articles both on and off campus.
We are of course committed to continuously improving the scholarly publishing experience for our authors. At the end of 2016, we partnered with ORCID, the not-for-profit organization that provides unique identifiers for researchers and scholars, to collect ORCID iDs for all submitting authors to our suite of journals. We hope that this partnership with ORCID will resolve name ambiguity in researcher identification caused by name changes, cultural differences in name presentation, and the inconsistent use of name abbreviations.
And of course, we value the work done by our impressive family of reviewers. We are currently refining ACS Reviewer Lab, an online course created to educate researchers on the principles of quality peer-review. The course features interactive modules covering the basics of peer review and ethics, as well as real-life guidance on how to write a first-rate review. Keep your eyes peeled for the official release of this interactive course later this year.
Finally, the Society is currently advancing the concept for ChemRxivTM, a chemistry preprint server for the global chemistry community. This collaborative undertaking will ultimately help facilitate the discoverability of scientific research. We are in the midst of inviting interested stakeholders to participate in shaping this service ahead of its anticipated launch.
How can librarians become partners in product or training development?
We encourage all librarians to reach out to ACS Publications to get involved. We would love to know what kind of products or training developments you are interested in and how we can help you achieve your professional goals. We often work with librarians to collect feedback on new products, future trends, and more. We encourage you to provide us with feedback either through your sales representative or through our Library Relations group. In addition, the ACS Division of Chemical Information is a great technical division to join as a librarian member of the Society. I encourage you to contact libraryrelations@acs.org with any questions you may have about our relationship and opportunities to work collaboratively.
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This interview is part of a series of interviews with both WiLS library and vendor partners. Your feedback is appreciated. If you have any to offer on this article, or suggestions for upcoming interviews, contact Andrea Coffin at acoffin@wils.org.