Publishing platform redesign – looking back on 2017
A year ago, we began making changes to our publishing platform to meet the needs of our community. Here is what we have done so far.
A responsive platform
As part of the updates, we made the platform fully responsive. This means that researchers can now easily access our content regardless of the type of device they are using.
Over the last few years, technology has continued to develop and we know that researchers need to be able to access research published in our journals via their mobiles and tablets. Our new and improved responsive site will allow researchers to do just that.
Sharon Duan, Associate Product Development Manager, Royal Society of Chemistry
More improvements
As well as making the platform responsive we have also improved the discoverability of our content.
A common theme that came from the user testing we carried out earlier this year was the importance of a fast site, especially when it comes to downloading articles. Therefore, we have significantly reduced unnecessary features on each page, optimised the way we handle images and created a better system architecture. As a result, we have been able to halve the page load time compared to a year ago.
We have also improved accessibility of the platform by helping people with disabilities perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the website.
What do you think?
Our improvements to the publishing platform won’t stop here. We will continue to develop the platform to ensure it meets the needs of the community. If you have any feedback that will help us continue to improve our platform please let us know.