'Genuinely disruptive'

The last 30 or so years in scholarly communications have been marked by a steady trend towards digital content creation and delivery; particularly for journals, the industry has now moved from print to online. However, online delivery may mask underlying print-based attitudes, as is evidenced from the continuing preference academics have for reading PDF rather than any other format. In this regard, the advent of machine learning, because it involves a semantic engagement with the content, may in the end be more far-reaching, in fact genuinely disruptive, as it looks to challenge existing business processes. Here, for the first time, is a tool that can identify the meaning contained within articles. Machine learning will have an impact throughout the publishing lifecycle, from discovery (the most obvious quick win) to authoring, classification and presentation.