Bringing 3D visualization into the online research article

Abstract

The ICT revolution of the last decade impacts scientific publishing and changes the format in which articles are delivered and how results of scientific research are communicated. With researchers increasingly generating and referencing 3D data in their articles, the ability to accurately visualize that data in online publications has become extremely important. To address growing demands in online 3D visualization across various scientific domains and journals, Elsevier and Kitware launched a project to develop a 3D visualization infrastructure supporting different data formats, visualization techniques, and interaction styles for online scientific publishing. In this paper, we describe the expandable Hybrid Visualization Platform and five domain-specific 3D visualization viewers and present results of an author feedback survey. The presence of interactive 3D viewers embeddable in online articles is a key example of how the digital article format adds value to scientific communication and how it helps readers to better understand research findings and re-use the associated 3D data.