Preamble

Exploration and Practice of Transformation and Development of Sci-Tech Journals in the All-Media Era

Li Yuwei¹, Li Wei²
(1. Machinery Industry Information Institute, Beijing 100037; 2. Liaocheng University, Liaocheng, Shandong 252000)

Abstract: With the continuous deepening of media convergence, traditional journals face unprecedented challenges. This paper, drawing on practical work experience, presents a preliminary exploration of the transformation and development of sci-tech journals in the all-media era. The study analyzes the various challenges brought to sci-tech journals by the rapid development of new-generation information technologies and examines development strategies utilizing multiple new media platforms in the all-media context. The findings indicate that transformation in the all-media environment must prioritize content quality, establish journal branding, and build a comprehensive new media dissemination matrix through diversified communication strategies. The all-media era provides diverse channels and platforms for sci-tech journal dissemination; journals should proactively collaborate with self-media and new media, leverage emerging communication forms such as short videos and live streaming, promote media convergence development, and create entirely new dissemination models for sci-tech journals.

Keywords: All-media; sci-tech journals; media convergence; transformation and development; journal brand

Classification: G202
Document Code: A
Article ID: 1671-0134(2025)02-98-05
DOI: 10.19483/j.cnki.11-4653/n.2025.02.019
Citation Format: Li Yuwei, Li Wei. Exploration and Practice of Transformation and Development of Sci-Tech Journals in the All-Media Era [J]. China Media Technology, 2025, 32(2): 98-102.

The rapid development of new-generation information technologies and the swift rise of new media platforms have fundamentally transformed how people access information and their reading habits. These changes are characterized by diversification, visualization, personalization, and fragmentation, driving continuous innovation in communication methods, product forms, and business models. This trend has profoundly impacted traditional media represented by newspapers, journals, radio, and television, while simultaneously presenting new development opportunities.

1. Challenges Facing Sci-Tech Journals in the All-Media Era

All-media refers to an integrated communication model that emerges under the background of media convergence, covering diverse media carriers and employing efficient dissemination methods. By breaking the closed nature of traditional media in information production, the singularity of communication channels, and limitations in dissemination, all-media has fundamentally transformed the business landscape and development structure of conventional media. As a crucial channel for publishing scientific research achievements and a fundamental carrier for academic exchange and communication, sci-tech journals play a vital role in promoting scientific research development and facilitating academic exchange and technological innovation. However, in the all-media era, various communication media are deeply integrated, and information dissemination has become remarkably diverse, instantaneous, participatory, and interactive, with transmission speed reaching unprecedented levels. The vast amount of diversified content and numerous platforms continuously compete for users' attention, leading more users to proactively select information and content products according to their needs. Consequently, single-topic journal content increasingly struggles to gather audiences with divergent orientations and diverse demands. Simultaneously, users no longer passively receive aggregated information but actively search for needed content, receiving fragmented and divergent information, rendering traditional journals' one-way communication strategies unsuitable for the current communication ecology.

1.1 Impact of New-Generation Information Technologies

The all-media era, characterized by fast, convenient, and efficient transmission technologies, has witnessed the gradual application of big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, blockchain, and other new-generation information technologies across various fields, transforming traditional knowledge production models and information transmission methods. If sci-tech journals rely solely on conventional production and dissemination methods, they will fail to meet the communication demands of scientific research achievements in the all-media era. Therefore, sci-tech journals must adapt to new technology trends and embrace these innovations to accelerate information collection, creation, and dissemination, thereby achieving efficient and effective information transmission. Based on new-generation information technologies, sci-tech journals can reshape their business processes from manuscript solicitation and commissioning to review, editing, and distribution, further improving access and dissemination channels for sci-tech journal information. By establishing digital information service platforms that enable online submission, review, editing, proofreading, and production throughout the entire workflow, journals can achieve comprehensive digitalization and integration, enhancing both production efficiency and quality while boosting their communication power.

1.2 Impact of New Media Platforms

New media platforms refer to internet-based media platforms, including social media, microblogs, WeChat official accounts, video websites, and live streaming platforms. These platforms, characterized by convenience, speed, and strong interactivity, have attracted massive user bases and become important channels for people to obtain information and communicate in the all-media era. Sci-tech journals, which typically focus on specialized content in editing and publishing, often suffer from single communication methods and relatively narrow coverage. Actively leveraging the communication advantages of new media to promote deep integration between sci-tech journals and media has become an inevitable trend for enhancing their communication influence. Currently, many sci-tech journals have launched microblogs and WeChat official accounts to regularly or irregularly push industry information, technology development trends, and electronic versions of papers to expand their audience base, but the results have been less than satisfactory. Fundamentally, this is because sci-tech journals have not transformed their traditional mindsets. The transformation of sci-tech journals in the all-media era is not simply about converting print content into electronic versions for distribution; rather, it requires a conceptual shift toward using Internet thinking to guide publishing work.

1.3 Intensifying Content Homogenization

Media convergence has accelerated information dissemination speed and dramatically increased information volume, inevitably leading to content homogenization. Most sci-tech journal content comprises research achievements, industry hot topics, and technical information. This homogenization causes journals in the same field to easily focus on identical hot topics, organize similar special issues, and set up comparable columns, intensifying content homogenization and resulting in convergent manuscript content with uneven quality. To avoid homogenization, sci-tech journals must have clear content positioning, combine the specific circumstances of their sponsoring organizations, highlight their advantages, and strengthen the construction of characteristic and key columns to achieve differentiated development. When organizing special issues and setting up columns on current hot topics, journals should conduct careful segmentation, select appropriate angles and themes, and must highlight their distinctive features rather than blindly following trends.

1.4 Shortage of All-Media Talent

To enhance influence and competitiveness in the all-media era, sci-tech journals must adapt to the trends of mobile, social, video-based, and interactive internet communication. Using "two micros and one end" (microblog, WeChat, and client APP) as carriers, they should comprehensively employ multimedia forms to produce content that meets users' diverse and personalized needs and supports multi-terminal dissemination. This requires editorial staff to possess not only professional academic backgrounds, rigorous editing attitudes, and solid computer skills but also Internet thinking to create content suitable for platforms such as websites, videos, microblogs, WeChat, APPs, and forums while handling journal publication, promotion, reader services, and content information services. However, all-media operational talent is currently scarce in the sci-tech journal field. When traditional journal editors produce new media content, they often simply copy and paste print content, which fails to meet new media users' reading habits and needs. Conversely, dedicated new media editors, while familiar with platform operations, often lack understanding of sci-tech journal content, focusing excessively on attracting attention at the expense of sci-tech journals' rigor and failing to reflect their distinctive features and content priorities. Some sci-tech journals assign new media editors only to publish content while providing text from journal editors, resulting in a strong sense of disconnection in content published on new media platforms.

2. Development Strategies for Sci-Tech Journals in the All-Media Era

Therefore, sci-tech journals must reconsider their content production and communication methods, actively transform toward all-media operations, establish new digital strategies, and build all-media communication matrices. They should actively collaborate with various new media platforms, provide diversified content including text, images, audio-video, and live streaming, and expand their dissemination channels.

2.1 Internet Thinking

Internet thinking involves approaching problems from an Internet perspective, using the Internet as a tool to reduce costs and improve efficiency, and leveraging Internet information advantages to transform operational processes and models.

2.1.1 User Thinking

Among the nine dimensions of Internet thinking discussed in Internet Thinking: Nine Swords of Dugu, user thinking represents one of the most important approaches. User thinking requires standing from the users' perspective, orienting toward user needs, and helping users solve real-life difficulties and pain points. To establish user thinking, sci-tech journals must shift from "editor sovereignty" to "user is king," empowering and serving users. The audience of sci-tech journals generally comprises scientific researchers and technical workers who use these journals to showcase their research achievements and innovative experiences while learning from others' research outcomes and insights. To run sci-tech journals effectively, we must consider how to better serve this population and enhance user experience.

2.1.2 Cross-Boundary Thinking

Internet development has brought breakthroughs not only in technology but also in business models, social networks, and innovative thinking. Internet cross-boundary thinking refers to integrating knowledge, technology, and resources from different fields to break traditional industry boundaries and merge online and offline environments, thereby creating entirely new models and pathways. Similarly, when conducting all-media operations, sci-tech journals should apply cross-boundary thinking rather than simply copying and pasting print journal content. They must consider new media users' needs, avoid long text blocks, make greater use of audio-video content, achieve three-dimensional presentation through text, images, and sound, leverage video channels to build all-media communication matrices, and activate journals' social attributes to serve as platforms for communication between readers and authors. Taking WeChat official account promotion as an example, sci-tech journal content mostly involves scientific research achievements or technological innovations. When publishing on official accounts, new media editors must summarize content in plain and accessible language, avoiding obscure material to create articles suitable for new media users' fragmented reading habits. New media editors should communicate frequently with journal editors, with the latter marking key content points and the former refining them before editing and formatting according to new media users' reading habits and preferences.

2.2 Building Journal Brand

A brand constitutes an important component of a journal's intangible assets, and brand building forms the foundation for long-term journal development. In the all-media era, as media convergence deepens, sci-tech journals have embarked on digital transformation and upgrading. However, many still lack appropriate brand concepts, maintain vague and wavering self-positioning, and continue using the traditional format of "science policy + technology trends + scientific papers," combining these three article types into one issue with serious content homogenization. This general structure results in vague audience positioning, unclear core appeals, and difficult brand positioning, making journals easily replaceable by other media. For authors, it makes little difference which journal publishes their papers; for readers, content across journals is largely indistinguishable, or they can obtain relevant information directly from other new media platforms or channels. How to develop brand building and enhance brand influence represents an urgent problem that sci-tech journals must address.

2.2.1 Highlighting Distinctive Features

When establishing their brands, sci-tech journals must combine their distinctive features to eliminate homogenization. For sci-tech journals, unique content value holds the most core significance. Therefore, they must select original content that aligns with their positioning and innovate presentation formats during special issue planning to establish distinctiveness and authority, continuously using brand consciousness to create a sense of trust among readers and authors, thereby enhancing core competitiveness. In terms of content construction, journals must strengthen their distinctive features by building key and characteristic columns that allow readers to immediately identify content priorities. Presentation formats can also break away from the conventional "three-axe" approach of "science policy + technology trends + scientific papers." For example, journals can invite experts to discuss industry hot topics in roundtable formats, conduct pro-and-con discussions in dialogue formats, or display technology development through timeline formats, while incorporating innovative design elements in layout.

2.2.2 Creating a "Persona"

In the all-media era, image-based management has become normalized, with successful "persona" cases across various fields. In early 2024, Harbin became a sensation by creating the warm "Brother Harbin" persona, rising to become a "top stream." Successful image management can significantly enhance brand recognition. Sci-tech journals can also actively establish appropriate "personas" to strengthen users' impression of the journal. For instance, journals sponsored by national ministries or government institutions can highlight their official background, focusing content on "authentic, reliable, professional, and authoritative" interpretations to build a "professional" and "authoritative" persona. Popular science journals, aiming to expand influence on new media platforms, should particularly emphasize interaction with users or fans and can appropriately cater to younger generations' preferences by creating currently popular personas such as "knowledgeable," "adorable," "proud," or "cool."

National Geographic magazine's communication strategy on Sina Weibo exemplifies remarkable success, amassing over 13 million followers. Positioned as "a science communication magazine for teenagers covering humanities, biology, nature, and geology," its Weibo content primarily features common plants and animals in daily life, with unique and humorous language styles that make science popularization accessible and interesting. Its Weibo account frequently interacts with fans, making it the first resource users think of when encountering unfamiliar flora and fauna.

2.3 Content Is King

As new media continuously emerge, some attribute the decline of traditional media to technological backwardness and focus development efforts on "technology," championing "product is king" while neglecting content construction. They invest substantial human, material, and financial resources in technological "renovation" and even "relocation," ultimately resulting in serious content convergence across platforms and insufficient supply of truly beneficial, high-quality, and original information for readers. While new technologies have indeed broken traditional media communication patterns, fundamentally transforming media production, presentation, supply, and dissemination, readers' demand for information and ideas will only grow stronger regardless of how communication media or platforms evolve. Although big data and artificial intelligence can make news communication faster, more accurate, and more personalized, they can also lead news dissemination toward entertainment and traffic-oriented approaches. Sci-tech journals, bearing the historical mission of disseminating scientific achievements, popularizing scientific knowledge, and improving public scientific literacy, must leverage their professional advantages to produce substantial, in-depth, and broad content, vigorously promote academic ethics and scientific spirit, and set the record straight. Therefore, sci-tech journals must adhere to "content is king," maintain professionalism, deepen vertical content, enhance topic planning, innovate content presentation, and empower high-quality content production and dissemination using new-generation information technologies and various new media platforms, never putting the cart before the horse.

2.4 Compound Editorial Talent

In the all-media environment, sci-tech journals' content production methods, workflows, and communication patterns have changed, as have audience psychology and behavior. Sci-tech journals should actively explore the construction of "two micros and one end" and cooperate deeply with quality new media platforms. Journal editors must also transform their work patterns to continuously adapt to the needs of sci-tech journal transformation, shifting from text workers to comprehensive business providers, from content processors to service providers, from paper-based workers to information processors, and from traditional practitioners to innovation integrators. They can enhance their compound editorial capabilities through various channels, such as participating in relevant editorial skills training programs, learning from outstanding industry examples, attending lectures, and purchasing learning materials to enrich their knowledge base. Editors should proactively learn work methods and approaches suitable for the all-media context and apply them adaptively to practical work, transforming into compound editors with both professional editing skills and Internet thinking.

3. Transformation Practice of Sci-Tech Journals

3.1 Platform Construction

Building a complete sci-tech journal information management system to achieve full-process digitalization and integration of online submission, review, editing, proofreading, and production represents the inevitable path for sci-tech journal publishing and forms the foundation for digital publishing and media convergence. A comprehensive system includes official journal websites and remote manuscript processing systems. Capable sci-tech journals should establish their own official websites, which can serve as important components of journal brand image, showcasing journal characteristics, editorial policies, and historical evolution. Official websites also provide authors with direct and convenient submission channels, increase journal transparency, and enable readers to access journal information more conveniently, thereby enhancing professionalism and authority. Remote manuscript processing systems can be built based on official websites or established separately. If a journal lacks an official website, it can build an independent remote manuscript processing system or directly use third-party systems. Currently, many mature third-party remote manuscript processing system providers exist, such as CNKI and Qinyun, and sci-tech journals can choose to build their own systems or use third-party solutions based on their specific circumstances.

3.2 WeChat Official Account Operation

WeChat official accounts offer advantages including direct access to target audiences, low cost, and high communication efficiency, making them important channels for promotion, interaction, and mobile reading. Many Chinese sci-tech journals have established official WeChat accounts, but their influence generally remains weak compared with mass media. The most crucial aspects of WeChat official account operation are content and frequency. Both traditional and new media must adhere to "content is king," winning the market with excellent content. Simultaneously, new media must pay attention to update frequency and timeliness, actively capturing hot topics.

Sci-tech journals' official WeChat accounts can enrich content forms and types through multimedia means such as video, audio, and images, improving readability and comprehensibility while increasing reader stickiness and loyalty. For example, journals can use video to introduce research processes and results, audio to explain experts' viewpoints and opinions, and dynamic images to display experimental data and achievements. Furthermore, official accounts must actively organize interactions with fans, such as establishing fan groups, distributing holiday red packets, and organizing welfare activities to shorten the distance with fans.

The content strategy of the sci-tech journal I work for follows the principle of "flexibly using audio and video to showcase new perspectives from industry leaders." The account pushes content every afternoon, primarily including: weekly regular updates on latest research results, exclusive interviews with renowned industry experts, latest technical information, and exhibition and academic activity updates, focusing on exclusive and first-hand information while avoiding republishing press releases from other media, supplemented with audio assistance. In combination with each issue's key topics, the journal presents selected精彩内容in small video or H5 formats monthly. Additionally, the journal launches a quarterly video version of "Expert Talks," inviting well-known industry experts to interpret current hot issues, explain their research findings and ideas, and collects questions from fans in advance for experts to answer during the videos.

3.3 Short Video Business

Short videos generally refer to videos with duration of less than five minutes distributed on internet new media platforms. Creators typically edit raw footage, supplementing it when necessary with exquisite images, background music, subtitles, and 3D animations. With the continuous development of 5G and new-generation video compression technologies, short videos have increasingly participated in and reconstructed people's information exchange and lifestyle, becoming a universal application medium. The China Online Audiovisual Development Research Report (2024) shows that obtaining news information and learning relevant knowledge have become important reasons for users to watch short videos. Currently, short video platforms have become important venues for knowledge dissemination and popular science, with major video platforms launching knowledge sections covering humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and other professional fields.

Integrating with short videos represents not only a requirement posed by changes in readers' reading habits and information acquisition methods but also a necessity for academic communication by sci-tech journals. Short videos serve as an important channel for sci-tech journals to strengthen communication with readers and improve service quality. Content can include introductions to research results published in the journal, the journal's positioning and focus, call for papers activities, key points of technical paper writing, and the journal's expert review requirements—all of which can be presented using summarized text and images as source material. Journals can also produce short videos featuring renowned industry experts interpreting hot issues or introducing cutting-edge research, as well as small science popularization videos in specific fields. Additionally, journals can invite authors of published papers to produce short videos about their writing processes and experiences to share with readers interested in publishing. When producing short videos, journals should avoid excessive entertainment and actively interact with fans after publishing, guiding discussions about viewpoints and theories presented in the videos.

Producing short videos requires extensive use of new media production software. Sci-tech journal editors should promptly learn to use relevant software, understand application techniques of new media technologies in media convergence product production and dissemination, and familiarize themselves with characteristics and patterns of different media communication forms and symbols. Furthermore, editors should pay attention to platform hot traffic, make good use of platform traffic support, and monitor current hot topics in real time. For example, when publishing videos on Bilibili or Weibo, they can select corresponding knowledge sections and choose different "knowledge topic tags." Douyin platform has fixed topics such as "Knowledge Creator" to promote and attract traffic for knowledge videos, and publishers can select corresponding traffic support to achieve precise push and gain more potential audiences, thereby enhancing influence.

3.4 Live Streaming

Live streaming is a form of real-time online interactive content dissemination that uses computers, mobile phones, and other devices to share knowledge or experience through internet platforms. This communication format features strong immediacy and interactivity, allowing audiences to communicate with hosts in real time through bullet comments, comments, or likes. As an emerging internet communication method, live streaming also represents a new content production approach. For sci-tech journals, live streaming provides a platform for real-time direct interaction with readers, compensating for the interactivity deficiency of traditional media.

Sci-tech journals can regularly organize exchange activities through online live streaming, inviting review experts and paper authors to join editors in discussing paper writing essentials and review considerations, while other audiences and readers can participate at any time by expressing viewpoints and comments, engaging in discussions and real-time Q&A. Live sessions with published authors can be recorded and saved to generate QR codes, which can be attached to the ends of corresponding papers in print versions, enabling readers to scan and watch authors' explanations and expert review comments while reading print journals. Sci-tech journals can also live stream academic conferences, major exhibitions, significant events, and exclusive interviews, allowing readers unable to attend to participate and providing them with more opportunities to understand industry technology development trends and academic exchanges, while effectively disseminating latest research results and industry developments to enhance journal influence and coverage.

Before live streaming, journals should promote events through multiple channels including official websites, WeChat official accounts, microblogs, and fan groups to attract more participants. During live streaming, hosts should actively interact with readers and conduct in-depth analysis and discussion of topics. After live streaming,精彩片段can be published on short video platforms to inform more readers about the content and attract their participation.

Conclusion

In the all-media era, with rapid technological development and continuous emergence of new media and platforms, sci-tech journals must remain content-centered, integrate new media communication concepts, build diversified media social platforms, construct all-media communication matrices, continuously deepen media convergence innovation, promote comprehensive transformation, and explore development paths suitable for themselves. Journals must strengthen construction in content, process, dissemination, and interaction, enhance business capabilities, and broaden operational thinking to achieve high-quality development.

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Author Information: Li Yuwei (1982—), female, from Yanggu, Shandong, master's degree, intermediate editor, executive deputy editor-in-chief, research direction: media convergence; Li Wei (1971—), female, from Liaocheng, Shandong, master's degree, associate professor, research direction: library and information management.

(Editor: Li Jing)