HTML5 – bridging the mobile platform gap: mobile technologies in scholarly communication

The explosion in smart mobile devices is increasing demand for mobileenabled content and services. The growth in this market has provided opportunities for scholarly publishers to deliver targeted and relevant mobile content and information to their customers. Most innovative publishers have started to experiment with mobile strategies, and have developed applications for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. However, since these devices are based on different technology platforms, development for multiple devices inevitably means significant duplicated effort as application code cannot be shared between them. HTML5 provides publishers with a new set of powerful technologies to mitigate this problem. By using HTML5 and web services, publishers can cut out wasted effort and build cross-platform apps which work on all current mobile devices.This paper explores the options in more detail, and shows how publishers can reduce development costs, improve time to market and deliver more futureproof mobile applications.