Mindscape Commons, the world's first and largest source of Virtual Reality (VR) and interactive video content for teaching and learning mental health, was named as winner of this year's ALPSP Award for Innovation in Publishing. David Sommer, Chair of the judging panel, revealed the winners at the close of the ALPSP Annual Conference and Awards which took place virtually today. PLOS Community Action Publishing was also named winner among a distinguished list of finalists.
David Sommer, Chair of the judging panel, and cofounder at Kudos, commented, "The quality of all entries this year was outstanding, and the judging panel certainly had their work cut out in assessing each of those shortlisted. I'd like to congratulate both Mindscape Commons and PLOS Community Action Publishing for being chosen as this year's well-deserved winners."
The award is given to any new product, development, service, or project that is both innovative and of significant value to scholarly communication. Applicants are asked to demonstrate excellence in originality, innovation, value to the community, utility, and long-term viability.
"We are deeply honored to be chosen as a winner and to be in the company of such outstanding finalists. With this award, the ALPSP judging panel also recognizes the importance of mental health education," said Elizabeth Robey of Coherent Digital, the publisher of Mindscape Commons.
With its unique Virtual Reality (VR) content, Mindscape Commons allows future counselors, social workers, and psychologists to explore a variety of mental health experiences and to help students build empathy and develop critical clinical skills in a safe and repeatable setting. It offers hundreds of immersive and interactive, short-form, 360° and 2D videos. In service to the community, Mindscape Commons also aggregates and preserves open-source, research, and commercial VR content for free.
"The product was developed in close partnership with the academic community, from faculty to graduate students to VR lab directors, and that is its strength," said Peter Ciuffetti, Chief Technology Officer, Coherent Digital. "We're grateful to ALPSP for helping us raise awareness and grow our community even further."
About Coherent Digital
Coherent Digital was founded in 2019 by industry veterans Stephen Rhind-Tutt, Toby Green, Eileen Lawrence, Pete Ciuffetti, Elizabeth Robey and others. We find wild content and make it useful—so researchers can do their work, educators can teach, scholars can publish, and organizations can disseminate their knowledge to a global audience. Through Coherent, information is saved, uniquely tagged, stabilized, and made discoverable.
About ALPSP
ALPSP is the international trade association which supports and represents not-for-profit organizations that publish scholarly and professional content, and those that work with them. Membership of ALPSP is for the whole organization so all employees can take advantage of the benefits on offer. ALPSP is proud to have nearly 300 member organizations across 30 countries.