We propose to increase the accessibility and audience of AgBioForum and thereby increase its educational impact. This is particularly important at a time when issues of environmental, economic and sociological impacts of agrobiotechnology and genetically modified foods are heavily debated in various public fora around the word.

The specific objectives of the proposal are:

Provide services and content directed to a broader, non-technical audience to encourage readership

Improve interactivity of the site to encourage engagement and debate and augment the educational experience of the readers.

Procedures

1. Develop full searchability to provide readers with an ability to locate materials that most fits their needs in an intuitive and efficient way, e.g., search by author, issue, topic, and article.
2. Provide discussion forums and topic communities (where members are able to post new message, view topics, and search the database).
3. Provide scheduled chat rooms for members so that members interact with each other in real time by using plain text, video, or audio formats. Members can locate each other in different chat rooms with different topics, connect to multiple rooms using one username, and display multiple rooms while chatting. Members are given the opportunity to incorporate audio and video into their communication.
4. Incorporate continuous surveys to trace members' needs and wants.
5. Offer interactive learning tools (e.g.,online quiz).
6. Provide authors with immediate and real-time feedback from the readers thereby encouraging communication of experts with journal audience. This will be achieved by providing each author in the journal with individualized feedback web pages, which are updated in real time.

It is expected that increased interactivity, tools and services detailed above will augment the readership of AgBioForum and enhance the educational experience and impact of the journal.