Genre of a scientific article on the Internet: Structural and semiotic transformation

The article discusses changes in scientific communication that are related to its transfer to a digital environment. The authors aim to reveal structural and semiotic transformations that the genre of scientific article undergoes in the context of transition from paper to a digital format. To this end, the characteristics of the genre in its traditional printed format are compared to the characteristics of scientific articles as they are presented in the electronic versions of journals. The results of the analysis demonstrate that these changes affected both genre features per se (e.g. the abstract has acquired a visual form) and the “genre shell”, i.e. an instrumental interface that facilitates the recipient’s interaction with the text. The transformation of the genre characteristics found in a scientific article requires that scholars expand their competencies, both cognitive and technical, since this factor predetermines the effectiveness of scientific communication. As for the recipient, the technological context of a scientific article on the Internet provides readers with additional opportunities for interacting with the text through the common use of affordances. Being “intermediaries” between the properties of the text and the reader’s capabilities, affordances are widely used in the procedures of meaning translation. At the same time, a scientific article becomes a typical Internet object that is subject to all actions taken to any other object in a digital environment. The authors conclude that the next research stage can cover the examination of the reader’s interaction with a scientific article on the Internet, as well as the influence of new genre features and affordances on the recipient’s perception and interpretation of the text.