The magazine 360upf, available in three languages (Catalan, Spanish and English) published bi-annually, is a digital publication that takes the pulse of the UPF activities in an innovative way. With this initiative, the University seeks to play an important role in society and lead the new communication challenges in the field of higher education.

The structure of the information of the magazine is a far cry from traditional web navigation and shuns hierarchically organized content. On the contrary, all of the content is just a click away and it is the reader who discovers the different sections, as if leafing through a paper publication. Several graphically different areas stimulate their reading, with the desire to provide them with their own personality. Thus, the sections can become independent parts and can be custom-distributed and segmented by audiences.

It has been shown that the new dynamics of content consumption leads people, especially younger people, to get their information increasingly from digital media only. Based on this premise, the multimedia format of the magazine enables enriching content with videos, audio files, photo galleries and other interactive elements. Moreover, the commitment to multimedia format helps reduce the ecological footprint of the University associated with production and distribution costs, while contributing to environmental sustainability.

Reports, interviews and in-depth analysis from lecturers’ opinion pieces

In this first issue, which opens with a presentation by the rector, there are five articles, divided into five different sections: “Science with and for society” (“From the campus” section), focusing on the implementation of responsible research and innovation (RRI) at the University; ”Speak to me with your hands and hear me with your eyes” (In depth), on Catalan sign language (LSC) at UPF.

Other articles are “Transforming good ideas into real projects” (On the net), based in the UPF Starting Lab incubator; “Needle Safe: avoiding collateral infections in the detection of prostate cancer” (Innova), and finally, in the “Community” section, “Would you be able to explain your doctoral thesis in 4 minutes to an audience unfamiliar with the subject?”, which concerns the Rin4’ competition.

The magazine rounds off with interviews with Pablo Pareja, vice-rector for student reception, participation and support; Maria Islam Siraj, a second year student on of the bachelor’s degree in Industrial Relations, who for the second year is enjoying a UPF fellowship; and Albert Medran, UPF alumnus of Political and Administration Sciences, currently the digital director of the PSOE.

A section that has a prominent role is “Kaleidoscope”, which includes articles of opinion around a current topic of interest. This first issue hinges around “Big data, challenges and opportunities”, and involves Helena Ramalhinho and Miquel Oliver, Xavier Binefa, Ferran Sanz and Frederic Guerrero-Solé.

Finally comes the “Panorama” section, which takes a look at the essentials, the most important news of the University’s activities, and one section displays the inaugural poster of the 2017-2018 academic year, the work of Jaume Plensa.