Author: RIO Editorial Office

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RIO supports Publons in finding this year’s Sentinels of Science

Peer Review Week is coming and this year’s topic “Recognition for Review” is rather close to our hearts!

Developing the concept of RIO, among our central goals was to create a workflow that allows scientists – authors, reviewers and editors alike – to get the maximum credit for their work.

peer review week 2016 close

RIO implements one of the most transparent peer review processes, allowing authors to choose from several peer-review options.

The journal offers the unique opportunity for pre-submission peer review, where authors can invite mentors, colleagues and fellow scientists to review the manuscript and contribute, still during the authoring process.

Additionally, we power post-publication peer review, where all registered users have the option to publicly review journal articles.

RIO, alongside all other Pensoft journals, is also proud to highlight its partnership with Publons and showcase our commitment to honouring the efforts of our expert peer reviewers.

As part of Peer Review Week 2016, we support Publons in their excellent Sentinels of Science Awards initiative, which will put the spotlight on the most prolific heroes of peer review over the past year.

Just like us, Publons recognize that bad science slows down the rate of discovery. Expert peer reviewers protect us from bad science. These efforts on the front line help us in finding cures, develop innovative technologies and realise human potential.

To get recognized for your contributions to speeding up science this Peer Review Week Sign up to Publons now and effortlessly track, verify and showcase every review you do for RIO, all other Pensoft titles, and across the rest of the world’s journals.

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For more information visit: https://blog.publons.com/unveiling-the-sentinels-of-science-for-prw16/

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Scattered marine cave biodiversity data to find home in new database WoRCS, Project Report

Considered “biodiversity reservoirs,” underwater caves are yet to be explored with only a few thoroughly researched areas in the world. Furthermore, species diversity and distributional data is currently scattered enough to seriously hinder conservation status assessments, which is of urgent need due to planned and uncontrolled coastal urbanization.

Thereby, a large international team of scientists, led by Dr Vasilis Gerovasileiou, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Greece, have undertaken the World Register of marine Cave Species (WoRCS) initiative meant to aggregate ecological and geographical data to eventually provide information vital for evidence-based conservation. Their Project Report is published in the open access journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO).

With more than 20,000 existing records of underwater cave-dwelling species spread across several platforms, the authors have identified the need for a new database, where a standard glossary based on existing terminology binds together all available ecological data, such as type of environment, salinity regimes, and cave zone, as well as geographical information on the distribution of species in these habitats.

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In their project, which has already produced a dynamic webpage, the scientists work within the context of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) to add the already available records published in peer-reviewed outlets to reliable and case-by-case verified unpublished data, available from offline databases, museum collections and field notes, as well as the findings of the WoRCS thematic editors themselves.

Eventually, these presence records could be georeferenced for submission to the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) and constitute an important dataset for biogeographical and climate change studies on marine caves and anchialine systems.

To invite both the marine biology scientific communities and citizen scientists, WoRCS is meant to adopt a number of strategies.

Short and mid-term plans to engage the scientific community include development of common projects on poorly known marine and anchialine caves; projects that use WoRCS data; initiation of a fellowship programme to engage young researchers; and work with societies.

In the meantime, WoRCS is also intended to develop educational, citizen science and conservation activities, by creating products (e.g., maps, guides, courses) for the public, engage volunteers to encode data, and develop tools for MPA managers and the conservationist community.

“In particular, each time that a project about caves is funded, a work package or module or deliverable about WoRCS should be included to employ students and young researchers for data encoding, or to facilitate new types of data, or new links to other e-infrastructures and data tools,” suggest the WoRCS thematic editors.

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Original source:

Gerovasileiou V, Martínez A, Álvarez F, Boxshall G, Humphreys W, Jaume D, Becking L, Muricy G, van Hengstum P, Dekeyzer S, Decock W, Vanhoorne B, Vandepitte L, Bailly N, Iliffe T (2016) World Register of marine Cave Species (WoRCS): a new Thematic Species Database for marine and anchialine cave biodiversity. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e10451. doi:10.3897/rio.2.e10451

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Robot to find and connect medical scientists working on the same research via Open Data

Sharing research data or Open Science, aims to accelerate scientific discovery, which is of particular importance in the case of new medicines and treatments. A grant proposal by an international research team, led by Dr Chase C. Smith, MCPHS University, and submitted to the Open Science Prize, suggests development of what the authors call The SCience INtroDuction Robot, (SCINDR). The project’s proposal is available in the open access journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO).

Building on an open source electronic lab notebook (ELN) developed by the same team, the robot would discover and alert scientists from around the world who are working on similar molecules in real time. Finding each other and engaging in open and collaborative research could accelerate and enhance medical discoveries.

Already running and being constantly updated, the electronic lab notebook serves to store researchers’ open data in a machine-readable and openly accessible format. The next step before the scientists is to adapt the open source notebook to run SCINDR, as exemplified in their prototype.

“The above mentioned ELN is the perfect platform for the addition of SCINDR since it is already acting as a repository of open drug discovery information that can be mined by the robot,” explain the authors.

Once a researcher has their data stored on the ELN, or on any similar open database, for that matter, SCINDR would be able to detect if similar molecules, chemical reactions, biological assays or other features of importance in health research have been entered by someone else. If the robot identifies another scientist looking into similar features, it will suggest introducing the two to each other, so that they could start working together and combine their efforts and knowledge for the good of both science and the public.

Because of its ability to parse information and interests from around the globe, the authors liken SCINDR to online advertisements and music streaming services, which have long targeted certain content, based on a person’s writing, reading, listening habits or other search history.

“The potential for automatically connecting relevant people and/or matching people with commercial content currently dominates much of software development, yet the analogous idea of automatically connecting people who are working on similar science in real time does not exist,” stress the authors.

“This extraordinary fact arises in part because so few people work openly, meaning almost all the research taking place in laboratories around the world remains behind closed doors until publication (or in a minority of cases deposition to a preprint server), by which time the project may have ended and researchers have moved on or shelved a project.”

“As open science gathers pace, and as thousands of researchers start to use open records of their research, we will need a way to discover the most relevant collaborators, and encourage them to connect. SCINDR will solve this problem,” they conclude.

The system is intended to be tested initially by a community of researchers known as Open Source Malaria (OSM), a consortium funded to carry out drug discovery and development for new medicines for the treatment of malaria.

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Original source:

Smith C, Todd M, Patiny L, Swain C, Southan C, Williamson A, Clark A (2016) SCINDR – The SCience INtroDuction Robot that will Connect Open Scientists. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e9995. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e9995

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Guiding EU researchers along the ‘last mile’ to Open Digital Science

Striving to address societal challenges in sectors including Health, Energy and the Environment, the European Union is developing the European Open Science Cloud, a complete socio-technical environment, including robust e-infrastructures capable of providing data and computational solutions where publicly funded research data are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable (FAIR).

Since 2007 The European Commission (EC) has invested more than €740 million in e-infrastructures through Horizon 2020 (the European Union Research and Innovation programme 2014-2020) and FP7 (the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development). They want to see this exploited in full.

Many research communities are, however, struggling to benefit from this investment. The authors call for greater emphasis on Virtual Research Environments (VREs) as the only way for researchers to capitalise on EC advances in networking and high performance computing. The authors characterise this as a “last mile” problem, a term borrowed from telecommunications networks and once coined to emphasise the importance (and difficulty) of connecting the broader network to each customer’s home or office. Without the last mile of connectivity, a network won’t generate a cent of value.

Some concerns around the transition to Open Digital Science refer to attribution and quality assurance, as well as limited awareness of open science and its implications to research. However, most difficulties relate to many e-infrastructure services being too technical for most users, not providing easy-to-use interfaces and not easily integrated into the majority of day-to-day research practices.

Trustworthy and interoperable Virtual Research Environments (VREs) are layers of software that hide technical details and facilitate communication between scientists and computer infrastructures. They serve as friendly environments for the scientists to work with complicated computer infrastructures, while being able to use their own set of concepts, ways of doing things and working protocols.

Helping them to solve the difficulties noted above, VREs could guide the skeptical research communities along the ‘last mile’ towards Open Digital Science, according to an international team of scientists who have published their Policy Brief in the open access journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO).

The authors state “These domain-specific solutions can support communities in gradually bridging technical and socio-cultural gaps between traditional and open digital science practice, better diffusing the benefits of European e-infrastructures”. They also recognise that “different e-infrastructure audiences require different approaches.”

“Intuitive user interface experience, seamless data ingestion, and collaboration capabilities are among the features that could empower users to better engage with provided services,” stress the authors.

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Original source:

Koureas D, Arvanitidis C, Belbin L, Berendsohn W, Damgaard C, Groom Q, Güntsch A, Hagedorn G, Hardisty A, Hobern D, Marcer A, Mietchen D, Morse D, Obst M, Penev L, Pettersson L, Sierra S, Smith V, Vos R (2016) Community engagement: The ‘last mile’ challenge for European research e-infrastructures. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e9933. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e9933>

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Biodiversity data import from historical literature assessed in an EMODnet Workshop Report

While biodiversity loss is an undisputable issue concerning everyone on a global scale, data about species distribution and numbers through the centuries is crucial for adopting adequate and timely measures.

However, as abundant as this information currently is, large parts of the actual data are locked-up as scanned documents, or not digitized at all. Far from the machine-readable knowledge, this information is left effectively inaccessible. In particular, this is the case for data from marine systems.

This is how data managers who implement data archaeology and rescue activities, as well as external experts in data mobilization and data publication, were all brought together in Crete for the European Marine Observation and Data network (EMODnet) Workshop, which is now reported in the open access journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO).

“In a time of global change and biodiversity loss, information on species occurrences over time is crucial for the calculation of ecological models and future predictions”, explain the authors. “But while data coverage is sufficient for many terrestrial areas and areas with high scientific activity, large gaps exist for other regions, especially concerning the marine systems.”

Aiming to fill both spatial and temporal gaps in European marine species occurrence data availability by implementing data archaeology and rescue activities, the workshop took place on 8th and 9th June in 2015 at the Hellenic Center for Marine Research Crete (HCMR), Heraklion Crete, Greece. There, the participants joined forces to assess possible mechanisms and guidelines to mobilize legacy biodiversity data.

Together, the attendees reviewed the current issues associated with manual extraction of occurrence data. They also used the occasion to test tools and mechanisms that could potentially support a semi-automated process of data extraction. Long-disputed in the scholarly communities matters surrounding data re-publication, such as openly accessible data and author attribution were also discussed. As a result, at the end of the event, a list of recommendations and conclusions was compiled, also openly available in the Workshop Report publication.

Ahead of the workshop, curators extracted legacy data to compile a list of old faunistic reports, based on certain criteria. While performing the task, they noted the time and the problems they encountered along the way. Thus, they set the starting point for the workshop, where participants would get the chance to practice data extraction themselves at the organised hands-on sessions.

“Legacy biodiversity literature contains a tremendous amount of data that are of high value for many contemporary research directions. This has been recognized by projects and institutions such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), which have initiated mass digitization of century-old books, journals and other publications and are making them available in a digital format over the internet,” note the authors.

“However, the information remains locked up even in these scanned files, as they are available only as free text, not in a structured, machine-readable format”.

In conclusion, the participants at the European Marine Observation and Data network Workshop listed practical tips regarding in-house document scanning; suggested a reward scheme for data curators, pointing out that credit needs to be given to the people “who made these valuable data accessible again”; encouraged Data papers publication, for aligning with the “emerging success of open data”; and proposed the establishment of a data encoding schema. They also highlighted the need for academic institutions to increase their number of professional data manager permanent positions, while also providing quality training to long-term data experts.

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Original source:

Faulwetter S, Pafilis E, Fanini L, Bailly N, Agosti D, Arvanitidis C, Boicenco L, Capatano T, Claus S, Dekeyzer S, Georgiev T, Legaki A, Mavraki D, Oulas A, Papastefanou G, Penev L, Sautter G, Schigel D, Senderov V, Teaca A, Tsompanou M (2016) EMODnet Workshop on mechanisms and guidelines to mobilise historical data into biogeographic databases. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e9774. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e9774

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How RIO Collections help showcase research project outputs

This text was originally featured on the OpenAIRE Blog. We thank OpenAIRE for allowing us to republish, the original post can be found here.

A recent SPARC Innovator award winner, Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) was built around the principles of open research in scholarly communications. Traditionally, a research project ends up with just a few articles published in scholarly journals after many years of work. But why communicate just research articles at the end of a cycle?

Research articles are just a small component of the research cycle. What about all the other project outputs – research ideas, grant proposals, methodologies, data, software, policy briefs and others? At RIO we want to publish the full research cycle, all in one place, with ‘Collections’, to encourage re-usability and effective open knowledge transfer.

Collections for Project Coordinators

RIO offers a wide range of publication types to cover the needs of each research project. Flexible article templates are tailored to provide an easy fit for project outcomes, including H2020, FP7, NSF, NIH, DFG, FWF and other Grant Proposals, Case Studies, Project Reports, Data Management Plans, Data Papers, Software Descriptions, Workshop Reports, Policy Briefs, Conference Presentations and Posters, and many more.

Collections can be opened for each project, where project results, including interim ones, are officially published in both human- (HTML, PDF) and machine-readable (JATS XML) formats, assigned a DOI, collected, archived, made discoverable, easily citable and openly available to everyone. To ensure longevity and compatibility with Horizon 2020 recommendations for open access, all RIO publications are also automatically archived in ZENODO (in both PDF and XML) on the very same day.

RIO is also integrated with OpenAIRE and the CrossRef’s Open Funders Registry meaning that authors can choose to tag both funders and projects in their articles. The workflow is highly-beneficial – automatically linking funders to publications via API, whilst at the same time directly adding RIO articles to project and funder output lists, browsable on OpenAIRE.

This comes packed with additional innovation, thanks to the ARPHA Journal Publishing Platform.

ARPHA (Authoring, Reviewing, Publishing, Hosting and Archiving), is the first ever online collaborative journal publishing platform that supports the full life cycle of a manuscript, from authoring through submission, peer review, publication, dissemination and updates, within a single online collaborative environment.

ARPHA includes a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) authoring tool. It allows authors to work collaboratively on a manuscript with their co-authors, and one can also invite external contributors, such as mentors, pre-submission reviewers, linguistic and copy editors.

The authoring tool is fully integrated in the publishing workflow so there is no need for a ‘typesetting’ stage or ‘page proofs’ – we have eliminated this inefficiency. What the authors see, is what the reviewers and editors see, and is what will be published. At other publishers, errors and delays are often introduced by the need for a typesetting process – we therefore offer a more efficient and timely system.

The platform lays the infrastructure for RIO’s transparent three-stage peer review: (1) author-organized,pre-submission, during the manuscript authoring process in ARPHA (2) community-sourced, post-publication, and (3) journal-organised, post-publication (optional), to ensure quality-controlled, efficient publication and dissemination.

Emphasis is put on the societal relevance of research by mapping research outputs to the United Nations’Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for each published output.

All this comes with an affordable pricing model, which offers tailored packages for projects and individual researcher needs. For individual publications an à la carte pricing model gives authors the opportunity to select only the publishing services they need, thus providing flexibility in the final price they pay.

An example Collection at RIO: the FP7-funded EU BON project

The large-scale FP7-funded EU BON project: Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network is one of the first to try out our Collections feature. The EU BON Collection at RIO is a great way for the project to showcase and link-up all the important published outputs in the same place, openly available in a variety of formats, at the click of a button.

EU BON collection

Be our next open research pilot!

If you are feeling inspired and see the potential of publishing more of your project results, RIO invites you to enquire about publishing a pilot Collection with us. We welcome suggestions from all fields of research, not just the sciences.

The journal will support a limited number of FREE project output Collections. Apply now to be one of the first fully open access research cycles!

Interested project co-ordinators can contact us at rio@riojournal.com outlining initial output proposals or a Collection of project outcomes they would like to publish in RIO.

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Big news for RIO: we join the club of SPARC Innovators

The latest SPARC Innovator Award was announced yesterday and (we must admit it’s hard to hide the joy) – it’s RIO!

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) is a global coalition committed to making Open the default for research and education. Their bi-annual Innovator Award goes to individuals and initiatives who dare to challenge the status quo in scholarly communication.


As SPARC Innovators, we join a prestigious club of awardees including the OA Button, the authors of the Panton Principles and the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) as well as PLOS ONE, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Health Research Alliance and the World Bank, to name just a few.

But what is more substantial for us is this recognition from a community-focused organisation that aligns with our principles of openness and transparency in scholarly communication. From the very start, we believed in the potential of RIO. Now, we have official recognition that our project has the spark of innovation to challenge the status quo and to introduce a new dimension of openness into scholarly communication.

Why RIO?

SPARC has clear criteria for selecting its Innovators that in summary include noteworthy contributions to openness, technological advancements and challenging the status quo in scholarly communications. Here is how we believe RIO met these points:

From the very start RIO was set to innovate traditional science publishing practices by opening up for publications from across the research cycle. Our list of publication types includes Ideas, Grant Proposals, methods, Data, PhD Project Plans, Project Reports and Communication Briefs.

By publishing results from every step of the research life-span, we hoped not only to provide authors an opportunity to get credit for their efforts, but also to introduce a publishing environment that ensures maximum transparency and encourages exchange of ideas and expertise. Special functionality allows linking each published output to UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to map its social relevance and promote interdisciplinary research.

To add to this mix, we also installed a transparent multi-option peer-review process, including options for author-supplier pre-submission and public post-publication peer-reviews.

All these options are available in a unique online XML-based collaborative writing, reviewing, editing and publishing environment powered by our ARPHA Publishing Platform.

What’s in for the future?

When we first announced RIO in September 2015, we promised the community a one-of-a-kind innovative journal. Since then, we’ve had many people believe in us and show us their support by joining our Advisory and Editorial Boards and, of course, by publishing with us too.

We want to express our thanks for all of the support and trust our editors, authors, reviewers, readers, and others offered us from the very beginning.
We will not ‘rest on our laurels’: this is still just the beginning for the journal. We hope to grow engagement, partnerships, content, impact, quality, readership, awareness and transparency. The most exciting Research Ideas and Outcomes are still to come…

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PostDoc Project Plan invites collaborators to study how plant lice cope with variability

While Climate change steadily takes its toll, promising to raise temperatures around the world by at least 1.5 °C within the next 100 years, organisms have already started defending their species’ existence in their own ways. Possibly, such is the case of plant lice, which evoked the curiosity of PhD student Jens Joschinski with their reproductive strategy, which shifts from sexual to asexual as the days grow shorter in the autumn.aphids

Entomologist Jens Joschinski, currently studying at the University of Würzburg, Germany, is interested in finding out to what extent this advanced reproductive strategy is affected by variable and unpredictable conditions. Do plant lice spread their risks to reduce their losses (like investors that buy hedge funds), or do they put all their eggs in one basket? If plant lice manage their risks, does this adaptation compromise fitness?

By formally publishing his research idea as a PostDoc Project Plant in the open access journal Research Ideas and Outcomes, he hopes to find fellow scientists to collaborate with, as well as a host institutions.

Plant lice reproduce asexually during summer, which means that the mother give live birth to offspring by cloning herself. Then, as the days become shorter, indicating the approaching winter, the plant lice begin to produce eggs, since only they tolerate low temperature and can overwinter. However, there is a transitional period when a fraction of the same species still produce asexual offspring, which is what made Jens Joschinski wonder if this is an intended evolutionary response to climate change.

In order to assess the link between variable climates and the transition to sexual offspring, the PhD student plans to study at least 12 plant lice clones from different environments across Europe, and induce reproductive switches under controlled laboratory conditions. Afterwards, he is to assess the fitness and the ‘cost’ of this microevolution phenomenon.

The PostDoc Project Plan is to build on Jens Joschinski’s research done as part of his doctoral thesis, which is to be submitted for publication later this year. Then, while also being trained in evolutionary biology, he concluded that the plant lice are active during the day, which explains why they suffer fitness constraints related to the shorter days.

“The intended methods leave room for collaborative side-projects beyond the study question (e.g. molecular control of photoperiodism, or sharing aphid lines from throughout Europe), so this article might be of interest to anyone working with aphids”, he points to his fellow entomologists. “In addition, I would be happy to receive feedback from experts in bet-hedging theory, phenotypic plasticity and photoperiodism.”

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Original source:

Joschinski J (2016) Benefits and costs of aphid phenological bet-hedging strategies. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e9580. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e9580

Additional information:

Funding was provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG), collaborative research center SFB 1047 “Insect timing“.

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Sharing biodiversity data: Best tools and practices via the EU-funded project EU BON

Due to the exponential growth of biodiversity information in recent years, the questions of how to mobilize such vast amounts of data has become more tangible than ever. Best practices for data sharing, data publishing, and involvement of scientific and citizen communities in data generation are the main topic of a recent report by the EU FP7 project Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON), published in the innovative Research Ideas & Outcomes (RIO) journal.

The report “Data sharing tools for Biodiversity Observation Networks” provides conceptual and practical advice for implementation of the available data sharing and data publishing tools. A detailed description of tools, their pros and cons, is followed by recommendations on their deployment and enhancement to guide biodiversity data managers in their choices.

“We believe publishing this report in RIO makes a lot of sense given the journal’s innovative concept of publishing unconventional research outcomes such as project reports. This feature provides projects like EU BON with the chance to showcase their results effectively and timely. The report provides a useful practical guide for biodiversity data managers and RIO gives the project an opportunity to share findings with anyone who will make use of such information”, explains Prof. Lyubomir Penev, Managing Director of Pensoft and partner in EU BON.

The new report is the second EU BON contribution featured in a dedicated project outcomes collection in RIO. Together with the data policy recommendations it provides a comprehensive set of resources for the use of biodiversity data managers and users.

“We did our biodiversity data sharing tools comparison from the perspective of the needs of the biodiversity observation community with an eye on the development of a unified user interface to this data – the European Biodiversity Portal (EBP)”, add the authors.

The scientists have identified two main challenges standing in front of the biodiversity data community. On the one hand, there is a variety of tools but none can as stand alone, satisfy all the requirements of the wide variety of data providers. On the other hand, gaps in data coverage and quality demand more effort in data mobilization.

Envisaged information flows between EU BON and LTER Europe, showing the complexity of sharing biodiversity data (from the 3rd EU BON Stakeholder Roundtable, Granada on 9-11 December 2015).
Envisaged information flows between EU BON and LTER Europe, showing the complexity of sharing biodiversity data (from the 3rd EU BON Stakeholder Roundtable, Granada on 9-11 December 2015).

“For the time being a combination of tools combined in a new work-flow, makes the most sense for EU BON to mobilize biodiversity data,” comment the report authors on their findings. “There is more research to be done and tools to be developed, but for the future there is one firm conclusion and it is that the choice of tools should be defined by the needs of those observing biodiversity – the end user community in the broadest sense – from volunteer scientists to decision makers.”

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Original Source:

Smirnova L, Mergen P, Groom Q, De Wever A, Penev L, Stoev P, Pe’er I, Runnel V, Camacho A, Vincent T, Agosti D, Arvanitidis C, Bonet F, Saarenmaa H (2016) Data sharing tools adopted by the European Biodiversity Observation Network Project. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e9390. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e9390

 

About EU BON:

EU BON stands for “Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network” and is a European research project, financed by the 7th EU framework programme for research and development (FP7). EU BON seeks ways to better integrate biodiversity information and implement into policy and decision-making of biodiversity monitoring and management in the EU.

 

 

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50th publication in RIO Journal: Report of the first FORCE11 Scholarly Commons workshop

What if scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and funders could restart scholarly communication all over? This was the slogan of the first FORCE11 Scholarly Commons Working Group (SCWG) workshop, which took place in February. Advocating for an open, sustainable, fair and creditable future that is technology- and business-enabled, not -led, FORCE11’s SCWG committee published a Workshop Report in the open access journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), becoming the anniversary 50th publication in the innovative research publishing platform.

The community of FORCE11, comprising scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and research funders from around the globe, was born at the FORC Workshop held in Dagstuhl, Germany in August 2011. Ever since, the community have been working and striving together towards a change in modern scholarly communication through the effective use of information technology. Their aim has always been to facilitate the change to improved knowledge creation and sharing.

In 2016, the Scholarly Commons Working group within FORCE11 conducts two workshops in order to find the answers to the question how scholarly communication would have looked now, had it not been for the 350 years of traditional practices. They also focus on the implications of modern technology and modes of communications that could help bring the right change about.

“Too often, scholars are unaware of the origins of current practices and accept the status quo because ‘that’s how it’s done’,” the authors point out. “But what if we could start over? What if we had computers, Internet, search engines and social media, but no legacy of journals, articles, books, review systems etc.?”

The first workshop, held between 25th and 27th February in Madrid, Spain, was titled “What if we could start over?”. The second one is planned for later this year under the slogan “Putting the pieces together.”

During the three-day workshop, the fifty participants, representing experts, early career researchers and new voices from across disciplines and countries, engaged in various activities. In order to”diverge and then converge”, the participants were encouraged through a number of enjoyable tasks to freely think outside the box, assuming that the current system of scholarly communication, based on a paper-based reward system, never existed.116566

“Given today’s technology and the amount of money currently in the system, how would you design a system of scholarly communications (“The Scholarly Commons”), the goal of which is to maximize the accessibility and impact of scholarly works,” they were asked. “By putting us in an alternate reality with a clear charge, we sidestepped issues that often engulf such discussions: why do we publish and who do we publish for.”

At the end of the workshop, the group’s principles were ordered under five subheadings, namely:

  • Open and sustainable
  • Fair
  • Credit for all endeavors
  • Technology- and business-enabled, not -led
  • Governance and funding

The attendees’ ideas, visions and suggested principles were also captured in a live and interactive visualization, consisting of the participants’ virtual post-it notes, also available through Trello.

In the spirit of the workshop itself, the report is now formally published in the form of a new scholarly communication artifact. Workshop Report is only one of the various innovative research publication types, provided by the open access journal Research Ideas and Outcomes(RIO), whose aim is to acknowledge and disseminate all quality and valuable research outputs from across all stages of the research cycle.

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Original source:

Kramer B, Bosman J, Ignac M, Kral C, Kalleinen T, Koskinen P, Bruno I, Buckland A, Callaghan S, Champieux R, Chapman C, Hagstrom S, Martone M, Murphy F, O’Donnell D (2016) Defining the Scholarly Commons – Reimagining Research Communication. Report of Force11 SCWG Workshop, Madrid, Spain, February 25-27, 2016. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e9340. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e9340