ScienceOpen Launches

BERLIN, Germany and BOSTON, May 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

ScienceOpen, the research + publishing network, published their first Open Access articles in April and is officially launching today to coincide with the SSP 36th Annual Meeting (#SSPBOSTON).

     (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140528/689706 )

This next generation Open Access (OA) platform builds on the premise that scholarly publishing is not an end in itself, but the beginning of a dialogue to move research forward. It combines over 1 million articles from all areas of modern science, the humanities and social sciences with collaborative pre-publication workspaces, immediate publication and post-publication peer-review.

ScienceOpen provides a holistic authoring environment to facilitate the entire research communication process, putting valuable resources at the fingertips of researchers and liberating more time for experimentation:

"We don't want to be just another new Open Access journal, but to develop our platform into a service-provider for scientists and become a forum for all available Open Access research articles. We will rapidly develop our infrastructure to facilitate this" says Tibor Tscheke (@tigracc), Co-Founder, leader of the technical team and who is attending the SSP meeting.

The site is committed to Open Science and offers features that are prerequisites and some that raise the bar for other publishers. Articles are published under a common and flexible OA license (CC-BY) and are fully compliant with funder mandates. Preview articles that have passed an internal 5 point editorial check receive a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) from CrossRef so the work can immediately accrue citations. Open peer review takes place after publication and article level metrics are provided in collaboration with Altmetric. Proofs are automatically provided and versioning is included.

The platform also provides free collaborative workspaces where researchers can develop their manuscripts in a private team without the need for email or any obligation to publish with ScienceOpen. Informal scientific communication takes place in public groups or through social networking tools. Participation in reviewing and commenting, on both ScienceOpen articles and all the Open Access content available on the site, requires free membership. Members are allocated different privileges and roles depending on the previous publication history that appears on their unique ORCID research identity, to maintain the level of scientific discourse.

In the interest of simplicity, ScienceOpen accepts all article types and charges a flat $800 fee, ensuring it delivers excellent value to research funders and the scientific community.

Finally, ScienceOpen is delighted to welcome Liz Allen (formerly PLOS and Nature, @LizAllenSO) as Vice President of Marketing. She said "my start-up experience and OA credentials make me a good fit for this position and the European team. I look forward to helping ScienceOpen reach its full potential". Dr Alexander Grossmann, President of ScienceOpen (@SciPubLab), added "we are delighted that Liz has joined our team at this important time. Her deep expertise and professional connections will be crucial to our future success". 

About ScienceOpen: Founded in 2013 in Berlin and Boston by Dr. Alexander Grossmann and Tibor Tscheke. See site for further information or email Liz to arrange an interview.

Contact information: Liz Allen, @LizAllenSO, E: [email protected], T: (001)-415-342-8009

SOURCE ScienceOpen GmbH