Month: September 2017

Ever wanted to know what the temperature in the depths of the ocean is? Why and how has our climate changed through time? What are the thermal boundaries of life? To what extent earthquakes are predictable?

These are some of the intriguing and fundamental questions helping to shape our knowledge and depict the future of our planet. These are the questions that the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) is finding answers for. Recently, the IODP integrated all of its published research into the ScienceOpen network, increasing its availability and accessibility. All published content is Open Access for all ScienceOpen users to enjoy!

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IODP is an international marine research collaboration that explores Earth’s history and dynamics. They use ocean-going research platforms to recover data recorded in seafloor sediments and rocks and to explore sub-seafloor environments. Scientists from 24 countries embark on IODP research expeditions conducted throughout the world’s oceans.

Here are some of the top features of the IODP research program:

Open data for global research

In addition to informing decision makers about some of the most challenging environmental issues our society is facing today, IODP also places special emphasis on keeping the wider public informed about their latest scientific discoveries. All IODP publications are therefore openly accessible for everyone, not just the global scientific community. Samples and data collected during drilling expeditions are available to scientists and teachers in 5 core repositories around the world, while scientific and technical accomplishments are reported in the Open Access publication series Proceedings of the Ocean Drilling Program.

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Ocean research opened up for discovery

Being now indexed on ScienceOpen, the volumes of all proceedings are transformed into part of our interlinked research network. The web of references and citations facilitate the recognition of scientific connections, patterns and lineages that would otherwise remain invisible. What’s more, you can now export all the relevant metadata into your citation managers with just one click.

Research from the IODP is centred around 4 main topics.

1.Climate & ocean change

Samples from the core of the ocean floor give insight into what the climate was like in deep time. The ocean floor is therefore especially invaluable for the study of Earth’s climate history. Some selected research articles in this field include:

• Changes in the Indian summer monsoon at orbital to suborbital timescales.
• The evolution of the equatorial climate system throughout the Cenozoic period.
• The linkages between global climate change, modification of surface process dynamics, and subsequent tectonic responses in St. Elias orogen of Alaska, the highest coastal mountain range on Earth.

2. Biosphere frontiers

Studying the process of serpentinisation (chemical modification of basaltic lavas through interaction with seawater) yields insights on the origins as well as thermal limits of life on Earth, and the boundaries of life in the most extreme circumstances: at the bottom of the deep oceanic biosphere.

Diving into this line of ocean research, we can learn more about whether and how life thrives in lower-energy environments like off the Shimokita Peninsula, Japan, at a water depth of 1180 meters, or inside a rocky crust under the colder North Pond, along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

3. Earth system connections

Investigations on the formation of volcanic rift margins and oceanic plateaus can teach us about the often explosive dynamics of Earth’s outer crust, and the evolution of Earth’s surface. Expeditions shed light on:

• The evolution and dynamics of the Antarctic cryosphere.
• The overall tectonic and magmatic history of the Izu-Bonin-Mariana (IBM) arc in the western Pacific
• The effects of tectonic activity on evolution of the Gibraltar Gateway and margin sedimentation and its influence on global circulation and climate.

4. Earth in motion

Recognising the causes and modelling circumstances of earthquakes and landslides is critical in assessing potential future hazards, and in saving human lives in risk-prone areas. Research here aims to identify subduction zones and the geological properties of the surrounding sediments, and how these influence the occurrence of earthquakes and what we can do to mitigate their effects. The Costa Rica Seismogenesis Project, the Japan Trench Fast Drilling Project or Lesser Antilles Volcanism and Landslides project are among the multidisciplinary mega-endeavours aiming to accomplish this mission and to find clues for the causes of large earthquakes.

Whether you are interested in an expedition, site, region or scientific goal, our numerous semantic search filters and multiple sorting options allow you to drill deep down into the IODP collection and find exactly what you are looking for. Give it a go!

ScienceOpen is pleased to announce a new hosting partnership with UCL Press, the first fully Open Access university press in the UK, based at University College London. With this, ScienceOpen extends its portfolio of dedicated features for publishers to enhance the visibility and context of their content by adding a suite of full-text hosting services.

All 8 scholarly journals published by UCL Press will be hosted on the ScienceOpen discovery platform and integrated into ScienceOpen’s research network. This will provide a dynamic, transparent and interactive Open Access channel that pushes the boundaries of how we create and communicate knowledge.

“ScienceOpen’s new hosting service is the logical extension of our commitment to putting research in context. With our advanced technology we can ensure that UCL Press articles are found by the right researchers and then give those readers the opportunity to interact with the content in a variety of ways. A range of aggregated journal- and article-level metrics then provide enriched usage statistics for the publisher to monitor impact,” said CEO of ScienceOpen, Dr. Stephanie Dawson.

Continue reading “ScienceOpen launches Open Access hosting services with UCL Press”  

Unique

Peer review at ScienceOpen is a little different to what you might be used to.

Does the fact that a paper has been published, and therefore peer reviewed, mean that it is flawless? Does it mean that the conversation around that research should stop? We do not think so. The only reason there would ever be no value in doing post-publication evaluation would be if all published work were completely infallible. Which is clearly not the case. This is, after all, why we continue to do research and build upon the work of those before us!

Therefore, we enable post-publication peer review across 34 million article records, as a form of final-version commenting. It can also be performed on preprints from the arXiv. These are essentially treated as open, pre-review manuscripts. Users can organise these into collections, and manage peer review entirely themselves as a community process.

Managed

We have now added a new feature that enables any of our users to invite another researcher to perform peer review on our platform. This is in the same way that an Editor does for a journal, as part of a fully transparent process – the theme for Peer Review Week this year! The difference to the traditional process of peer review is that this is more democratic as it is open to anyone.

All article pages now have an ‘Invite to Review’ button. Click it, and you have 2 options.

1. Search within the ScienceOpen userbase to see if the person you want to review already has a profile with us.
2. Add an email, or list of emails, of who you want to invite to review, if they don’t already have a ScienceOpen profile.

That’s it. It’s that easy. This combines the editorial management of peer review with open participation. We enable this to make sure that the process is fair, but efficient. This means that anyone within your research community can contribute to the research process, should they wish to.

Continue reading “Managing transparent peer review at ScienceOpen”