One of the biggest challenges for researchers is time. So when you find an abstract of interest and have just a moment to actually read, you need the full text right now. With our newest release, the ScienceOpen discovery environment incorporates open access data from Impactstory to provide researchers with more ways to read the paper.
Institutional repositories, open access aggregators, self-archiving, preprint servers – the last years have seen a proliferation of access options. The new ScienceOpen article page, therefore, aims for transparency and choice on nearly 40 million article records.
ScienceOpen is excited to work with the Unpaywall data from Impactstory to provide more information about open access licenses and access options for our users. This powerful dataset is being used by several discovery engines to enrich the search experience. Jason Priem of Impactstory says, “we’re thrilled to welcome ScienceOpen as our latest partner to integrate Unpaywall data, and excited about how this new integration furthers our goal to make Open Access content truly ubiquitous for researchers and readers.”
Potsdamer Platz Berlin, Andreas Levers, Traffic Light, Flickr, CC BY-NC
A green light for reading
The publisher’s version of record is a reader’s most reliable source. With our latest release we highlight this version on the article page with a green “Publisher” button for better orientation. Editors and publishers work hard to make the most accurate version of research results available to the community and changes to the version of record are often tracked on the publisher website via Crossref’s Crossmark service. With so little time in the day, reading the original is your best bet.
However, if further freely-accessible versions are available according to data from Unpaywall, these links are also provided and clearly labelled. Repository versions can be helpful outside of academic settings. And sometimes we have not identified an Open Access license, but Unpaywall has – so we, of course, want to give the reader this information as well!
If ScienceOpen indexing is based on the full text XML available on our platform (Open Access Hosting customers or PubMed Central Open Access articles), then the ScienceOpen access button is highlighted green. The same is true if we are getting our indexing information from SciELO. Our goal is always to help users find the best version for their needs.
“By offering more access choices, ScienceOpen has become so much more useful for researchers,” said Nina Tscheke, who has been involved in research community outreach over the past year. “This is an important step towards meeting researchers needs.”
ScienceOpen continues to develop tools and features for researchers and publishers to provide a superior discovery environment for scholarly research. If you are a publisher, editor, society or institute, talk to us today about our platform technology. Contact Stephanie Dawson for more information.
In the current scholarly ecosystem, communicating your research results doesn’t stop at the point of publication. Increasing the accessibility of your research and engaging audiences beyond your own institution and peer groups became inevitable steps in reaching out from the massively increasing global research output to create real impact.
At ScienceOpen, we are seeking the best ways of serving open communities by amalgamating their needs and turning them into new research management and discovery features. Our post-publication services are designed to offer all scientists transparent and effective ways to communicate their knowledge and enhance the visibility and discoverability of their publications. Recently, we announced new features enabling authors to add non-specialist summaries to their articles indexed on ScienceOpen.
Storify your research and open it up for the public
Although we see many great non-specialist summaries added so far to articles on ScienceOpen (you can see nice examples here, here or here), we are also aware of the fact that it’s not always easy to write an effective, non-specialist summary of specialized work. In many cases researchers simply don’t have the time or the expertise to make their science accessible to the broader public.
To help our researcher community in opening up their research and reaching and engaging a wider stakeholder audience, ScienceOpen has teamed up with ScienceImpact, an award-winning team of leading science communication staff with decades of combined experience publishing academic books, papers, and broad science publications. This partnership gives our users direct access to ScienceImpact’s non-specialist summary services and provides them with the means to have complex scientific concepts translated into accessible language for a broader audience. Their editorial and design staff works closely with all featured researchers to craft summaries that disseminate the aims, objectives, and impact of your research.
If you have already begun to think about how you can communicate your research to wider audiences but don’t feel confident about it, you are in the right place! You can thrust this into the hands of professional science communicators and get your non-specialist summary in 3 easy steps:
Go to your profile page
Click on the Impact banner
Fill in the form on ScienceImpact’s website.
Here you can find out more about how this process works or discuss the production of a lay summary for your research paper.
Expand your audience and amplify your message
Adding non-specialist summaries to your articles enables the communication of your research and its impact in a format and language that all stakeholders will understand.
For funders
Being able to clearly articulate the economic, scientific, and societal impact of your project is crucial from the very first steps of your research lifecycle. When it comes to funding decisions, reviewers of your grant application, who are rarely representing your specific field, need to understand clearly how your research can make the world a better place.
For researchers from other areas
Communicating your research and making it connectible for audiences beyond your own institution, peer group, and field of research carries the potential of opening it up for interdisciplinary cooperation. In fact, using simple everyday language might be refreshing even for your own research community as well. Do them a favor and make your papers look nice, concise, and easy to see through.
For the public
We are in the midst of a global information and knowledge crisis. Access to scientific research has never been more important to provide the basis for debates on critical issues such as climate change, global health, and renewable energies.
By translating your research results into benefits for society, you can play your part in making science more understandable to everyone without restriction. Just because a research paper is freely available, that does not mean that it’s also accessible and everyone will be able to read it and understand the content. What we all need is to make sure that the maximum number of people possible can enjoy and re-use what we have discovered without having to work their way through dense technical language. Don’t alienate your work from taxpayers who fund it.
Maintaining fair and inclusive scientific communication attitudes and investing in the proper explanation of your findings is like gathering a good research karma: it works for you, works for science, and works for the society at large. We give you tools and access to outputs—but it’s you who can make them truly accessible.
We are pleased to welcome Stuart Cooper to the ScienceOpen team as Global Business Development Manager. Stuart brings a wealth of sales experience in the publishing industry. We are, therefore, excited to work with him to expand ScienceOpen’s offerings and client base.
Open for Business, Mark Morgan, Flickr, CC BY
Open for Business
We are often asked about the business model behind ScienceOpen, so here is a short outline for clarification. ScienceOpen offers a whole range of search and discovery tools to researchers for free – from dynamic author profiles based on ORCID to post-publication peer review and “Collection” curation tools. At the same time, we offer paid services to publishers, societies, institutes and other content producers, who can take advantage of the technological infrastructure of the ScienceOpen discovery environment to unlock the context around their articles and journals and showcase their authors’ work. ScienceOpen can provide Open Access hosting, advanced metadata analysis, flexible topical collections, journal brand promotion and even full publishing solutions. We work with publishers large and small to find customized solutions for their content presentation and promotion needs.
We offer
Context environment of 39 million records driving search and discovery
Link back to publisher webpage via read button
Dynamic search and filtering of all content at journal, publisher, author and collection level
Article and journal level usage statistics
Author profiles and self-promotion tools for users to add lay summaries and track usage
Journal branding or flexible publisher-branded topical collections promoted with a banner on all relevant content in the 39 million article records
Community-run, researcher-led topical collections further promote usage
Commenting and recommendation functionalities
Post-publication peer review tools to engage community
With ScienceOpen, publishers can gain insight into how their content fits into the bigger research picture and how they can support their authors for maximum visibility and increased impact.
If you are a publisher or editor and would like to learn more about the ScienceOpen platform infrastructure, you can fill out this webform or contact Stuart Cooper at Stuart.Cooper@ScienceOpen.com. Join us today!
