Scholarcy is a UK based technology company applying machine learning to extract structured data and knowledge summaries from scholarly content.

Researchers use Scholarcy to identify and verify the key findings and sources from research papers. Publishers and aggregators use the Scholarcy API to create rich XML metadata from documents in any format, and to support the publishing process - from manuscript submission and appraisal - to review, publication, and promotion. University communications teams use Scholarcy to generate lay summaries from complex articles to promote their research output.

Scholarcy.com

Open Access (OA) output is growing year-on-year and there is widespread belief that research will function better if results are made openly available to the community. For a breakthrough in the transformation of the market such that OA is supported as the predominant model of publication, a joint challenge has to be addressed: the complexity around the implementation of multi-lateral OA publication-level arrangements. The OA Switchboard contributes to the solution as a neutral, independent intermediary providing shared infrastructure, standards and back office services for funders, institutions and publishers. Following a 2020 project overseen by OASPA, as of 2021 it will be run from the newly founded Stichting OA Switchboard.

This presentation tells the story of the OA Switchboard initiative so far and shows how stakeholders are applying this simple solution to tackle multiple use cases as we move into 2021. It also presents how the OA Switchboard contributes to building trust by addressing challenging topics in the global transition to OA.

From Complexity to Transparency: How the OA Switchboard is building a cost-effective collaborative Infrastructure Solution for an OA-driven scholarly Communications Landscape

As Open Access to scholarly information has become a dominant force in scholarly publishing, in recent years there has also been a diversification in the underlying business models to support OA publishing of research. Inspired by initiatives such as SCOAP3, a particular stream of models have focused on collective or collaborative approaches, with libraries working with publishers to underwrite the production of research literature to be published OA. This presentation provides insight into one of the models that has gained recent attention, "Subscribe to Open," which is a pragmatic approach that publishers can adopt to convert journals from paywalled access to open. Providing an overview of the model and its underlying logic, this presentation outlines how the S2O model has been built on the basis of collective action theory to motivate participation, as opposed to models which rely on altruism or pro-group behavior. By explaining the fundamental tenets of the model, the presentation seeks to demonstrate how S2O can support publishers, particularly society publishers, including those with little or no tolerance for financial risk, to transition their journals sustainably to OA.

Subscribe to Open' as an alternative path to OA Transition

The Luxembourg Centre for Digital History (C²DH, University of Luxembourg) together with De Gruyter Publishing Group have recently launched the Journal of Digital History (JDH).

The JDH aims at becoming the central hub of critical debate and discussion in the field of digital history by offering an innovative publication platform, promoting a new form of data-driven scholarship and of transmedia storytelling in the historical sciences. International, academic, peer-reviewed and open access, the JDH will be setting new standards in history publishing based on the principle of multi-layered articles:

    - the first layer will enable to produce transmedia narratives (narration layer);
     - the second layer will explore the authors’ reflection on the methodological implications of using digital tools / data (hermeneutic layer);
    - the third layer will give access to data and code through a professional infrastructure (data layer).

The presentation will focus on the technical development, narrative principles and epistemological challenges of developing a platform for data-driven scholarship in the field of history.

Data-driven Publishing and scalable Reading: co-designing the 'Journal of Digital History'

The COVID 19 pandemic has demonstrated that trust in science is an important societal resource. The way politicians and the public dealt with scientific research was an important factor in determining how different countries coped with the disease and its social and economic repercussions. To improve the resilience of societies, it is important to understand what is the basis for trust in science. An open and transparent system of scholarly communication that safeguards its autonomy will be a crucial element in this.

Open and Autonomous. The Basis for Trust in Science

Labforward assists laboratory teams in their quest for groundbreaking discoveries. With its digital tools for laboratories, it drives productivity and increases efficiency of R&D. Amongst its products are the well-designed electronic lab notebook (ELN) Labfolder, and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) platform Laboperator.
Laboperator enables automation of laboratory workflows in a flexible and cost-efficient way. The unique solution allows scientists to control and monitor laboratory equipment remotely, reducing the time spent with tedious manual work in an often hazardous environment.
Labforward products are used in academic R&D organizations such as the Max-Planck-Society and Charité University Hospital as well as by Pharma and Chemistry Corporates such as Bayer and BASF.

Labforward.io

What our authors have told us – the view from every day researchers exploring how research evaluation isn’t always aligned with their ambition to drive real-world impact and to solve the problems facing our global society.

What does the Research Community need from Stakeholders?

The monograph - so central to AHSS scholarship - has been slow to move into a digital environment, but things are starting to change. Arguably the most exciting opportunity afforded by this shift, though, is the possibility of open access for monographs. This talk explores recent developments in monograph publication, and provides some insights into a recent collaborative venture in support of OA for books - the OAPEN OA Books Toolkit.

The Future of the Monograph: long-form Scholarship in the digital Age

Many differing forms of pre-review publication followed by a range of post-publication peer review approaches, both transparent and closed, have recently been developed. This short presentation will provide a summary of some of these approaches, and highlight key features and advantages of differing approaches, in particular as they relate to trust in science and societal benefit of research.

Panel: Balancing the Need for rapid Sharing with the Need for rigorous Evaluation – the Role of Preprints and Peer Review - Panelist Rebecca Lawrence

Regardless of the field of study, sharing data is one of the most fundamental aspects of Open Science and of maintaining the integrity of research. As publishers are pivotal in encouraging authors to share data, linked to their publications and cited properly, STM dedicated 2020 as the Research Data Year. In this presentation the activities, results and outcomes of this program will be reviewed and evaluated. It will also present the plans going forward, aimed at structurally making the sharing, linking and citing of research data an integral part of scholarly communication.

STM Research Data Year 2020 - A Review

I will discuss how machine learning can help us better assimilate what we read by enhancing publications with personalized microlearning experiences.

MagmaLearning.com

What does the data tell us around the research trends for publications related to SDG 13 Climate Action. Lewis Collins will walk through key data presented in the 2020 Elsevier SDG report.

Climate Action – what the Data tells us

There is no mistaking 2020 for just another year. The extraordinary challenges posed by Covid-19 and ensuing public health and financial crises will cast a long shadow for many years to come. 2020 also acted as watershed moment for scholarly communications, forcing long running debates surrounding equitable access, the rapid dissemination of research, and the politicization of science into the spotlight. Never has scholarly communications been more relevant; never has the work being done to support the global research community more important. The question now becomes, where do we go from here? Do we return to existing structures and norms, or does this become an opportunity for rethinking and reinvention? Kane will explore the resiliency of this community in the face of challenges new and old, and the potential for a more collaborative, interoperable, and inclusive future.

Reinvention or Return to 'normal'? Scholarly Communications at a Crossroads

Trust is earned, not given. The trust that is enjoyed today comes from our previous experience of the source. In recent years scientists have learned that they cannot always trust at face value the veracity of a research claim. Before using that research claim in their own work, a cautious scientist will want to understand the provenance of the claim, the extent to which the description of the work done supports the claim that is made. Where previously this provenance could be inferred from a publication having undergone peer review, we know now that this is no guarantee of veracity. Importantly, this is not a question of falsification, fabrication or plagiarism (which is a different set of problems), but rather that the methods are incompletely reported; or suboptimal designs place the findings at risk of bias; or there is selective reporting of outcomes; or publication bias.

These problems are now widely understood, yet those who seek to deepen our understanding or to develop strategies in mitigation are still, far too often, considered to be “methodological terrorists” or saboteurs, intent on undermining a well oiled and highly efficient machine. Everything from applications for grant funding to simple requests to conduct surveys are unsuccessful because they are not quite good enough, or interesting enough, to make the grade. This resistance to acknowledging the need for honest reflection and improvement may be intended to “protect” trust in science, but in practice has the opposite effect, burning the goodwill and trust which has been generated through the hard work of generations who have gone before.

What is to be done? The burden falls on us all – publishers, funders, institutions, and – most importantly – researchers. In our research outputs we need to describe, and demonstrate, the steps we have taken to maximise the likelihood that our findings are correct. This includes but is not limited to pre-registration, appropriate study designs, open publication, and open availability of research data and materials. Just as important, we need to be able to demonstrate that we are committed to improving our research processes, and that we have systems in place to monitor performance, to reflect on what has gone well or badly, and to adjust our practices in the light of this experience: “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often”

Keynote: Restoring Trust in Published Research

We would like to thank the Program Committee, Chair Persons and Speakers for realizing this program under difficult circumstances.
We would like to thank everyone who has followed this very different APE Conference. We hope that next year, we will be able to not only have yet another excellent program, but also to see each other in real life, in Berlin.

Please note: APE 2022, 10-12 January 2022.

Auf Wiedersehen! Goodbye!

A short presentation of Researcher at the APE 2021 conference, for presentation at the New Dotcoms session.

With over 32,000 peer reviewed journals publishing more than 3m articles every year, it’s harder than ever for researchers to stay on top of new work in their field.

We founded Researcher to take the pain out of staying up to date.

Since launch in mid 2017 over 1.8m scientists and researchers from over 3000 institutions and businesses worldwide have used our free apps and website to stay up to date with relevant papers and data in their field.

We index over 17,000 publications across life sciences, earth sciences, pharmaceuticals, medicine, machine learning and AI, social sciences, psychology and business studies - and our content offering is expanding all the time.

researcher-app

In 1965 a former editor of The Lancet, Sir Theodore “Robbie” Fox, published /Crisis in Communication/, which outlined the functions and future of medical journals. Over 50 years later this book still has lessons for scholarly publishing. Sir Robbie argued that ‘newspaper journals’, which are primarily edited with readers (rather than authors) in mind “will still be indispensable in our system of communication”. In 2021 the Nature journals will offer submitting authors of primary research papers the option of publishing Open Access. The presentation will outline the three routes for publishing OA in Nature journals and will emphasise the need for an ecosystem in which selective journals can flourish, for the benefit of both authors and readers.

Crisis in Communication: the Functions and Future of selective Journals

The research paper is a highly evolved method of efficiently summarizing a research project. But as we abandon the constraints of the print era, opportunities arise to add to the depth of knowledge presented and useful outputs created beyond those efficient summaries. The open data movement is the first and most obvious addition to the scholarly record, providing valuable resources both for reuse and reproducibility purposes. Where else in the research workflow should we be focusing? What other parts of the process can both be captured and provide value to the community?

Registered Reports

SciScore, an automated screening tool, gives studies a mark out of ten for ‘rigour and transparency’. SciScore searches methods sections for pieces of key information, which act as proxies for how rigorous the experiments are, and how easy it would be for other researchers to reproduce them. The software can flag where authors have specifically identified the reagents they use, such as antibodies, software tools, cell lines or transgenic organisms they use, for example. It also checks whether they have discussed factors such as sample sizes, how tests have been blinded or the sex of animals used. 

Last month we launched version 2 of SciScore which features 55 algorithms and a brand new MDAR report that can be used a the author's checklist. We have also extended the rigor checklist in the SciScore report such that it will be of added value for publishers, institutions and funders alike.

Sciscore.com

Beyond the Paper, the Data, and then a bit further – Capturing more of the Research Workflow

I give an overview of how we can make materials and methods more FAIR and discuss how managing experimental protocols as research objects can help.

Reporting Research Methodologies and Reagents

A principled discussion on the inherent value of the different dimensions of selectivity applied by academic journals (e.g. for quality of research, for the importance (which includes a number of different definitions), for the depth and breadth of the research findings, for the integrity of the research, for its novelty/conceptual advance, or for its newsworthiness, etc.) seems timely to reaffirm the value of this selectivity and to ensure OA moves away from being labelled a process uniquely suited for lower selectivity publishing. In particular, we also want to focus on how to make highly selective OA work.

Selectivity adds Value 
Dimensions of selectivity
Why select?
The cost of Quality Control & Peer Review
Front end in OA

Dimensions of Selectivity and how they add Value

How can the policy impact of publishing on climate change be maximised? This presentation introduces climate change as a unique field of research and publishing, and identifies five core contributions academic papers can make to policy making. It then considers what are the main barriers to achieving this potential for policy impact, and points to options for overcoming these barriers, drawing on the experience of the journal Climate Policy.  The presentation concludes with a key recommendation - to set up a mentoring and support programme to increase the geographical spread of climate change academic publishing, notably to the Global South.

Combining Policy, Science and Publishing

When the OA2020 initiative was established in 2016, the original intention was to establish and network national Open Access contact points. The National Open Access Contact Point in Germany was launched in 2017 as a complement to the DEAL project with the aim of creating the conditions for large-scale Open Access transformation. One aspect of this was the development and implementation of cooperative transformation models for publishers and academic disciplines not covered by DEAL contracts. The presentation will introduce these models and place them in the context of Open Access transformation.

Collaborative Open Access: The National Contact Point Open Access

Thank you for attending APE 2021! The content for APE will become available over the next few days after post-conference processing for audio and visual quality has been completed. Please check back next week. 
The First Publishing Event in the New Year! Full Unlimited Online Coverage! Was that the real beginning of the new 21st Century? Global challenges changing lives on a scale never seen before – a global pandemic, ferocious evidence of climate change and biodiversity loss, and cyber warfare influencing global leadership against a backdrop where evidence and experts are increasingly discounted in place of tribes with their own truths. Research is increasingly having to step up to meet global challenges and we need robust responses to reclaim trust in both scholarly publishing and the expertise of researchers as we map the path to the future. Covid-19 stress-tested scholarly communication and there’s room for improvement but also inspiration for change. A changing world has led to new solutions and new players – but are they robust and tested for long-term trust? Pre-prints proved a rapid way to communicate potentially crucial findings in a crisis but is the world ready to understand the implications of reading un-tested research? Peer review, the bastion of trusted science, is under scrutiny from those within and outside research and with calls for transparency and openness in science, where next for dissemination of research findings? 2021 is the start of a very new and very different period in history and we come together with purpose and a collaborative spirit.
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