One of the latest creations to emerge from the Research Institute’s lab, Apograf is an interactive platform that houses an extensive and continually updated collection of technical publications. Our vision is to provide a high-quality, secure, and transparent source of scientific papers — an alternative to the traditional publication and distribution models of scientific scholarship. Given this vision, becoming an ORCID member was an easy decision with so many tangible benefits for our users — name disambiguation, interoperability, and the time-saving benefits of a single identifier for researchers to use throughout their career.
Our platform allows researchers and academics access to a rich collection of scientific publications, via a searchable database of content compliant with research funders’ Open Access policies. It includes original publications and also pulls from thousands of unique online content hosting locations, including OA journals, hybrid journals, institutional repositories, and disciplinary repositories. For any paywalled content, enriched metadata and links are provided to a user so they can purchase access, should they so choose.
Apograf allows users the ability to filter articles, and design their own feeds, including subscriptions to a handful of curated newsletters or preset filters. There’s also functionality built into the platform that allows users to create and share personalised collections as seen below.
Apograf is designed to give contributors more recognition and to incentivise peer review. So we use the ORCID member API to collect and display authenticated iDs, to improve recognition and discoverability of research outputs, and to enable interoperability with other systems (iDs work with many institutions, funders, and publishers). The beauty of the ORCID iD for Apograf is its persistence, as it can be used for the entirety of a researcher’s career.
Currently, an ORCID iD is required to upload a paper to Apograf or to conduct a peer review. Existing peer review peer can be a slow process and, because it’s often done by poorly incentivised, busy people it can also be inconsistent, unreliable, biased. Most reviewers are themselves scientists or researchers who could be spending their time doing original research or myriad other things.
With an upcoming blockchain integration, Apograf will offer improved peer review functionality. The introduction of tokens, along with a gamified leader-board style system, will give researchers more tangible reasons to spend their time on peer review.
The more a user participates in peer review, and the more their peer-reviewed article is referenced by other authors, the more tokens they have and, ultimately, the higher their position in the rating system. This combination of incentives, together with the rating system also makes life easier for grant application reviewers or those who are simply looking to collaborate with the best in a given field — a truly merit-based system.
As Apograf joins ORCID, thousands of publications and users — were they not already — will get connected to the Registry. Developing new platforms and supporting initiatives like ORCID are small steps in the grand scheme of things, but each one counts, and as they stack up we inch closer toward solving some of the challenges of scientific publishing. Apograf is proud to join ORCID in pursuing the establishment of an open, fair, and accessible scientific research ecosystem.
For more information, or to sign up for Apograf, please visit our website.
