Just how easy is it to start a science publisher?
Starting a science journal is not easy. The barriers to entry in this lucrative market are high for various reasons. For example, a major hurdle for a new journal is building enough trust and a strong reputation within the academic community. Scientists will tend to favour journals with the highest impact factor and the best reputation within a given field of research.
One of the main reason for pursuing publication in traditional, “high impact” journals is career advancement for scientists. A scientist’s career and ability to obtain grants for research is dependent on the impact which her publications are deemed to have. Publishing in a journal with a questionable reputation or a low impact factor can be detrimental to career advancement. The role of science publication is to further research globally and not only the careers of those who conduct research. As such, a shift is coming in the perception of researchers about where they publish publish. Ground-breaking research should be rewarded based solely on the quality of the research and not on the impact factor of the journal in which it appears.
ScienceMatters was established to provide ratings of validated, peer reviewed single observations. Its care mission is to improve research in term of quality established in a triple blind review process.
ScienceMatters: a journal and a journey
ScienceMatters was honoured to announce that Prof. Thomas C. Südhof of Stanford University, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine, in 2013 would be made Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board. Recruitment of 23 prominent academics to the Scientific Advisory Board followed from reputable universities. Through the efforts of Founder and CEO Prof. Lawrence Rajendran and his editorial and technical team, ScienceMatters published its first issue in 2016. The journey towards establishing the technological infrastructure, which is required to run a single-observation publishing platform like ScienceMatters, involved many technical challenges.
Some of these technical challenges included creating a website and platform where scientists could submit their manuscripts for review. In addition a database for these manuscripts needed to be able to manage the process flow from submission, to revisions, and then publication after strict criteria were met.. Recruiting high calibre editors and reviewers was essential for the deployment of this technology.
Establishing a good reputation and credibility with the scientific community has been crucial in establishing the open access framework for ScienceMatters.
Today, the ScienceMatters team of 15 people are working on the next challenge: EUREKA.
The EUREKA Platform’s first integration will be using the existing ScienceMatters platform. Blockchain technology is ideally suited to eliminating the need for trust between parties, as it relies on consensus. This makes tampering or falsifying data more difficult. Through the REWARD system, EUREKA will offer a representative and sophisticated way in which authors of research can
However, the human element will remain an integral part of the system for the foreseeable future, and establishing a trusted network of trusted editors and reviewers is still needed.
