9:30 AM - 10:00 AM
[U06-03] the UNIVERSITY OF TSUKUBA GATEWAY is developed in collaboration with F1000Research is the first in the world to enable publication in Japanese.
★Invited Papers
Keywords:research articles, diversity, open peer review, iMD, University of Tsukuba Gateway, F1000 Research model
Background
The University of Tsukuba’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences has been working on its initiatives to visualize the humanities and social sciences papers, one of which is the iMD (index for Measuring Diversity) and the other is the University of Tsukuba Gateway. iMD is an index we proposed to measure the diversity of author affiliations of academic journals, and is the first patent obtained by the University of Tsukuba's Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. The other project, the University of Tsukuba Gateway, started with an offer from Dr. Rebecca Lawrence, the managing director of F1000 Research Ltd. We began exchanging ideas with Dr. Lawrence after she took the stage at a symposium on research evaluation that we organized. As a result, our wish to bring about a change in scholarly communication between Japan and the rest of the world resonated with F1000 Research's philosophy that there should be no barriers among research fields and languages. Although the contracting process was time-consuming because F1000 Research did not have an agent in Japan at that time, we successfully concluded the contract. Thus, our university became the first one in Japan to use the F1000Research publishing model, and the first in the world to publish papers in Japanese using the model.
How open peer review works
The mainstream peer-review model for conventional journals involves anonymous peer review, and only those papers that pass the peer review process and have paid the submission fee are published. The copyright of the articles generally belongs to the academic society or publisher.
In contrast, in the F1000Research model, the author retains the copyright of the paper. Only minimal checking is required at the time of submission, and the paper is published on the web in about two weeks after the submission fee is paid. When the article is published, it will be treated as a non-refereed paper with a DOI. In other words, it will be regarded as a published paper and can be cited from this point on. After publication, open peer review will begin. After passing the peer review, the paper will be included in databases such as Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar.
The present situation
Since its launch in November 2020, the University of Tsukuba Gateway has published three papers in FY2020 and 13 papers in FY2022. Most of the papers were peer-reviewed within a month or two of publication. As of February 2022, nine papers have been indexed in Scopus and other databases.
Responses from researchers
Researchers who have submitted papers so far have expressed the following:
・The two merits of having a paper reviewed by someone who I believe is the most suitable and having a sense of security that it will not be rejected were very significant.
・In the past, I felt frustrated by the passive position of waiting for the reviewers to evaluate my paper for several months, or even years. The University of Tsukuba Gateway made me realize that the reviewer's comments would be an opinion by one of diverse researchers and I felt that I could further deepen my research in this field.
・Although I did not publicize my paper at all, it was viewed more than 100 times within a week.
・I also felt that it was beneficial to let students see the process of writing a paper.
I hope that the University of Tsukuba Gateway will spread and make the rapid and open dissemination of research results in any language a world standard.
The University of Tsukuba’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences has been working on its initiatives to visualize the humanities and social sciences papers, one of which is the iMD (index for Measuring Diversity) and the other is the University of Tsukuba Gateway. iMD is an index we proposed to measure the diversity of author affiliations of academic journals, and is the first patent obtained by the University of Tsukuba's Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. The other project, the University of Tsukuba Gateway, started with an offer from Dr. Rebecca Lawrence, the managing director of F1000 Research Ltd. We began exchanging ideas with Dr. Lawrence after she took the stage at a symposium on research evaluation that we organized. As a result, our wish to bring about a change in scholarly communication between Japan and the rest of the world resonated with F1000 Research's philosophy that there should be no barriers among research fields and languages. Although the contracting process was time-consuming because F1000 Research did not have an agent in Japan at that time, we successfully concluded the contract. Thus, our university became the first one in Japan to use the F1000Research publishing model, and the first in the world to publish papers in Japanese using the model.
How open peer review works
The mainstream peer-review model for conventional journals involves anonymous peer review, and only those papers that pass the peer review process and have paid the submission fee are published. The copyright of the articles generally belongs to the academic society or publisher.
In contrast, in the F1000Research model, the author retains the copyright of the paper. Only minimal checking is required at the time of submission, and the paper is published on the web in about two weeks after the submission fee is paid. When the article is published, it will be treated as a non-refereed paper with a DOI. In other words, it will be regarded as a published paper and can be cited from this point on. After publication, open peer review will begin. After passing the peer review, the paper will be included in databases such as Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar.
The present situation
Since its launch in November 2020, the University of Tsukuba Gateway has published three papers in FY2020 and 13 papers in FY2022. Most of the papers were peer-reviewed within a month or two of publication. As of February 2022, nine papers have been indexed in Scopus and other databases.
Responses from researchers
Researchers who have submitted papers so far have expressed the following:
・The two merits of having a paper reviewed by someone who I believe is the most suitable and having a sense of security that it will not be rejected were very significant.
・In the past, I felt frustrated by the passive position of waiting for the reviewers to evaluate my paper for several months, or even years. The University of Tsukuba Gateway made me realize that the reviewer's comments would be an opinion by one of diverse researchers and I felt that I could further deepen my research in this field.
・Although I did not publicize my paper at all, it was viewed more than 100 times within a week.
・I also felt that it was beneficial to let students see the process of writing a paper.
I hope that the University of Tsukuba Gateway will spread and make the rapid and open dissemination of research results in any language a world standard.