UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health will become the first to launch an institute-focused publishing platform with F1000, a provider of a suite of services to support researchers, institutions and funders. The platform, UCL Child Health Open Research (https://childhealthopenresearch.org.uk), will start publishing in Q4 of 2017 and allow any UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health or any other UCL researcher studying child health to publish with greater speed and transparency.
UCL Child Health Open Research will follow in the footsteps of two funder-based platforms, Wellcome Open Research and Gates Open Research, both of which are based on a publishing model pioneered by F1000Research that first launched four years ago. The model permits immediate publication followed by transparent invited peer review and inclusion of all supporting data. This enables reanalysis, replication attempts and data reuse – bringing benefits to the research community, as well as to society more broadly.
The publication platform will help the dissemination of research outputs from UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, where some of the world’s top research in child health takes place. This research can sometimes focus on rare diseases or small clinical trials, which can be difficult to find the right publication outlet for. UCL Child Health Open Research will publish a wide range of types of research, from traditional impactful research, methods and protocols, to case reports and small, negative or confirmatory findings.
All articles will comply with the open access policies of UCL and its funders. All publication charges will be covered through UCL’s central open access fund.
Professor Rosalind Smyth, Director of UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, said: “UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health has often led the way in the area of child health research, so it is only fitting that we lead the way being the first institute to launch this kind of publication platform. Publishing on UCL Child Open Research will mean that the results of our research can be made available in an immediate and transparent way and help inform decisions and other research in the area of child health.”
Dr Rebecca Lawrence, Managing Director of F1000, said: “It is fantastic to have UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health take this big step in becoming the first institute to launch their own publication platform. Joining the growing family of publication platforms demonstrates the vital role that research institutions can play, together with research funders, in supporting their researchers in improving the way that the findings of their work are communicated and helping reduce research waste.”
Further comment from Professor Rosalind Smith and Professor Martin Elliott is available in this blog: https://blog.f1000.com/2017/06/26/ucl-child-health-open-research/
Further comment from Dr Rebecca Lawrence is available in this blog: https://blog.f1000.com/2017/06/26/a-not-so-baby-step-on-the-journey/
