Publications

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Open Science, as a very new movement, is slowly influencing the scholarly communication process. What does "scholarly communication" mean? The Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) defines this as follows: "Scholarly communication is the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic listservs."

Scholarly communication and publishing has a long tradition (the first scientifc journal appeared in 1665). In this period of more than 350 years, the publishing process and the scholarly product (scientific article) have not seen great changes. But scientists are dissatisfied with the publishing mechanism, they claim access, pressure to publish, bias of peer review (to mention only a few things). On the other side, innovative players like Sciencematters or RIOJournals (Research Ideas and Outcomes) try to revolutionize the scene with fascinating tools.

How does the actual landscape of scholarly communication look like, how do we envisage the future in the year 2030? Which problems are scientists facing today and tomorrow? How can we create an inspiring ecosystem for the scientific community to foster creativity and new ideas? "In the new world of books, every bit informs another; every page reads all the other pages." Will this vision of Kevin Kelly (Wired-Editor) dominate the future of scholarly communication?

This Special Issue "Scholarly Communication—a Vision for Tomorrow" will gather papers with fresh ideas, thoughts and inputs to explore new ways in the whole publishing process. Papers on the following topics are expected:

- Open Science
- reading/writing process
- influence of Artificial Intelligence on scholarly communication
- Blockchain
- new models of peer reviewing
- future form of the scientific article
- nanopublications, data papers

I look forward to your submissions.

Anne-Katharina Weilenmann
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Publications is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

scholarly communication
scientific article
Open Science
Peer Review

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Editorial

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2 pages, 134 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Scientific Communication—A Vision for Tomorrow

by Anne-Katharina Weilenmann

Publications 2018, 6(4), 49; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications6040049 - 14 Dec 2018

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 5626

Abstract

“Publishing is not evolving. [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Scholarly Communication—A Vision for Tomorrow)

3 pages, 144 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Against Storytelling—The New Paradigm of Scientific Publishing

by Anne-Katharina Weilenmann and Lawrence Rajendran

Publications 2018, 6(4), 45; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications6040045 - 22 Nov 2018

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 6129

Abstract

This is an interview which I conducted with Lawrence Rajendran, the founder and initiator of the platform «ScienceMatters». [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Scholarly Communication—A Vision for Tomorrow)

Other

Jump to: Editorial

10 pages, 783 KiB

Open AccessOpinion

“As-You-Go” Instead of “After-the-Fact”: A Network Approach to Scholarly Communication and Evaluation

by Chris H. J. Hartgerink and Marino Van Zelst

Publications 2018, 6(2), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications6020021 - 26 Apr 2018

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 7610

Abstract

Scholarly research faces threats to its sustainability on multiple domains (access, incentives, reproducibility, inclusivity). We argue that “after-the-fact” research papers do not help and actually cause some of these threats because the chronology of the research cycle is lost in a research paper. We propose to give up the academic paper and propose a digitally native “as-you-go” alternative. In this design, modules of research outputs are communicated along the way and are directly linked to each other to form a network of outputs that can facilitate research evaluation. This embeds chronology in the design of scholarly communication and facilitates the recognition of more diverse outputs that go beyond the paper (e.g., code, materials). Moreover, using network analysis to investigate the relations between linked outputs could help align evaluation tools with evaluation questions. We illustrate how such a modular “as-you-go” design of scholarly communication could be structured and how network indicators could be computed to assist in the evaluation process, with specific use cases for funders, universities, and individual researchers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Scholarly Communication—A Vision for Tomorrow)

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