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347 news posts in Open science

Open science and peer review

23 May 2016

Everything You Need to Know About Plagiarism

By Chloe Schmidt and Daisy Hessenberger Plagiarism is a serious issue in the world of academic publishing. Publishers must take great care to ensure content is original, referenced appropriately, or reused with permission. Plagiarism is not only taking someone else’s work and using it as your own: there are different circumstances under which reproduced content can be considered “plagiarized”. To shed some light on this issue, and explain the process Frontiers uses to detect and handle plagiarism, we’ve created the guide below. We use a tool called iThenticate to scan every submission. You can download an example of an iThenticate report here: Sample_iThenticate_report Some guidelines and resources for further reading: Frontiers author guidelines (see ‘Original Content’): http://home.frontiersin.org/about/author-guidelines Committee on Publication Ethics: http://publicationethics.org/ Office of Research Integrity (US): http://ori.hhs.gov/avoiding-plagiarism-self-plagiarism-and-other-questionable-writing-practices-guide-ethical-writing iThenticate: http://www.ithenticate.com/resources/papers/ethics-of-self-plagiarism Happy writing! PDF version available here: Plagiarism  

Young Minds

10 May 2016

American Indian students first to review Frontiers for Young Minds article

by Amee Hennig, associate Editor for Frontiers for Young Minds When asked where the science in your text book comes from, students often don’t have an answer. It was no different for the students of Lapwai High School, located near the Nez Perce Reservation in Lapwai, ID. So when the nine Nez Perce students of Tami Church’s mathematics class were asked to be the first-ever American Indian student reviewers for a Frontiers for Young Minds article they enthusiastically jumped at the opportunity to make a real impact on a scientific discovery they would not read about in their textbooks. Frontiers for Young Minds is read by kids, teachers and parents around the world.  It’s free for all to read and there are no publishing fees for the distinguished scientists who write   about their cutting-edge discoveries in a language that is accessible for young readers. It is then up to the kids – with the help of a science mentor – to provide feedback and explain to the scientists how to best improve the articles before it is published in the journal. Dr. Ben Zuckerman’s article, “Are there other Earths out there? Astronomers’ first clues to an answer date back 100 years” […]

Open science and peer review

06 Apr 2016

Highlights from Experiences with Open Access Journals

by Sandra Hausmann, Frontiers Business Development Manager On March 31st we brought five high profile Frontiers editors together for a panel discussion at the ICIS hosted event in UC Davis: “ Frontiers in Publishing – Experiences with Open Access Journals”. Mary Christopher, Field Chief Editor for Frontiers in Veterinary Science , Neelima Sinha, Specialty Chief Editor for Plant Evolution and Development, Cecilia Giulivi, Specialty Chief Editor for Cellular Biochemistry, Patrice Koehl, Specialty Chief Editor for Mathematics of Biomolecules, and Arne Ekstrom, Guest Associate Editor Frontiers in Human Neuroscience joined us for a lively discussion on open access and their experience as editors of Frontiers. The event was moderated by MacKenzie Smith, head of the  library  at UC Davis, who challenged the panelists on how their experience as Frontiers editors influenced the way they viewed open access and how well open access was received within their disciplines.  The discussion also touched on article processing fees, quality, and volume of open access publications. In general, open access was well received. Cecilia mentioned the fact that with OA authors can actually re-use their published work e.g. for teaching without infringing the publishers copy right, was a major improvement. Mary even pointed out that […]

Open science and peer review

29 Mar 2016

Frontiers launches new Digital Editorial Office

Frontiers has launched a new innovative service that allows for complete operational independence in academic publishing for their over 60,000 editors around the world. The Frontiers Digital Editorial Office launched this week and was built in-house by Frontiers’ team of IT professionals. It was at first specifically designed to assist Frontiers’ Specialty Chief Editors, who come from the world’s leading institutions,  in their editorial tasks and to assist them in quality assurance, as well as to assess the performance of their specialty area.  Created with  feedback from the editors, the new Digital Editorial Office is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and will help them make editorial decisions and supervise the review process. In 2008, Frontiers was the first publisher to build a Digital Editorial Office that gives editors complete editorial independence and freedom to act in the review process at any time.  The launch of the new Digital Editorial Office is an extension of this original innovation with more advanced usability, features and functions. A  winner of the Gold Prize for the ALPSP Award for Innovation in Publishing, Frontiers was born digital 8 years ago and changed the way publishing is done by custom-building their entire IT ecosystem in-house around collaborative and transparent peer-review and scalable journal management. Frontiers […]

Open science and peer review

24 Mar 2016

Digital repositorian’s vision sets new standards for open access in the Gulf region

By Michelle Ponto, Frontiers science writer The Open Access movement is becoming a standard for many universities around the world.  But just a few years ago, the concept of an open-access repository was an innovative venture in the Gulf region. Digital Repository Specialist Mohamed Ba-Essa and his team at King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) took on the challenge and were pioneers in creating the University’s open-access repository along with the policies and the procedures that have made it successful. “We were the first University in the Middle East. There was one university in Algeria who adapted the open-access policy one day before us – so they were technically the first in the entire MENA region, but we are proud to say we were the first in the Middle East,” said Ba-Essa. KAUST’s open-access policy officially launched June 30, 2014 and has since helped increase the number of downloads and views of the published research conducted at the university. In addition, it has helped to promote the university beyond the region and build its reputation.   Already, many MENA universities have been in contact with the KAUST digital repository team, asking for advice on how to set up an […]

Open science and peer review

23 Mar 2016

What is Peer Review? It Depends Who is Asking!

Frontiers for Young Minds and Knowing Neurons are excited to share the results of their collaboration on the question, “What is Peer Review?” In creating an infographic to address this question, we ended up with two versions targeted at two unique audiences. The first version – which you can find here – will be useful to undergraduates and other very early career researchers starting to navigate the research world. The second version, found below, is meant for K-12 teachers and students who want to learn about how and why scientists share their findings with each other. Both infographics are published under a Creative Commons 4.0 NC license, so they are free for educators to use and distribute! We will be sharing the second version with our Frontiers for Young Minds team soon! Thank you again to Knowing Neurons for their work on this!

Young Minds

16 Mar 2016

USA Science and Engineering Festival

Frontiers for Young Minds is proud to be an Official Partner of the 4th USA Science & Engineering Festival, to be held April 16-17, 2016 in Washington, D.C. What is the universe made of? Why did dinosaurs go extinct? What do magic tricks and hip-hop have to with math? What will be the next medical breakthrough? What does baseball have to do with physics? Find out at the 4th USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo where more than 350,000 K-12 students and parents, over 5,000 teachers and over 3,000 STEM professionals will experience the largest celebration of STEM! Participants include more than 1,000 of the world’s leading professional scientific and engineering societies, universities, government agencies, high tech corporations and STEM outreach and community organizations. The two-day Expo is perfect for teens, children and their families, and anyone with a curious mind who is looking for a weekend of fun and discovery. Meet science celebrities like Grammy Award-winning alternative music band “They Might Be Giants!” and  Bill Nye the Science Guy! On Thursday April 14, 2016 middle and high school students will have a chance to view presentations from the most inspiring STEM professionals at the 3rd X-STEM Extreme Symposium! And Sneak Peek […]

Open science and peer review

04 Mar 2016

New Data Debunks Old Beliefs: Part 2

Our original New data debunks old beliefs blog post plotted the impact factors of 570 randomly selected journals indexed in the 2014 Journal Citation Reports (Thomson Reuters, 2015), against their publicly stated rejection rates. The goal was to understand the relationship between rejection rates and journal quality. Despite a widespread belief that high rejection rates secure high impact factors, no significant correlation was found. This study was preliminary, to start a discussion, because it suggests that such an entrenched belief may be wrong. This blog post is going one step further by removing what could be the main reason why we could not find any correlation: varying citation rates across academic fields. It is widely known that articles in some fields typically get more citations than in other fields. Perhaps a correlation would become evident once we removed this variable. In Figures 1-7 below, we normalized the impact factors by field, thus effectively removing this variable from the results (data accessible here). We have done this by calculating the ranking of each journal within its own Journal Citation Reports category (or field). As an example, a journal that has the 4th largest IF among 200 journals in its category will […]

Young Minds

23 Feb 2016

Frontiers for Young Minds – Expanding on the Map

Frontiers for Young Minds is excited to be expanding its reach once again. Already it has expanded into four disciplines, and now it has expanded its footprint on the map. The main headquarters for Frontiers and the Frontiers Research Foundation remains in Lausanne, but its Project Manager has moved daily operations for the journal to the Capital Region of New York. This has already increased the opportunity for participation and collaboration with US organizations and universities – like last years’ event at the Bay Area Science Festival and its upcoming appearance at the US Science and Engineering Festival. With staff both in the US and Europe there will be greater ability to take advantage of the widespread outreach opportunities for interested young science minds. With Chief Editors in the US and Europe, authors and editors in numerous countries, and the Young Minds editorial team collaborating from opposite sides of the ocean, Frontiers for Young Minds has taken another step towards becoming the international science outreach and educational resource it seeks to be. And we are continuing to grow. If you are researcher and would like to rewrite one of your published articles for kids, let us know. We are accepting submissions. […]

Open science and peer review

16 Feb 2016

SciComm meet-up in San Francisco March 9

Part of the Frontiers Communication team will be in San Francisco on March 9, and together with swissnex San Francisco, we are hosting a Science Communication Meet-Up at Terroir, one of our favorite wine bars in the city. Whether you are a journalist who writes about the new discoveries or a scientist trying to let the media and other researchers know that you have just published a new exciting discovery, communicating science can be challenging. Let’s break down the boundaries and get to know each other so we can share information. WHO YOU’LL MEET: On March 9, you’ll meet Sandra Hausmann and myself (Michelle Ponto) from Frontiers, an academic publishing company based out Switzerland, and Benjamin Bollmann from swissnex. Sandra is Frontier’s Business Development Manager. She works out of our San Francisco Bureau and can fill you in on the latest innovations in academic publishing, what type of research Frontiers publishes and some of the interesting Research Topics we are excited about. These topics pool the research of scientists around the world and can cover big issues like Alzheimer’s, Zika virus research, climate change adaption, E.coli tracking, robotics and more.  She’s also your go-to person if you are looking for a researcher in your area to interview on a specific topic. […]

Open science and peer review

27 Jan 2016

Peer-reviewing Frontiers

Surveys among thousands of our authors, editors, reviewers show high overall satisfaction with Frontiers,  but also yield constructive criticisms which help us to improve our processes and platform. Frontiers is determined to let researchers shape scholarly publishing. It is therefore important that we listen to you, the researchers. Send us your suggestions, your criticisms, your requests – we welcome them. We don’t claim to be perfect, but we are constantly evolving, based on feedback from the scientific community. It is particularly easy for Frontiers to make improvements, because we are the first and only publisher to have built our IT platform in-house and from scratch, ensuring maximum flexibility of our system and processes. Every day, Frontiers actively looks for such feedback, for example through conference calls and meetings with our editorial boards, through discussions with researchers at conferences around the world, and by tracking comments on social media. Another way is through continuous user satisfaction surveys. Here, we give a summary of results from two such surveys, with a combined response of over 11,000 Frontiers authors, editors, and reviewers. These surveys point to considerable satisfaction with Frontiers, but also yield constructive criticisms which allow us to improve further. The surveys in brief […]