Abstract

Some of the most relevant facts that are affecting the scientific publication and its impact are the transformations that have begun to happen in relation to what has been called Open Science. This represents a new approach to the scientific process, which is based on cooperative work and is inevitably linked to Open Access publishing. And although the latter term is linked to immediate and free access to research articles, it has evolved towards a much more complete concept involving the transformation of scientific practice to "share knowledge as soon as possible". The transformation towards Open Science has been assumed by the European Commission, which carrying out different measures in this regard.

But, despite the obvious advantages of Open Access publishing, it will not be an easy task to make search results universally accessible without restriction. This objective faces the inertia of custom practices and a market dominated by a few large publishers.

The idea of ​​developing a platform to answer many of the questions raised about the future of scientific publication is the outcome of many reflections and discussions on the presented scenario.

Scipedia (see http://www.scipedia.com) is essentially a web platform that integrates a digital scientific publishing platform with the concept of social network. Scipedia aims to improve communication between researchers and professionals in science and technology, facilitating the exchange of knowledge and dissemination of their work.

The ambition of this project is to be able to offer free publication services in Open Access to the entire scientific community. To this end, Scipedia integrates tools that allow the publication of journals and the management of their publication cycle, including support for blind and collaborative peer review.

But probably one of the most innovative aspects of this initiative is that it uses wikitext, a standard format for web pages, as a native format of publications. This definitely allows going beyond the paper support and its digital versions (such as the PDF format); the scientific communication can take full advantage of the publication on the Internet. This way, scientific journals and books, conference proceedings and any other document published in Scipedia can integrate text, multimedia information, data files, models, etc. in a natural way.

In addition, Scipedia has an advanced online editor that allows for collaborative work and facilitates self-publishing. The capacity of self-publishing is not a trivial matter, since it virtually reduces production and publication costs to zero, and is basic to fulfilling the project's main ambition: to offer free publishing services for the author and open access without restrictions.

The online editing tool is completed with utilities for importing files in LaTeX and Word formats, and exporting to PDF and ePub.

Another relevant aspect of the initiative is that various strategies have been designed that allow articles to reach the maximum impact. For this, it is not enough to comply with certain standards and procedures that facilitate their indexation in the main search engines and aggregators. Here, the integration of the platform into a social network can play a fundamental role.

Scipedia social network offers the standard tools of this type of platforms, creation of a user profile, creation of a network of contacts, presentation of the register of personal activities and of the contacts, creation and management of groups, etc. The basic information of the profile can be imported and synchronized with the data available in Google Scholar, which provides a first reference of the impact of the scientific activity of the user. This information is enriched with that generated by the personal activity in the network, which is dynamized using gamification techniques. This way, the actions of the user are rewarded and allow to evaluate the activity that generates in the network. In addition, records of visits and ratings of readers of an article are kept, which together with more traditional techniques such as citation counting, allows you to evaluate the impact of any document. In addition, each published document has a discussion page attached, and a history of all its revisions is maintained, even beyond the date of its publication.

Abstract

Some of the most relevant facts that are affecting the scientific publication and its impact are the transformations that have begun to happen in relation to what has been called Open Science. This represents a new approach to the scientific process, which is based on cooperative work and is inevitably linked to Open Access publishing. And although the latter term is linked to immediate and free access to research articles, it has evolved towards a much more complete concept involving the transformation of scientific practice to "share knowledge as soon as possible". The transformation towards Open Science has been assumed by the European Commission, which carrying out different measures in this regard.

But, despite the obvious advantages of Open Access publishing, it will not be an easy task to make search results universally accessible without restriction. This objective faces the inertia of custom practices and a market dominated by a few large publishers.

The idea of ​​developing a platform to answer many of the questions raised about the future of scientific publication is the outcome of many reflections and discussions on the presented scenario.

Scipedia (see http://www.scipedia.com) is essentially a web platform that integrates a digital scientific publishing platform with the concept of social network. Scipedia aims to improve communication between researchers and professionals in science and technology, facilitating the exchange of knowledge and dissemination of their work.

The ambition of this project is to be able to offer free publication services in Open Access to the entire scientific community. To this end, Scipedia integrates tools that allow the publication of journals and the management of their publication cycle, including support for blind and collaborative peer review.

But probably one of the most innovative aspects of this initiative is that it uses wikitext, a standard format for web pages, as a native format of publications. This definitely allows going beyond the paper support and its digital versions (such as the PDF format); the scientific communication can take full advantage of the publication on the Internet. This way, scientific journals and books, conference proceedings and any other document published in Scipedia can integrate text, multimedia information, data files, models, etc. in a natural way.

In addition, Scipedia has an advanced online editor that allows for collaborative work and facilitates self-publishing. The capacity of self-publishing is not a trivial matter, since it virtually reduces production and publication costs to zero, and is basic to fulfilling the project's main ambition: to offer free publishing services for the author and open access without restrictions.

The online editing tool is completed with utilities for importing files in LaTeX and Word formats, and exporting to PDF and ePub.

Another relevant aspect of the initiative is that various strategies have been designed that allow articles to reach the maximum impact. For this, it is not enough to comply with certain standards and procedures that facilitate their indexation in the main search engines and aggregators. Here, the integration of the platform into a social network can play a fundamental role.

Scipedia social network offers the standard tools of this type of platforms, creation of a user profile, creation of a network of contacts, presentation of the register of personal activities and of the contacts, creation and management of groups, etc. The basic information of the profile can be imported and synchronized with the data available in Google Scholar, which provides a first reference of the impact of the scientific activity of the user. This information is enriched with that generated by the personal activity in the network, which is dynamized using gamification techniques. This way, the actions of the user are rewarded and allow to evaluate the activity that generates in the network. In addition, records of visits and ratings of readers of an article are kept, which together with more traditional techniques such as citation counting, allows you to evaluate the impact of any document. In addition, each published document has a discussion page attached, and a history of all its revisions is maintained, even beyond the date of its publication.