Authors : Vitek Tracz, Rebecca Lawrence
The way science and research is done is rapidly becoming more open and collaborative. The traditional way of publishing new findings in journals is becoming increasingly outdated and no longer serves the needs of much of science.
Whilst preprints can bring significant benefits of removing delay and selection, they do not go far enough if simply implemented alongside the existing journal system. We propose that we need a new approach, an Open Science Platform, that takes the benefits of preprints but adds formal, invited, and transparent post-publication peer review.
This bypasses the problems of the current journal system and, in doing so, moves the evaluation of research and researchers away from the journal-based Impact Factor and towards a fairer system of article-based qualitative and quantitative indicators.
In the long term, it should be irrelevant where a researcher publishes their findings. What is important is that research is shared and made available without delay within a framework that encourages quality standards and requires all players in the research community to work as collaborators.