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Shaping the future of scientific publishing

We are incredibly excited to announce the 8 researchers joining the Early Career Researchers Advisory Board for Wellcome Open Research. The Board represent the needs and aspirations of early career researchers, making sure the voices of the next generation are heard and catalyse reform in publishing research. The members come from many different research areas and represent a vast array of fields of expertise.

Earlier this year we sought an early career researcher advisory board, and we proudly present the group to you now. Here is this energetic and creative group of researchers that will help shape the future of Welcome Open Research, and in turn the future of scholarly communications. They will represent the many early career researchers that are supported by Wellcome, providing an active voice for researchers who are building their careers in academia.

Here we introduce each member and share their thoughts on open research and how it can help early career researchers.

The perceived value of open research

Tony Ly, Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow, Cell Biology, University of Edinburgh

It is my belief that most early career researchers and established scientists, are aware of open research, however, what is lacking is perceived value or the esteemed factor associated with it. We need new modalities for recognising scientific value from a piece of research. So, I believe the key question we should ask ourselves is: how do we increase the community value of open research communications? And that is one I intend to tackle as part of my Board Member role.

Driving change from the ground up

Benjamin Steventon, Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow, Developmental Biology/genetics, University of Cambridge

For early career researchers, maximising on their work’s impact is essential, and open research methodologies can be an excellent way of moving out of the restricted communication medium of traditional peer-review journals. It enables researchers to communicate the output of their work to many different research fields, and thereby accelerates the transition to independence by generating increased networking opportunities and collaborations. Open research does not have to wait for the old system to expire, it needs to be driven from the ground up as the next generation of researchers shape the field ahead of them.

Greater transparency

Jana Hutter, Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow, Developmental Imaging, KCL

Open research platforms generate additional transparency, allowing access to not only the polished final article, but the intermediate versions, the peer review, and ideally the data and analysis too. This provides valuable insights into the processes of scientific writing, reviewing and publishing. While this is a benefit for all scientists irrespective of their level, it is particularly useful for early career researchers as they develop their skills and careers in science.

Increased visibility and accessibility

Mohlopheni Jackson Marakalala, Wellcome Trust International Intermediate Fellow, Africa Health Research Institute (South Africa); and Associate Professor in the Division of Infection and Immunity, University College London (UK)

Open research communication can provide opportunities to early career scientists by increasing visibility of their work and enabling them to access other important work at low or no cost. It is through such visibility and accessibility, that more and more of our work will become available to broader communities, including general society. This will also help our work find its way into policy formulation and societal impact as government and non-governmental organisations can start reading the material that is easily accessible.

Aid scientific progress  

Fiona Cresswell, Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD Fellow in Global Health, LSHTM

Personally, I have found that publishing on Wellcome Open Research has been extremely user-friendly and has removed the barriers and frustrations I used to face during manuscript submissions via other platforms, which would frequently crash while uploading documents due to unstable internet in Uganda. The platform reduces two important delays in accessing information; firstly, the delay in scientific outputs being available to the public during the peer-review process, and secondly the delay caused by trying to navigate paywalls in non-open access journals.

For early career researchers, Wellcome Open Research has the impact to increase transparency, reducing delays and maximise scientific knowledge sharing and outputs. 

Improve quality

Cherry Lim, Wellcome Trust Training Fellowship, Public Health and Tropical Medicine, MORU, Thailand

Open research provides a variety of opportunities for early career researchers. Firstly, open invited peer review ensures transparency in the review process and invites discussion about the research. This could encourage early career researchers to improve publication quality and to receive fair and constructive feedback. Secondly, open data provides research opportunities to early career researchers, who are not yet capable of building a full research team to generate new data independently. The existing open data could be a great starting point to generate new hypothesis; to test ideas; and could guide the design of new research projects. This also benefits researchers and policymakers, who are working on mapping and measuring the burdens of diseases.

Thirdly, open research provides a platform for early career researchers to publish ideas and research more rapidly. This could encourage results to be shared in a timely fashion to impact the current challenges in health and science.

Increased efficiency and reproducibility

Rebecca Payne, Wellcome Trust Career Re-entry Fellow, Immunology, Newcastle University

Open Research can create a more efficient, reproducible, robust and collaborative research environment, whether this is through open lab books; shared data repositories; shared protocols; or open publishing platforms with streamlined and open review processes. All these practises help researchers and have the potential to rapidly progress scientific advances for the benefit of all. But in my opinion, the most important outcome of open research for an individual early career researcher, is to do away with the influence of branded “top” journals. The pressure to publish in these branded journals is bad for science and innovation. However, through open research practices current early career researchers can lead the way to insisting that research quality and impact is assessed in a way that promotes excellent science and exemplary careers.

Broader dissemination and discussion

Jennifer Crane, Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, History, University of Oxford

In research terms, recent studies suggest that open access articles receive 18% more citations (Piwowar et. al., 2018). This means that our research is more widely read, engaged with, and cited by research communities, generating new opportunities for collaboration and interdisciplinary working. Open access research is also more likely to be read by relevant professional groups, voluntary groups, and members of communities, again raising opportunities for engagement, as these stakeholders may engage with, critique, and challenge our ongoing work. While these mechanisms benefit early career researchers, they also impose additional challenges and burdens, which I would like to highlight, and help to resolve, as a member of the early career researcher advisory board.

You can see full profiles of all of the Board Members here.

Next steps

Wellcome will host a meeting on 30^th July to bring this exceptional group of researchers together. This meeting aims to identify how to increase open research practises among early career researchers, and the steps a publishing platform like Wellcome Open Research should take to support this.

We are looking forward to seeing our early career researcher advisory board flex their creative muscles on this issue and are excited to see what kind of projects they can champion to shape the strategy for Wellcome Open Research.