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Tell the full story of your Wellcome-funded mental health research by publishing today on Wellcome Open Research. Here, Wellcome Open Researcher’s Senior Associate Publisher, Sheridan Willis, introduces mental health researchers to the open research publishing platform and its benefits.

What is Wellcome Open Research?

Wellcome Open Research is a broad scope, open access publishing platform for Wellcome-funded researchers. All aspects of publishing on Wellcome Open Research embrace the philosophy and practices of open research: 

• Wellcome Open Research publishes all articles open access 
• Our invited peer review model is entirely open and transparent as each peer review report, plus the approval status selected by the reviewer, is published with the reviewer’s name and affiliation alongside the article 
• Open commenting is available on every article to encourage discussion among the wider community 
• Our open data policy is in place to maximize reproducibility, discoverability, and collaboration 
• We offer a wide range of article types, including Data Notes, Clinical Practice Articles, Method Articles and more 

Overall, Wellcome Open Research values rigor, reproducibility, and the intrinsic value of individual research outputs. 

Developing open research in mental health  

The open research framework returns us to the values of science: to help advance and improve society. By providing immediate and unrestricted access to the latest research, we can accelerate discovery and create a more equitable system of knowledge that is open to all. 

Wellcome Open Research offers one of the most progressive and innovative forms of open research for mental health researchers. As such, we are well-positioned to support researchers encouraged by their funders, institutions, and research assessment bodies to adopt open research practices. The platform continues to host high-profile and impactful mental health papers including: 

• A Research Article that explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the lockdowns, had on adolescent mental health in the UK.  
• A Study Protocol by Gudyanga D et al. which investigates whether drama is a useful tool to engage communities about mental health and looks at whether drama can help raise awareness and educate communities about mental health to reduce stigma in Zimbabwe. 

Key challenges to address 

Mental health problems are set to become one of the world’s biggest causes of ill health by 2030, already affecting millions globally each year and causing significant social and economic impacts. As a result, Wellcome Open Research wants to help define a new era of mental health science that will speed progress by combining strengths from many areas of research. 

Wellcome-funded researchers are using cutting-edge science to understand how the brain, body and environment interact with mental health problems, to unpick how successful interventions work, and to develop treatments and approaches that are more effective and more personalized. Therefore, it is increasingly important to publish your research openly, ensuring maximum impact from your work and that you’re at the forefront of many of the major challenges we face in the 21st century. Key areas of focus include:

• Anxiety, Depression and Mood Disorders 
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry  
• Epidemiology and Population Science  
• Gender, Sexuality, and Health  
• Services, Policy and Law 

Telling the full story of your research 

Wellcome Open Research puts the decisions of what, when, and how to publish in the hands of authors. It removes traditional barriers to publishing by focusing on the rigor and quality of work rather than its novelty. Additionally, we allow authors to publish null, negative, and confirmatory studies. We offer multiple flexible, format-free article types that go beyond the traditional Research Article. These article types cater to the variety of outputs that naturally result from the research cycle. As a result, authors can take full advantage of their Wellcome-funded research. 

A variety of benefits for researchers 

Our rapid publication model offers an innovative alternative to traditional journals publishing, where long delays between submission and publication are expected – on Wellcome Open Research you can publish without delay. The publication costs are covered through article processing charges, which are funded centrally by Wellcome. This means that researchers funded by Wellcome can publish on the platform without direct cost to them. Authors will only be asked to provide details of their grant on submission! 

With fully open publication as standard on Wellcome Open Research, you can receive credit for your work across the research cycle as anyone can read, cite and use your work, including policymakers, practitioners, and fellow researchers. Alongside open publication of the article itself, Wellcome Open Research also advocates a rigorous Open Data Policy so that others can replicate your study, reproduce the original findings, or reuse the data to support their own work.  You can be confident that you are publishing with a reputable outlet that puts transparency and reproducibility at the heart of what we do.  

Finally, your research will draw the attention of Wellcome Open Researcher’s global, multi-disciplinary readership and be indexed in leading databases, such as Scopus, PubMed and Google Scholar. Taken together, these benefits show how you can maximize the impact of your work and improve reproducibility in research. 

Final thoughts 

Ultimately, Wellcome Open Research aims both to serve the research community and develop alongside it. We are building a sustainable, quality alternative to the existing journal publishing landscape, with the principles of open research as the driving force. We can only achieve this by working collaboratively with the research community.   

We’re excited to be working with mental health researchers to advance open research within their communities and across academic publishing. We encourage researchers in this field to get in touch with ideas, thoughts, and feedback – we look forward to hearing from you! 

Please follow us on @WellcomeOpenRes, as we’ll be showcasing published articles, announcing new gateways and collections, and shining a light on interdisciplinary collaborations and open data resources available on Wellcome Open Research that can help support you with you research.