First article published in UCL’s open access megajournal
2 August 2019
UCL’s new megajournal ‘UCL Open’ has published its first article, delivering on our commitment to provide academics, students and the general public with ground-breaking research free of charge.
UCL’s new megajournal ‘UCL Open’ has published its first paper, delivering on our commitment to provide academics, student and the general public with ground-breaking research free of charge.
Launched by UCL Press earlier this year, UCL Open is the first university megajournal and provides an open access and transparent end-to-end publishing model.
The first paper titled “Global evolution and palaeographic distribution of mid-Cretaceous orbitolinids” has been published in ‘UCL Open: Environment’, which focuses on environment-related research and will include contributions from life and earth sciences, as well as medical, physical, population, engineering, and social sciences.
Dr Paul Ayris, CEO of UCL Press and Pro-Vice-Provost (UCL Library Services), said: “We believe that an open science agenda is the best way to ensure the future of academic and scholarly pursuit. UCL Open supports this belief and ensures that knowledge is accessible to all, regardless of location or financial means.
“By establishing UCL Press and the UCL Open megajournal, we’re bringing the publication and dissemination of knowledge back into UCL and challenging prevailing scholarly publishing models across the academic sector. We want to transform the way new knowledge is shared openly and without barriers.”
UCL Open aims to challenge the existing commercial publishing models and provide greater transparency, whilst also showcasing radical and critical thinking applied to real world problems. The platform will be developed and rolled out across a broad range of multidisciplinary research subjects.
Professor David Price, UCL Vice-Provost (Research), said: “UCL seeks to transform how knowledge is shared and applied to humanity’s problems. Only by sharing academic research as openly and widely as possible – with, for example, researchers, educators, students, policymakers, partners and members of the public – can its benefits to humanity be maximised. The traditional scholarly publication system is not fit for, nor does it intend to serve, this purpose.
“Today’s publication will be the first of many going forwards, and UCL Open is a further innovative step towards delivering our ambitions, building on UCL Press’s leading accomplishments in open access. Operating dually as an e-journal with a linked preprint server, accepted papers will first appear as open access preprints, then undergo Open Peer Review before the final article is published in the e-journal. In this way, the entire publishing process will be accessible, transparent, accountable, and faster.”
Preprints are defined as scholarly articles that precede publication in a peer-reviewed journal. They speed the delivery and accessibility of academic research work and lead to faster reuse and collaboration by the research community.
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