Episciences: an overlay publication platform

Christine Berthaud, Laurent Capelli, Jens Gustedt, Claude

Kirchner,

Kevin Loiseau, Agnès Magron, Maud Medves, Alain

Monteil,

Gaëlle Rivérieux, Laurent Romary

ELPUB 2014, Thessaloniki, Greece

Contents

• Background

• Episciences

• Implementation and availability

• Conclusions

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Background

Dramatic increase of

subscription cost in American

libraries

400% between 1986 and

2011

Journals became the subject of a

very lucrative international

business of which libraries are

captive

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Isn’t there a problem ?

Isn’t there a problem ?

Learned societies & Publishers

Researchers and

institutions are creating

value

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The scholarly publishing system: the origins « 1665 »

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Journal des sçavans•Spread & communicate scientific discoveries•Dissemination & archiving on a stable medium

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London•Establish the principles of peer-review and scientific priority•Genesis of scientific communities (scientific networking)

Scholarly publishing nowadays: two niches

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Until 70’s

From 80’s

[Grudin 2013] Journal-conference interaction and the competitive exclusion principle, ACM

Towards a new and fairer publication model

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Dynamising exchanges between scientists : scientific social network

Gathering different data types: images, codes, videos…related to the article

Adaptable & robust tool

Multidisciplinary

Associated to an editorial process of scientific high quality

Financially independent, sustainable and stable

Keeping ALL data under open access policy

[Holzschuch 2012] « There is room for a new publication model, combining Open Archives for immediate access with editorial peer-reviewing »

Towards a new and fairer publication model

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Social networks burst into

the scholarly publishing

sphere, where they bring a

formidable added value

and could benefit from

being connected with the

open access

repositories

http://maverick.inria.fr/~Jean-Marc.Hasenfratz/SIS/Carto/

EpisciencesBuilding a new scholarly publishing

platformbased on a public infrastructure

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An overlay journal platform

What is an overlay journal?

«  A quality assured journal whose content is deposited to and resides in one or more open access repositories »

RIOJA, Repository Interface for Overlaid Journal Archives

Providing traditional publishing services

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• Submitting paper / data• Etablishing author’s precedence• Ownership of ideas

Registration

•Quality control ensured by peer-review•Scholarly recognition of the authorCertification

•Wide communication of the findings

Dissemination

•Preserving a fixed version of an article for future reference and citation

Archival record

•Advanced scientific social networksDiscussion

Offering a definitive & immediate

open access to scientific

results without

embargo nor financial

compensation

Offered services

• Technical–High quality technical environment comprising 24/7 services

–Long-term archiving of articles

–Web design, archiving of the reviews and correspondance

• Editorial–Management of the peer-review process

–Management of the journal volumes and issues

–Contribution to some basic quality checking tasks: metadata, references…

–Communication and community management: social networks, online

discussions

–General visibility: interaction with major indexing services and databases

(DBLP, Scopus…)

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Episciences: stakeholders

• CCSD*provides a technical platform

of peer-reviewing

• Scientific communities are

organised thematically:

–Episciences Maths(Institut

Fourier)http://www.episciences.org/page/epimath

–Episciences IAM Informatics &

Applied Mathematics(Inria) http://www.episciences.org/page/epiiam

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*CCSD is a joint service unitof the CNRS, Inria and the University of Lyon

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Editorial workflow: « Go »

Repository Publication

Repository: HAL, arXiv, CWI…

Journal Publication

Author

Submission to a journal

(editorialboard)

Reviewers

Comments, interactions…

« Go » 

Validation

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Editorial workflow: « No Go »

Repository Publication

Repository: HAL, arXiv, CWI…

Author

Submission to a journal

(editorialboard)

Reviewers

Comments, interactions…

« No Go » 

Validation « No Go »

In case of rejection of publication, the manuscript remains in the archive

Implementation & availability

IAM Landscape

• Wide use of HAL or arXiv repositories

• Significative content available online both in volume

and %

• Autonomous scientists using home made open

source publishing tools

Episciences is created as a support to the community

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Methodology

• Agile method

• Two full-scale journals were successfully launched:

–One well-established journal « DMTCS »

–One newly created journal « JDMDH »

• Platform already up and running

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http://jdmdh.episciences.org

DMTCS http://dmtcs.episciences.org

JDMDHhttp://jdmdh.episciences.org

Well-established scientific journal at the cross-section between Computer Science & Mathematics

Covers all aspects of data mining methods for the Humanities, Emerging domain with a scientific committee who decided to go for an open journal

Created in the late 90’s, first published over a home made server, then moved to OJS

Reaction after a first contact with a predatory publisher

Existing workflow, content & visual identity

First Episciences native journal

Well-organised editorial team No legacy data, more flexibility upon organisation and handling of the tool

Change management Initiate a workflow and structure an editorial team, set up the website

Tools handling Choose a visual identity, define rating criteria

Management of legacy data: 34 issues, 15 vol, 411 articles including proceedings & special issues

Training on the toolBuilding a readership and a reputation

Funding scheme

–Baseline: a consortium of cooperating

institutions (financial ou inkind contribution)

–Possible collaborations with initiatives such as

OpenEdition offering Freemium subscription schemes

–Author Processing Charges in case of additional

copy-editing services

–Hybrid business model, i.e. a combination of

open and closed conditions, is ruled out

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Leaving away the post peer-review publishing paradigm

• Consequences

–No author anonymity

–Immediate high visibility

–Could lead to less poorly written papers -> more

efficient peer-review

–Availability whatever happens during peer-review

–Asset for version management (in case of errata)

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Further features offered by open repositories

• Grobid  -> automatic PDF to metadata recogniser to simplify the

submission process  for an author

• Automatic detection of bibliographical references for linking the

paper to other relevant publications    

• Automatic detection of plagiarism / state of the art (data mining

tool based on keywords, content, bibliographical references)

• A  reference XML version of all papers, which in turn can be used to 

produce different publication formats (HTML, ePub, PDF with a

specific  layout, etc.)

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Conclusions

Issues

• IAM advisory board currently being set up:

- A group of about twenty internationally recognised experts

- Role: select new incoming journals, attract new journals, ensure

the coherence and quality of the journal portfolio, incite synergies

with other communities

• Additional services

- Can be envisaged such as : Copy-editing, Proof-reading,

Branding

- Are subject to a specific business model which will be set up

under needs and demand

• Social functions

- Commenting , sharing articlesELPUB 2014 - 25

A moving landscape…We are in an exciting exploratory phase

Institutional endeavour

• The involvement of scientists is essential

• Academics bodies shall become responsible of their scientific information

policies/strategies

• Foster cross-institutional initiatives

Towards new peer-review models

• Open peer-review: Identification of the reviewer becomes possible, Reviews

could become publication objects of their own

• « Invisible college »: Social networks allows discussions, feedback and many

other forms of knowledge sharing and building. All data issued from these

networks are a fundamental richness that should also be open.

Data journals, journals of the future?

The  Episciences workflow is designed independently of the nature of the initial

document.

It may not be a textual object but a compound  of notes, programs (possibly

active) and data that could benefit from the same kind of certification

process.

Where are we heading to? [verify, reproduce, compare, reuse, extend, share

data]

•Allowing programs reproducibility

•Monitoring of calculations and data sets

•Testing datasets to launch new applications (serendipity)

•Favouring transdisciplinarity

•Referencing, indexing programs, DOI, going towards finer granularity from

document to dataELPUB 2014 - 27

Thank you !

episciences@inria.fr

http://episciences.org/page/epiiam/lang/en