Introducing: The Journal Of Proposals, Ideas, Data, And More

2015-09-20

There are so many scientific journals out there, it’s almost impossible for a newcomer to draw attention, but this one does. Research Ideas and Outcomes, or RIO is not just a new journal, it’s a new type of journal: it will not only publish articles, but also proposals, experimental designs, data, and software. They’re open access and cover “research from all stages of the research cycle”, according to a press release they’ve released.

“The new journal represents a paradigm shift in academic publishing: for the first time, RIO will publish research from all stages of the research cycle, across a broad suite of disciplines, from humanities to science,” the press release reads.

Academic journals are at the very core of modern science, but recently, they’ve been receiving more and more flak, and for good reasons – but that’s another discussion. The thing is, journals publish studies after the work is done; this sounds very logical, but there’s a problem with that: what if your study turns out to be a negative? For example, if you’re trying to study the effects of X drug on Y disease and it turns out to be negative, then you’ll likely find it impossible to publish your research anywhere, even though it’s perfectly valid and useful science. RIO will publish ideas and outputs from all stages of the research cycle: proposals, experimental designs, data, software, research articles, project reports, policy briefs, project management plans, and more. Personally, I agree with them – this is a game-changer.

“I’m proud to pioneer the first journal which can publish research from all stages of the research process,” said Prof. Lyubomir Penev, Co-Founder of RIO and Pensoft. “For the first time, researchers can get formal publication credit for previously ‘hidden’ parts of their work like written research proposals. We can publish all outputs in one journal; the same journal – RIO.”

But Research Ideas and Outcomes is about more than just publishing different kinds of submissions, it’s about providing a new approach to science – reducing redundancy and publishing the entire research cycle, as opposed to just the results.

“RIO is not just about different kinds of submissions, though that is a crucial feature and certainly unique for publishing ongoing or even proposed research: it is also about linking those submissions together across the research cycle, about reducing the time from submission to publication, about collaborative authoring and reviewing, about mapping to societal challenges, about technical innovation, about enabling reuse and about giving authors more choice in what features they actually want from the journal.” said Dr. Daniel Mietchen, a founding editor of RIO.

(Source: www.zmescience.com)