Publish with ScienceOpen

Researchers can publish different types of manuscripts on ScienceOpen. Your work will be published with a creative commons CC BY 4.0 attribution license and assigned a Crossref document object identifier (DOI). Submission of articles or posters is free of charge.

To submit a manuscript for publication, first register at ScienceOpen and create a user account (www.scienceopen.com/register) attached to your ORCID ID.

Publishing your work on ScienceOpen

You are invited to publish your work on ScienceOpen to get credited immediately for your work and let your peers review and comment your paper.

Our BASIC publishing model with FREE submission and open peer-reviewing works in 2 steps:

Step 1 — you submit your manuscript as a PDF and then it is uploaded as a preprint on ScienceOpen Preprints to receive immediately a fully citable CrossRef document object identifier (DOI) for your work. See the next section for how it works. You can then use the ScienceOpen platform to invite peers as potential reviewers. Submitted reviews will be openly displayed on ScienceOpen together with your work. According to the recommendations of the reviewers you may modify your work and submit a second, revised version, if required.

Step 2 — after having received at least 2 independent reviews with recommendation for acceptance in its present version, you can decide to finally publish your work on ScienceOpen Research. We will then provide a full typesetting and digital conversion of the manuscript to prepare a final PDF and XML version of your work. Your work is furthermore automatically added to our publication platform with over 90 million scientific records. ONLY if you made your decision for this option in step 2, we will charge you or your institution 400 USD for our additional services.

Publishing preprints

The “Preprint” is a format to share early stage results with a larger community for feedback, while retaining the right to publish formally in a scholarly journal at a later date. Wikipedia hosts a list of academic journals by preprint policy and publisher policies can also be found at can also be found at SHERPA/RoMEO.

Submit your preprint via the “Submit a manuscript” button on our ScienceOpen Research Preprints collection page. The simple upload form allows you to link your ORCID ID, add co-authors, declare funding, link to datasets and more. After submission your preprint will undergo an editorial review to check for completeness and basic scholarly integrity in line with our general publication guidelines. Preprints in all languages are welcome but we recommend to include an English language abstract and title to make your work accessible to a broader audience worldwide. After acceptance by the editorial team, your preprint will be published on ScienceOpen at ScienceOpen Research Preprints with a Crossref digital object identifier (DOI), a CC BY 4.0 attribution license and a preprint flag. The preprint is then open to peer review on the ScienceOpen platform. See our peer review guidelines and get involved.

ScienceOpen has a preprint filter integrated in our search engine to make preprints easily discoverable among our over 90 million records – 2 million of which are preprints. ScienceOpen aggregates preprints by integrating arXiv, BioRxiv, Preprints.org, PeerJ Preprints, ChemRxiv, and Open Science Framework repositories. Simply check the ‘preprint’ box after selecting the filter to restrict your search to preprint content. Preprint articles can then be filtered by discipline or keyword and sorted by Altmetric score, average rating, citations, date of publication, view count, and relevance.

Preprints can also be added to ScienceOpen Collections by collection editors and can at a later stage be exchanged for a fully published article (see the first section above). Adding preprints speeds up research communication and diversifies available research on the topic of the collection. Preprint authors can at any time add a lay summary, change a thumbnail image, or keywords and disciplines to increase the discoverability of their research within the ScienceOpen environment and the wider scholarly community.

There are many benefits to publishing preprints and including them in ongoing research. You would like to hear an expert opinion on your work? Invite a reviewer! At ScienceOpen, your published preprint can be openly and publicly reviewed by expert peers.

Publishing posters

Conference posters are an effective way to communicate the essence of a research project in a compact space and provide an opportunity to present preliminary results and get feedback from the scientific community before publishing. Early career researchers often have their first experience of presenting their work in the form of a conference poster.

To help researchers share their results beyond the conference, ScienceOpen allows any scholar to publish a poster on our platform for free in just a few minutes. Simply register on ScienceOpen with your ORCID and then click on the ‘Submit manuscript’ button in the ScienceOpen Posters Collection header. Upload your poster as a PDF file and add metadata such as title, abstract and keywords plus a catchy image and you are ready to go! An editor will review your submission before publication. ScienceOpen offers a range of tools to increase your digital profile. You can share your published poster on social media with just a click and then track usage on the article page. Next to a full suite of tools to promote and track usage and impact, all posters receive a CC BY license.

Conference organizers interested in promoting a selection of their posters or proceedings, as for example the Model Reduction of Parametrized Systems conference that took place in Nantes in April 2018, should contact the ScienceOpen team for a quote. A branded collection landing page can significantly increase your reach.

This feature is still in beta testing, so your feedback is particularly welcome under feedback@scienceopen.com.

How to peer review?

ScienceOpen offers a full suite of tools to peer review preprints and posters. See our peer review guidelines. Reviews are published with the author’s ORCID and a Crossref DOI for certain discoverability. Any user on ScienceOpen can invite another researcher to formally review any preprint.

To peer review a preprint, first register with ScienceOpen and ORCID. During the registration, link your ScienceOpen profile to ORCID publication history. Reviewers are required to have published at least five scientific manuscripts. If you have questions about updating your ORCID profile to reflect your prior publications, feel free to contact us here. Before you review an article, make sure to check out our Checklist for Reviewers and read the detailed guidelines for peer review at ScienceOpen here. Reviewers have to declare any potential conflicting interests before submitting their review – read our Competing Interests policy for more information.

Competing interests

Reviewers and authors must declare any potential conflicting interests arising from personal, financial or professional/academic relationships or dependencies that may have influenced their objectivity or professional judgment. Authors should declare any conflicting interests upon manuscript submission; reviewers before submitting their review.

The transparent declaration of competing interests allows others to evaluate the neutrality of the reviewer’s judgment and to estimate the influence of third parties on the presented content.

Please see here for further details or contact the editorial office (feedback@scienceopen.com) in case you are uncertain whether a specific conflict has to be declared or not.