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Editorial
. 2021 Apr 19;3(4):000232.
doi: 10.1099/acmi.0.000232. eCollection 2021.

Converting Access Microbiology to an open research platform: focus group and AI review tool research results

Alexandra M Howat  1 , Alexander Mulhern  1 , Hilary F Logan  1 , Gaynor Redvers-Mutton  1 , Chris Routledge  1 , Justin Clark  1
Affiliations
Editorial

Converting Access Microbiology to an open research platform: focus group and AI review tool research results

Alexandra M Howat et al. Access Microbiol. .

Abstract

The Microbiology Society will be launching an open research platform in October 2021. Developed using funding from the Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the platform will combine our current sound-science journal, Access Microbiology, with artificial intelligence (AI) review tools and many of the elements of a preprint server. In an effort to improve the rigour, reproducibility and transparency of the academic record, the Access Microbiology platform will host both preprints of articles and their Version of Record (VOR) publications, as well as the reviewer reports, Editor's decision, authors' response to reviewers and the AI review reports. To ensure the platform meets the needs of our community, in February 2020 we conducted focus group meetings with various stakeholders. Using articles previously submitted to Access Microbiology, we undertook testing of a range of potential AI review tools and investigated the technical feasibility and utility of including these tools as part of the platform. In keeping with the open and transparent ethos of the platform, we present here a summary of the focus group feedback and AI review tool testing.

Keywords: Wellcome Trust; open research platform; open science; preprints; publishing; society publisher.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors work for the Microbiology Society. The authors declare no other conflicts of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Proposed model of the Access Microbiology open research platform presented to the focus groups.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Menke J, Roelandse M, Ozyurt B, Martone M, Bandrowski A. The rigor and transparency index quality metric for assessing biological and medical science methods. iScience. 2020;23:101698. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2020.101698. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

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