Emerald Open Research hits 50th milestone

22nd June 2020

As we celebrate our 50th piece of content being published on Emerald Open Research, we wanted to use this time to reflect on our journey since launching the platform.

We launched Emerald Open Research in 2019 to give authors the opportunity to openly and rapidly publish their research findings related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

We were proud to be the first publisher to offer an open access platform for HSS authors that allows them to increase the discoverability, accessibility and impact of their research. Here we look back on our journey since launch and highlight three things we have learned along the away.

1. We need to work more closely with our HSS author community to create an open landscape

The open peer review process and open data policy on Emerald Open Research are both areas which our author community were not familiar before launch, however what we have seen since then is a real appetite from authors to embrace this new way of publishing. We have had several authors share their experience of the open peer review process, describing it as an ‘educational experience for all concerned, the reviewer, the author and the reader’. Although encouraging data sharing has been challenging, we have been able to work closely with F1000 and our authors to educate them on the importance of open data and help them make their data openly available.

2. Partnering with new communities can help us collectively make a difference

Since launching Emerald Open Research, we have worked closely with a number of associations and institutions to develop partnerships that can help us collectively drive change in related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Examples of these partnerships are N8 AgriFood and CEEMAN, both of which have recently launched collections on Emerald Open Research. We’ve worked closely with these groups to publish collections that ties their research together and reaches a truly global audience to drive positive change.  We’re committed to continue to work without communities to offer them innovate publishing solutions.

3. We need to react quickly to share crucial findings

While much has been documented about STEM Research projects that have been mobilised in response to COVID-19, research focusing on the wider impact of the global pandemic on society is equally critical. As a publisher we had a role to play in helping to facilitate the publication and sharing of critical research to benefit society. In early March 2020, we launched an Open Access Publishing fund to help researchers across the world immediately publish their research. Through doing this we have been able to create a COVID 19 collection dedicated to sharing vital research findings. We will continue to use Emerald Open Research to share such crucial findings whilst ensuring they are easily accessible and discoverable to all.

Read all the latest research published on Emerald Open Research.