Link: https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/

Wellcome Open Research is an open research publishing platform for Wellcome funded researchers that aims to remove the barriers to publication and ensure research findings are quickly discoverable. The platform uses an author-driven approach where authors and their collaborators can rapidly publish any results, from traditional narrative-based articles to incremental findings, methods, protocols, software tools, datasets and negative/null results.

The platform uses a post-publication peer review model, where articles are published first (after it has been checked by an in-house editorial team). Once the authors have finalized the manuscript, the article (with its associated source data) is published within a week, enabling immediate viewing and citation. Expert referees are selected and invited, and their reports and names are published alongside the article, together with the authors’ responses and comments from registered users. As reviews come in authors are encouraged to publish revised versions of their article. All versions of an article are linked and independently citable. Articles that pass peer review are then indexed in external databases such as PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar.

Remarks from the Director Professor Stephen Gordon

“This week we published our first article on the platform that describes the framework for Controlled Human Infection Model (CHIM) studies in Malawi: https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/browse.  My reflection on this process was that it was very fast (a week to publication from submission) and so it offers groups with a publication backlog a real chance to catch up.  Also, publication is critical in grant production – this high-speed method allows your published review to be cited in your grant, even if both are worked up at the same time. 

Finally, there are certain papers that struggle – post-publication review allows you to address those difficult reviewers without the delay and potential career damage.  So, all in all, I strongly encourage you to publish in this way. Another feature of Wellcome Open Research is the opportunity to create dedicated areas on the platform for Wellcome Centres and Institutions called Gateways.  The only example of a Gateway that is currently being used effectively can be seen through the KEMRI centre in Kilifi,  Kenya: https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/gateways/KEMRI. The plan here at MLW is to create our own Gateway, and this will happen when collectively there are five articles from MLW published on the platform. So, if you are interested in publishing some of your research please do consider Wellcome Open Research.

 Publication in a Gateway will increase the chance that non-specialists will see your work, and that the wider research community will more fully understand the breadth of MLW’s work.  For the Gateway to be effective, we would like at least one paper from every research group in the very near future.  I look forward to seeing how this grows.”