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PRESS RELEASE

Today, the University of Tsukuba has announced that it has signed a contract with F1000 Research Ltd to develop the first open research publishing gateway that will enable researchers to publish in either English or Japanese.

Not only will the publishing gateway make it simple for authors affiliated with the University of Tsukuba to publish any research or data they wish to share rapidly, openly and transparently, but it will also enable those studying the humanities and social sciences to choose whether to publish in English or in Japanese.

Indeed, English holds a preeminent position as the “lingua franca” in international scientific communication, despite the majority of the world’s scholars not possessing English as their first language. This does not necessarily mean, however, that studies published in other languages are of less value or quality.

This forward-thinking publishing approach means that researchers specializing in fields such as humanities and social sciences will be able to publish in an international journal but choose which language they feel most comfortable writing in, as well as what befits their field of study the most.

Indeed, the humanities and social sciences fields are where publishing in a regional language would enable more profound understanding and knowledge sharing, given these academic disciplines are often dedicated to the study of philosophy, history, literature, society, law, economy, and so on of a specific culture. Japanese language research articles will include abstracts and metadata in both Japanese and English, and will be indexed in relevant bibliographic databases in both English and Japanese.

All outputs will be published open access so free for anyone to read, and will use the F1000Research publishing model that combines the benefits of pre-printing (providing rapid publication with no editorial bias) with mechanisms to assure quality and transparency (invited and open peer review, archiving and indexing). This publishing model is also used on the customised platforms that F1000Research provides for major global funders such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and many others. F1000 Research has also just been awarded the contract to provide the European Commission with a publishing platform using this publishing model to support beneficiaries of the Horizon 2020 programme. 

The F1000Research publishing model is designed to serve authors and is author-driven from beginning to end, from participation in open review to copyright ownership. The gateway will also offer researchers an open and transparent peer review process and have a mandatory FAIR data policy to provide full and easy access to the source data underlying the results.

The gateway, which is due to launch in November 2020, will be hosted on the F1000Research site and will adopt its pioneering approach to open science publishing. It will cover all fields in the physical, biological, medical, and social sciences, arts and humanities, in all forms, from traditional research articles to a protocols, registered reports, data notes, case studies and much more.

Kyosuke Nagata, President of the University of Tsukuba said: “Scholarly communication is about to change drastically.

“In response to the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2002, various initiatives are underway around the world. One of the factors behind this is that the institutional subscription to electronic journal collections, article publishing charges (APCs) to authors, and the fees paid by individuals to read published articles are getting to be quite a burden. As a result, Germany has been negotiating with major electronic journal publishers for a fair price model and open access (OA). There are also movements such as OA2020, which promotes OA by divesting electronic journal subscription fees to invest in APCs, and Plan S, which demands immediate OA for all published articles supported by public funds.

“These initiatives share not only financial difficulties but also academia’s determination to bring scholarly communication back to the hands of the academic community, with which I fully sympathize. Japan has not yet demonstrated its leadership in OA in the world, but we aim to take the lead in exploring the future model of scholarly communication by opening Japan’s first gateway in F1000Research, which implements an innovative OA model.”

Hideo Kigoshi, Vice President for Research of the University of Tsukuba said: “Although the term ‘open science’ is rather ambiguous and vague, I have no doubt that academic research results are public property belonging to the entire world, therefore, building an environment in which people all over the world can have access to such research, is a vital challenge for the world. In this respect, I have high expectations for the F1000Research’s innovative way of publishing research results as a concrete measure towards open science.

“The University of Tsukuba is promoting its research as a comprehensive university that has an extremely wide range of fields from natural sciences, humanities and social sciences to sports sciences, and arts and design sciences. We hope that the publication in the University of Tsukuba gateway will enrich international outlook of the research results of our university. We believe that this will eventually lead to the creation of new fields necessary to solve global issues that cannot be addressed by existing research fields alone.”

Saburo Aoki, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Tsukuba said: “There are over 200 researchers in our Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences studying and analysing humanity, its society and activity through such varying issues as the formation of sustainable societies, the succession and development of civilizations, language and communication, and so on. The research results, in the form of monographs and scholarly articles, are published in various languages, not only in English, but also in Japanese, French, and Chinese for example according to the research discussion. Although the number of papers written in English has been on the rise recently, it is nevertheless evident that many fields, such as Japanese philosophy, history, literature, law and society, for instance, can only be fully discussed in Japanese.

“It is, therefore, great news for us to hear that the gateway of our university will be set up within F1000Research and that, for the first time, the gateway will publish papers in Japanese. Moreover, papers in Japanese, having passed open peer review, will be indexed in databases such as Scopus, ensuring even more visibility for high-level research results in Japanese. I am convinced that this will lead to a more dynamic sharing of knowledge beyond language barriers.”

Rebecca Lawrence, Managing Director of F1000 Research Ltd said: “The leadership and innovation shown by the University of Tsukuba in its desire to not only embrace open research publishing practices but also establish the first gateway that is multilingual, is a significant step forward for open science in Asia, and indeed for the rest of the world.

“We believe that research and scholarship, and indeed language, should have no barriers and we will continue to adapt the model to ensure it best meets the needs of the communities that we serve. In addition, with an initial focus on the humanities and social science fields, the University of Tsukuba gateway has the potential to help revolutionise how the results of research in Japan are disseminated”.

About F1000 Research Ltd

F1000 Research Ltd provides innovative open access publishing platforms offering rapid publication and open peer review, whilst supporting data deposition and sharing for the research community. F1000 Research Ltd’s own publishing platform, F1000Research, was launched in 2013 and was the first open research publishing platform combining the ability to publish rapidly with functionality to ensure transparency, robustness and reproducibility of research. Building upon the growth and success of its core platform, F1000 Research Ltd also provides fully managed, open research publishing services directly to research funders and institutions, including Wellcome, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and soon to launch with the European Commission. F1000 Research Ltd is wholly owned by the Taylor and Francis Group, an Informa Group company.

Website: https://f1000research.com/ Twitter: @F1000Research

About the University of Tsukuba

The University of Tsukuba was originally founded as a Normal School in 1872, becoming the first institution of higher education in Japan. In 1973, it was relocated from Tokyo to Tsukuba Science City and re-born as a new concept university. Taking full advantage of being at the heart of Japan’s premier science city, the university has developed innovative systems in research, education and management. Over the years, it has flourished as one of Japan’s top research universities in diverse fields such as the humanities, social sciences, natural and life sciences, engineering, medicine, sports sciences, arts and design; boasting Nobel laureates, Olympic and Paralympic medalists as well as successful entrepreneurs amongst its faculty and graduates.

Website: http://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/