EGU and Copernicus to launch new open-access platform with unique interactive features to serve the Earth, planetary, and space science community
17 March 2020
Today, Copernicus.org and the European Geosciences Union (EGU) are announcing the launch of EGUsphere, a new online platform designed to increase visibility and boost discussion and collaboration within the Earth, planetary, and space science community. EGUsphere will serve as a central repository for the abstracts and presentations from EGU's annual General Assembly and other meetings, with the opportunity to engage in virtual discussions. In the coming months, additional capabilities will offer geoscientists the options to publish standard preprints as well as preprints that are being peer reviewed through the interactive open-access process we have pioneered.
"EGUsphere will be an innovative step forward for the Earth, planetary, and space science community", says EGU President Alberto Montanari. "I hope researchers around the globe will take advantage of the new platform to openly present and discuss their research. EGUsphere is an important step forward towards greener networking."
Within the next couple of weeks, abstracts scheduled to be presented at EGU meetings, including the annual General Assembly, will receive a DOI and appear on the new platform. Starting in April, authors will also have the option of uploading their poster, PICO, and oral presentations prior to or following each EGU meeting.
"The platform will let each author decide whether or not they want to receive comments from the community on their meeting presentations", says EGU President Alberto Montanari. This feedback, he says, can be used to help shape the presentations and to promote discussion about the impact of researchers' work.
Geoscientists will be able to continue discussing presentations and post updated versions before, during, and following each EGU meeting. All abstracts, presentations, and comments will remain permanently archived and accessible on the platform. "EGUsphere will offer additional, long-term visibility for work submitted to the EGU General Assembly, with the added benefit of online discussions that will continue even after the meeting ends", says EGU Programme Committee Chair Susanne Buiter. "I would like to encourage all our abstract authors to explore this exciting new opportunity!"
Later in 2020, authors will also have the ability to submit a preprint to EGUsphere for interactive open-access discussion. Thereby, EGUsphere can serve as a classical preprint server including commenting on preprints, or authors ask for an interactive public peer review of their preprint with the intention to be published in one of EGU's 19 well-established, open-access journals, if the revised version after discussion and peer-review completion is accepted for final journal publication. The final paper will then be added to the journal's online library along with the linked preprint and open discussion. "In terms of platforms, we clearly separate preprints from the journal articles and put the public peer review on top of a preprint server. That enables authors to submit their manuscripts to other journals should the public peer review of their preprint lead to a rejection for final journal publication", explains Copernicus' Managing Director Martin Rasmussen.
"The unique combination of a preprint server with a repository for conference presentations, both freely accessible and with commenting functions, extends the options available for authors while helping facilitate an open, effective, and impactful dissemination of scientific ideas and research findings, which benefits everyone", Rasmussen emphasizes the innovative approach.
Regarding conference abstracts and presentations, EGUsphere uses Copernicus Meetings' new feature of uploading presentations and opening them for public commenting including revisions based on these inputs. "Assigning DOIs to conference abstracts, encouraging authors to upload their presentation under the CC BY 4.0 License, and opening the presentation for comments is from now on our standard in conference organization for all our clients", says Xenia van Edig, Business Development at Copernicus.org. "This is a perfect combination of our experiences as an open-access publisher on the one hand and those of a professional congress organizer on the other hand."