Join Royal Society Open Science's birthday party to celebrate the history and successes of the last decade.
I’m glad to be able to write this short blog to launch a year of celebration of the 10th birthday of Royal Society Open Science. I invite you to join us in our extended birthday party (though I am sorry not to be able to offer cake to every reader and contributor to the journal this time around).
Birthdays are an opportunity to showcase successes and to pause and reflect on the journey so far, and where the path may take us in future. The birthday of Royal Society Open Science is no different.
The journal started modestly, publishing around 250 papers in its first full calendar year, but this had more than doubled to almost 600 last year. Our authorship is global, with the majority of papers published from non-UK-based authors. We’ve published papers from authors at all stages of their career, from Fellows of the Royal Society, rising stars (as part of our ‘New Talent’ series of special collections), and students just starting out. Indeed, as is referenced by our first Editor-in-Chief, Prof Jeremy Sanders in our accompanying recorded discussion, we’ve published papers by high school students in Pakistan and popstars from Thailand, and UK students undertaking work experience at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source.
The journal has led our portfolio in open science initiatives. We’ve supported Registered Reports more or less from our launch, and in more recent times encouraged authors to submit their approved PCI Registered Reports to the journal for version-of-record publication. With Prof Chris Chambers, we’ve adapted the Registered Report workflow to allow for a pre-registered Replication studies (though we have always welcomed replications submitted as regular research papers, too). We’ve worked with the Royal Society of Chemistry for most the decade, collaborating with them to peer review and publish chemistry research. With our stable-mate journals, Proceedings A and Proceedings B, we are a venue for evidence synthesis work. Prompted in part by the prior existence of evidence synthesis, and the growing list of scientific and technological challenges policymakers face, the journal broke new ground in launching a section of the journal to support researchers and policymakers at the interface of Science, Society and Policy. Last year, we announced we would permit – nay, encourage – the submission of complete manuscripts based on content first appearing in the modular publishing platform Octopus. This is not a comprehensive list of all we’ve achieved in the journal in the spirit of openness – I’ve not mentioned transparent peer review or open data, for instance – nor does it imply we are going to rest on our laurels, but it does showcase how far we have come in trying to make science more open and, dare I say it, better for practitioners.
It feels improbable that the journal is a decade from launch – time really does fly! I have been the Senior Publishing Editor for much of that time, taking this role on at the end of 2015. It has been a pleasure to work with so many enthusiastic journal editors, authors, referees and Royal Society colleagues over the last 9 years. I encourage readers to visit our celebration’s landing page regularly this year as we share more material from first decade. I am certainly going to enjoy revisiting our history and successes. You, the communities we serve and work with, have been with us from the beginning – in closing, and looking forward, I feel I could do worse than quote from Prof Dame Wendy Hall’s most recent Editorial “I am excited to see what the next 10 years will bring, I hope you will be too.”
Image credit: Beacon of Crystals in a wild forest by Shayam Rathod. Royal Society Photography Competition 2023 microimaging runner-up.
