Materials science is increasingly at the forefront of both academic and societal progress. It is clear that these advances will continue to be shaped by cutting-edge research from across this field. As a discipline, materials science has rapidly grown in profile as one of the most vibrant and pioneering areas of study, resulting in substantial growth in the numbers of published articles and associated research materials. ¹ Materials science is the predominant factor for innovations in industrialized societies. ² Significant technological innovations, such as flexible biosensors and recyclable materials created from excess carbon dioxide, have the potential to address huge challenges and improve societal well-being. ³ In other fields, advances in materials often underpin attempts to drive sustainable change, such as in the use of perovskite materials to support next-generation energy storage solutions. ⁴ In order to expedite these discoveries and maximize their impact, ensuring the availability of open and reproducible materials science research is vitally important, as well as embracing the opportunities provided by emerging cross-disciplinary fields such as artificial intelligence. ⁵ The open sharing of materials research and data can encourage further exploration, improving collaboration between researchers and, ultimately, accelerating the discovery, design, and deployment of new materials as well as new business models. Materials Open Research, a new publication venture from publishers F1000 and Taylor & Francis, has been conceived and launched with these principles in mind. All research shared on the platform will aim to provide impact, nurture innovation, and lead to a more sustainable future.

The publishing model of Materials Open Research is designed to speed up the dissemination of research, improve transparency and reproducibility, and enable a more equitable approach to publishing. Articles are published rapidly following a series of rigorous prepublication checks which ensure originality, readability, availability of FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data, and compliance with various guidelines and policies. Methodologies should provide sufficient details of the materials, methods and software used so that the work can be assessed and reproduced by others.

Post-publication peer review means there is no delay in other researchers, practitioners and the wider community being able to access the work during the peer review process. This process is completely transparent, with all reviewer reports and reviewer names and affiliations published alongside the article, with the aim of mitigating against potential biases, further contextualising research through accompanying scholarly dialogue, and giving public credit to the peer reviewers for their valuable work. Randomised controlled trials have also shown that open, signed peer review reports tend to provide more constructive, in-depth feedback than anonymous peer review processes. ⁶ The authors’ response to the peer review report is also published, fostering an open and collaborative dialogue between authors and reviewers. Where traditional approaches to scholarly peer review have often been characterised as a ‘black box’, Materials Open Research is built around a set of fundamentally transparent principles to help demystify the process, as well as better informing and educating the academic community. ⁷

Similar to preprints, articles on Materials Open Research remain published and discoverable on Google Scholar, regardless of the outcome of peer review. Articles that pass peer review will then be further indexed in relevant bibliographic databases, once the platform has undergone a formal evaluation process by those indexing services. The versioning system of Materials Open Research also allows authors to ‘update’ articles that have already passed peer review. This can be particularly helpful when important but incremental improvements are made to methods and protocols, when a quick update is more appropriate than an entirely new publication. These features and innovations enable Materials Open Research to better meet the requirements of an increasingly progressive and transparent research ecosystem around materials science and technology. The platform has been launched in close collaboration with the scientific community, including a diverse group of advisors, with these developments in mind. The Advisory Board is made up of subject experts who act as ambassadors for the platform to the global research community. Advisors also provide constructive input and guidance on publishing policies, aims & scope, and the strategic direction of the platform.

Responding further to the evolving landscape of materials science research, Materials Open Research offers a wider range of article types than those typically found in traditional journals. Formats such as Study Protocols, Data Notes, Software Tool Articles and Method Articles, aim to go beyond the boundaries set by more traditional article types, catering to authors wishing to disseminate valuable information which contributes positively to the cumulative body of knowledge available to the research community. In addition to these article types, Materials Open Research encourages the publication of null, negative or confirmatory studies. Such results can be beneficial in demonstrating why a method was not successful in solving a specific problem and can also help to combat the problem of research waste. ⁸ This allows authors to document the whole life cycle of the research process to maximise the value of their project.

In addition, the platform supports the publication of dedicated collections which enable the curation of thematic research, conference outputs and community projects. The scope of a collection can fall anywhere across the entire breadth of Materials Open Research’s scope, including fundamental research, applications of materials, and research relating to all classes of materials. Collections can be multidisciplinary, bringing different communities together around a new research question with their own ontologies. We have already partnered with several researchers to launch our first collection on designing materials for a circular economy and we are open to receiving collection proposals from the community.

Major funded materials efforts currently underway internationally support FAIR Data Principles in varying degrees. As an example, the Materials Genome Initiative Strategic Plan, recently released as part of a federal multi-agency initiative to support adoption of methods for accelerating materials development, recognized FAIR Data Principles as significant in ensuring best practices in data management. ^{9, 10} The report noted that, not only do FAIR materials data help to advance the goals of MGI, these data management guidelines are also useful in making materials data “AI-ready”, another driver of materials innovation. Materials Open Research endorses FAIR Data Principles and has adopted a strong open data policy requiring submitted written works to be accompanied by the underlying data and software supporting the research. While Materials Open Research’s endorsement and adoption of FAIR and open data are important steps, it is the publication’s guidance to authors on implementing FAIR practices such as selecting repositories to store accompanying data and use of persistent identifiers to cite and link their data to their submitted paper that help authors take the broad FAIR Data Principles and put the guidelines into action in researcher’s practices.

Moving forward, Materials Open Research will be actively seeking new partners in the materials research community. We are eager to work with key stakeholders, including authors, peer reviewers, professional organizations, research funders, universities, learned societies, and industry, in ensuring the platform becomes an essential venue for the publication of materials science and technology research using a modern, progressive and open approach.

We’re proud to launch Materials Open Research in collaboration with our first affiliate partner – the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining (IOM3). IOM3 is a major science and engineering institution whose activities promote and develop all aspects of the materials cycle globally, from exploration and extraction, through characterisation, processing, and application, to product recycling and reuse. IOM3 has been supporting the sharing of technical information and research for over 150 years and is keen to support researchers of all career stages in sharing and publishing their results, data, and other relevant outputs.

Materials Open Research provides IOM3 members with a dedicated gateway to rapidly and openly disseminate their research. The gateway enables IOM3 to support transparency and reproducibility of research, which is essential to building trust in research and its practical applications. Events and conferences associated with IOM3 can also benefit from the ability publish all kinds of outputs from their meetings, from peer reviewed research through to technical reports, posters, and slide decks.

We are committed to offering these innovations and benefits to a wide range of materials science organizations. Materials Open Research can provide a personalized open research hub or ‘gateway’ which supports the publication of a variety of outputs, including non-peer reviewed content, and can help to maximize an organization’s research visibility and impact through open access publication and industry-standard metadata that supports discoverability. We thank you in advance for your interest and engagement with Materials Open Research, for your support of an innovative publication venue and invite you to read our first articles.

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