What is Arcadia’s publishing platform?

You’re on it! We are launching our publishing efforts using a platform called PubPub. We’re using it to share “pubs,” our detailed research products. We’re also creating “project narratives,” running narratives that put each new pub into context. All of the data associated with a pub will be accessible through clear links or embeds.

Our hope is that in using this free, open platform, we will remove barriers that slow down the release of useful scientific information, avoid the gatekeeping of journal-led peer review by opening comments to anyone, and gain the chance to experiment with new, more effective styles of formatting and interactivity.

How are individual contributors to Arcadia’s science recognized in posts?

All contributors to a publication will be listed in alphabetical order by surname. Those responsible for the content and execution of the work will also be “byline” authors, and their names will appear in the pub’s citation. If you prefer to be anonymous, you may use a pseudonym for your first and last name. We do not have access to your email address.

To best capture the unique nature of each contributor’s input, we are adapting the “CRediT” system. Per casrai.org, “CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is high-level taxonomy, including 14 roles, that can be used to represent the roles typically played by contributors to scientific scholarly output. The roles describe each contributor’s specific contribution to the scholarly output.”

How can I provide feedback on Arcadia’s science?

We think that science is best when all feedback — positive and negative — is shared openly. We therefore ask that all feedback on our posts be provided publicly via comments on our posts. To provide comments, individuals will need to create an account at PubPub here (sign-up is easy and requires only your email address).

You can also use Twitter! Reply when @ArcadiaScience tweets about a pub or include the pub’s URL in your own tweet, and it will be pulled into a feed that appears at the bottom of the pub.

Having technical issues? Contact [email protected] or visit the PubPub Help Community.

How will Arcadia use comments provided by the community?

We will use the comments to improve upon our science! We also hope that through this engagement, we can learn to make our research more useful to you. It’s a win-win!

What is the copyright status of posts published on the platform? 

The copyright for all of the work published on our platform is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license by default. This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format so long as attribution is given to Arcadia.

Can work from Arcadia’s publishing platform be cited?

All of our work is citable (just click the “CITE” button on the right side of a pub to view and copy the full citation). Our pubs will ultimately be assigned a unique DataCite digital object identifier (DOI) as a persistent identifier.

How does Arcadia approach patents with respect to the science described on the publishing platform?

While Arcadia does file patent applications occasionally, we will reference any patents (pending or issued) directly in our posts on the publishing platform. If the post does not include a reference to patents, then we consider the science described in the post to be open to the community, and we encourage you to adapt upon and improve the science that we have shared.

To ensure that the scientific community is comfortable providing substantive comments on our science, we will not file any patent applications for which a commenting member of the community would be considered an inventor.  In other words, the community should feel free to comment and share ideas openly — we will not patent your inventions.