Innovative, Fast, and High-Quality Peer Review with e-SCRIPTS – the ICST’s Journal Publication System

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ICST is exploiting the opportunities offered by Web 2.0 technologies to improve the quality, rapidity, openness, and effectiveness of the collaboration within the scientific community. Central to this strategic perspective, e-SCRIPTS enables an innovative, fast, and high-quality review process, for both the ICaST Magazine and the portfolio of ICST Transactions.

ICST Tools for Global Collaboration in the Research Community

In order to facilitate universal and multidisciplinary cooperation within the global research community, ICST has developed a set of tools (e.g., collaborative tools, submission systems, online repositories, and social networking platforms) that assist ICST and EAI (European Alliance for Innovation – a newly formed, nonprofit umbrella organization for ICST and a number of European ICT organizations) members in all different stages of the collaboration process. For instance, these tools provide now or will provide solutions for the identification of potential partners for project proposals and for joint research activities in general, for soliciting rapid feedback on novel ideas and solution guidelines, for the early dissemination of preliminary and promising research results and experience reports. In addition, the ICST spectrum of online tools will support all society members involved in conference/workshop organization, creation of project consortia, or building of personal/professional networks.

Using Web 2.0 approaches and technologies, ICST provides an open and interoperable infrastructure for scientific collaboration that supports innovation activities and their easy/rapid dissemination, thus maximizing international visibility and community/market impact. As researchers are by nature active prosumers of scientific content, the ICST dissemination and cooperation strategy capitalizes on emergent Web technologies to provide the ICT community with the tools that allow public/private academic/industrial organizations to easily and effectively link, share, disseminate, and cooperate in real time.

A First Glance on e-SCRIPTS – the Society’s Multidisciplinary Journal Publication System

e-SCRIPTS is a peer reviewing system that offers a promising and innovative alternative to the traditional way of presenting, disseminating, and sharing results of scientific research efforts. e-SCRIPTS builds on Web 2.0-inspired mechanisms, to revolutionize the scholarly publication process. By combining Web-based interactivity with the latest research on peer-review publications, including self-optimizing processes that lead to fair, unbiased, and autonomous review systems, e-SCRIPTS aims at substantially reducing the timeframe of the scientific publication life cycle, thus accelerating the transformation of research ideas into practical applications, with potentially significant impact on both the scientific community as well as industry innovators.

Papers submitted to e-SCRIPTS are peer-reviewed and ranked by ICST members. The members must bid for the right to review a paper; e-SCRIPTS’ unique algorithms determine the winning bidder based upon a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria, including the bidder’s H-index, as detailed in the following section. In addition, by providing immediate release of information (e.g., abstracts delivered as soon as they are submitted) through access monitoring, e-SCRIPTS accelerates research dissemination and shortens the innovation cycle.

By protecting published results through fast publication (papers are immediately published when accepted, without waiting for the time to compile an entire journal issue) and monitored registration of readers, e-SCRIPTS encourages the early and open exchange of research ideas, thus creating an effective channel for the transfer of theoretical results to practical, industrial, and business-oriented applications.

A Detailed Overview of e-SCRIPTS – Advantages and Opportunities

By delving into finer details, the portfolio of ICST publications (primarily ICST Transactions, but also the ICaST technical articles submitted  from an open call) are powered by e-SCRIPTS, a unique bidding and reviewing process under the auspices of the European Commission. By using Web 2.0-inspired mechanisms and exploiting latest research on peer-reviewed publications, e-SCRIPTS provides a revolutionary alternative to the traditional way of reviewing, presenting, and disseminating scientific results. Thanks to its innovative approach, e-SCRIPTS:

• provides an unbiased selection of the best reviewers available for each specific paper submission (based on internationally recognized bibliometric indicators such as H-index);
• significantly reduces the timeframe of the scientific publication life cycle (e.g., through automated review suggestions and bidding, and immediate publication of accepted articles);
• accelerates the transformation of research ideas into practical applications (for instance, via immediate abstract accessibility at paper submission time and free availability of full article contents for all ICST members after paper acceptance).

As a result, ICST publications provide a unique opportunity to publish scientific research results through a publication model that combines high quality peer-review with instantaneous publication, objectivity, and transparency unparalleled in the scientific publication world. Aside from serving archival purposes and providing unique benefits to authors, the publication immediacy and Web 2.0 interactivity (e.g., possibility to add/ask for comments on published contents and to interact with article authors) make ICST publications an important tool in supporting and accelerating research, technology transfer, and innovation.

Through various distribution agreements, ICST publications will be available and referenced in leading online databases. Accepted papers will be assigned all major bibliographic identifiers (e.g., ISSN and DOI) and will be indexed by all major international indexing organizations. Published papers will be accessible through individual and institutional subscriptions; but to support and promote the adoption of the journal series’ novel publication model, ICST will grant complimentary access to its members for an introductory period of time.

Publication of papers submitted via e-SCRIPTS will be characterized by the following unique features:

• Accelerated publishing lifecycle. Through a reviewer-initiated revolutionary paper evaluation process, ICST publications guarantee a substantially shortened scientific publication lifecycle of days instead of years;
• Community-enforced objectivity and transparency. Via a ranking system based on direct community feedback, ICST publications define scientific excellence through an automated system with qualified reviewers. Given its transparent and community-based editorial processes, ICST publications ensure total professional objectivity in the review and selection processes;
• Excellence-based reviewer ranking. Through a unique ranking system (based on internationally recognized bibliometric indicators, such as H-index), ICST publications target the selection of reviewers with the highest level of academic excellence and the technical expertise most closely related to the topics addressed by submitted papers;
• Publication by community-defined excellence. Via not only e-SCRIPTS, but also AGORA and the Science Rewards Program, ICST publications will become an international reference point as the most relevant publication venues based on community-defined scientific impact. To further stress these aspects, top charts for each ICST Transactions journal will be compiled with best published papers depending on community recognition (e.g., review scores, number of accesses/downloads, blog comments, cross references, …);
• Extensive bibliographic metrics. By means of multiple bibliographic identification standards (e.g., ISSN and DOI), ICST publications are or will be  referenced in most digital libraries and scientific citation indices, to ensure easy accessibility, cross-referencing, and maximum visibility. All of major internationally recognized indexing companies have been contacted and/or have agreements already in place for indexing the ICST content (e.g., GoogleScholar, Elsevier EI/SCOPUS, DBLP, Thomson Reuters ISI).  ICST is also in the process of contacting and arranging with another fifteen indexing organizations worldwide.
• Protection and expanded exposure. Through access monitoring, ICST publications provide an extremely broad dissemination channel for papers without compromises on the protection of authors’ intellectual property;
• Points-based incentive system. Owing to its integration in the Science Rewards Program, ICST publications offer  points mechanisms for all contributors  participating to all the ICST publication activities; these points may be used to offset ICST conference registration fees, journals subscriptions, and other ICST fee-based products and services;
• Extensive editorial support. Resulting from mutually dedicated resources on behalf of ICST and its partners, ICST publications support all editorial participants (Authors, Editors-in-Chief, Editorial Board Members, and Reviewers) through a series of rewarding mechanisms, including reduced/waived fees for ICST conference registrations.

We truly believe that you, as active contributors of the scientific and innovation community, will benefit from all the opportunities offered by e-SCRIPTS to enable an innovative, high-quality, community-based, and rapid publication of relevant research results with maximum worldwide visibility and impact.

Be part of this revolution in the publication process! Contribute to the challenging and promising portfolio of ICST publications!

ICST is exploiting the opportunities offered by Web 2.0 technologies to improve the quality, rapidity, openness, and effectiveness of the collaboration within the scientific community.

About the Author

Paolo Bellavista

Professor, Dipartimento di Informatica, Elettronica e Sistemistica, Università di Bologna, Italy