text:
For Funders
For Project Coordinators
For Conference Organisers
Why Publish in RIO
What Can I Publish
Core Charges
Pre-Paid Plans
Promotions and Waivers
Publishing Updated Versions
Tailored PR Campaign
Video Podcasts
Custom Social Media Content
RIO Policies
Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) aims to catalyse change in research communication by publishing ideas, proposals and outcomes in a comprehensive way. By doing so, we hope to increase transparency, trust and efficiency of the whole research ecosystem.
Our key goals are to maximise:
RIO aims at making better use of the vast effort spent on writing and evaluating research proposals and other valuable products of the research cycle. It harnesses the full value of investment in the academic system by registering, reviewing, publishing and permanently archiving a wider variety of research outputs that aren't traditionally made public.
Speed and Efficiency
By making these outputs public, we will expedite the process of evaluating proposed and performed research, opening up new mechanisms for collaboration, feedback, appraisal, dissemination and funding.
Real-World Impact
Research Ideas and Outcomes creates and strengthens links within and across fields of research by placing special emphasis on how research addresses the challenges that our global society is facing. Read more.
We are committed to an entirely open and public peer-review process. We are convinced that this is the best way to build trust in the reviewed outcomes.
RIO offers tailored services and various benefits to all types of users. With the user in mind we have created a set of features to fit the needs of all our stakeholders - authors, reviewers, funders, project coordinators and conference organisers. Learn more about what RIO has to offer in this short presentation, or read how the journal is specifically tailored to your needs below.
At Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), we want authors to concentrate on content and not to spend their time on matters of formatting. There are thus NO author guidelines here with regard to text or reference formatting. The ARPHA Writing Tool will guide you during the authoring, submission, review and publication process. There are only a few simple rules to follow, so please please have a look at ARPHA's Tips and Tricks before you start your manuscript!
Alternatively, manuscripts can be submitted as text (MS Word, RTF, ODT) files that shall be converted into the ARPHA Writing Tool by RIO's Editorial Office. Please note that the conversion comes at a small additional cost, therefore the Article Processing Charges (APC) will be higher in case a manuscript is submitted as a text file. In that case, we strongly recommend to use our article templates as a pattern to follow in order to minimise the extra work in formatting.
Pensoft journals are Sherpa green journals that is: author can archive pre-print and post-print or publisher's version/PDF.
The publishing process in RIO includes several steps, which are briefly explained in How it works. The different steps are directly accessible also via the following links:
Authoring a manuscript in the ARPHA Writing Tool
Pre-submission technical validation
Pre-submission, author-facilitated peer-review
Post-submission editorial check
Reviewable publication
Formal peer-review organized by RIO (optional)
Editorial evaluation of a revised version (optional)
Validated publication (optional)
Example scenarios for revisions and validation on the decision date
Publication of updated versions (optional)
Dissemination, harvesting, text and data mining
At Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) we use a novel, entirely open and public process of quality assurance checks, technical validation and formal peer-review, briefly described in How it works. The different steps of the review and evaluation process are directly accessible also via the following links:
All reviews submitted to RIO will be made public together with the corresponding publications. Reviewers' names are disclosed by default. Reviewers may opt to stay anonymous only in case they have been invited to provide a review by the RIO Editors.
Major funders of research such as the European Commission, Wellcome Trust (UK), National Science Foundation (NSF) of the US, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and others, are increasingly formally recognising that the research cycle is a continuum, and that all kinds of research objects and outcomes, not just 'articles', need to be made public in order to advance research and society and to enable reproducibility and transparent evaluation of research.
Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) publishes research proposals, either funded or disapproved, as well as progress all along the research cycle and exposes it to peer assessment, thereby highlighting:
Valuable research that has been performed in the past or is currently underway.
Research ideas that may be worth funding, taking into account both their scientific quality and their alignment with societal challenges.
Active members of the research community (individuals, teams or organizations) that may be worth funding.
Combined with its strong emphasis on openness and on community engagement, RIO thus provides a strong basis for increasing the impact of research funders, be they classical research funding organizations or emerging ones based on decentralized funding mechanisms.
RIO provides also useful ways to link all outputs related to a research project in online collections that help funders to keep track on the project development and progress.
RIO will notify funders via email alert each time the funding organisation is acknowledged in the publication's metadata.
The philosophy behind the RIO Journal is to offer flexible and decoupled publishing services to various actors, including individual researchers, research projects, funders, research institutions and libraries.
Institutions may benefit from publishing in RIO thanks to:
Flexible online collections that allow linking of various research outcomes along research cycles carried out in an institution or by a research group.
Easy customization of institution-tailored and domain specific article templates and publication plans.
Peer assessment and usage tracking system for various institutional research outcomes, not just research articles.
Great discount options that will make your publishing activities more cost efficient and free authors from having to deal with the financial aspects of publishing.
Dedicated promotional PR campaigns for selected research achievements in coordination with institutional press officers.
Please do not hesitate to contact rio@riojournal.com for further information.
Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) is designed to publish research proposals, funded or not, as well as all valuable outputs along the research cycle or a research project, and to expose these to peer assessment, publication and wide dissemination:
Funded research projects may publish the grant proposal or parts of it at the start of the project, so as to get an early feedback on future development plans and link back the results to this first publication.
Grant proposals consume a huge effort to prepare, even if they turn out to be unfunded. Why not publish these to get credit for the huge work already invested? A research proposal not approved for funding by one organisation may well be found worthy of funding by another one.
RIO also offers the possibility to publish research ideas or research proposals before submission. By including the respective DOI in your application, you can demonstrate that you are serious about communicating your research and about public engagement.
Research articles and sometimes data are the prevailing if not only public outputs of most research projects. Why not publish also the valuable project reports and deliverables, software, survey reports and case studies, policy briefs, and even Wikipedia articles coming out of the project - in both human- and machine-readable formats - so as to get the maximum dissemination, outreach and impact?
RIO provides useful ways to link all outputs related to a research project in online collections that help funders to keep track on the project development and progress.
RIO also offers tailored publication plans and dissemination/PR services along research cycles and other outcomes of your project. Please ask rio@riojournal.com for more information.
Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) has developed a set of services that will ease the publication of conference outputs, such as abstracts, posters, presentations or conference full-text talks:
Collaborative online authoring and pre-submission peer-review of conference proceedings in the ARPHA Writing Tool.
A set of flexible manuscript templates for the different conference outputs
Publication of the proceedings in both human- and machine-readable formats (HTML, PDF and JATS XML) at any time when ready - either before or after the conference, or even while it is ongoing.
A flexible system of online collections for outputs of a conference or different symposia/workshops within it
Funders and sponsors of conferences may track references and acknowledgments for their support via each separate article metadata
Archiving of the conference proceedings in trusted international repositories
Promotion and PR campaigns for conference proceedings for separate outputs.
Please ask rio@riojournal.com for more information.
Publishing non-traditional research outputs before your research articles
Until the widespread adoption of the Internet, publishing was an expensive process. Researchers selectively published only their final summaries of projects as research articles because of the cost-constraints of print-based publishing.
But in the Information Age, these constraints on publishing have been significantly relaxed as digital publishing has superseded print-based publishing. Digital, online publishing is cheap. This shift enables us to reconsider what would be beneficial to publish in this new era.
Researchers expend huge effort and time writing non-traditional research outputs such as research proposals, software, datasets, project reports and milestones. Why not publish these too?
There are many immediate benefits, for multiple different stakeholders:
Greater transparency of the research process.
Publication credit for all the hard work put into these outputs.
Collaborators and improvements can be found by making ideas public at an early stage.
Helping others to make better outputs, after reading the previous efforts of others.
Rejected or underutilised outputs can be re-used or improved with publication exposure.
A typical research proposal is a costly document to write - it takes a lot of time and effort. Most research proposals are rejected, so significant effort in preparing and tailoring these for specific grant calls is squandered.
This is a waste.
Completed research proposals, regardless of whether they were accepted or rejected should be published to:
Get publication credit for your great ideas.
Show otherwise hidden and huge effort in writing it!
Get kudos for bright ideas whilst they are still novel.
Attract the attention (and perhaps grants!) of funders.
Publicly register priority of your ideas - you thought of them first!
Link-up your proposal with subsequent outputs.
Show you write great research proposals.
Enable you to put your proposals on your CV.
Let the world know about your newly approved proposal.
Find collaborators for techniques, lab work and fieldwork.
Get valuable feedback & evaluation.
RIO journal accepts submissions of ALL these different types of research ideas and outcomes:
Data Papers (Spreadsheets, Sound Recordings, Videos, Imaging Scans, Photos, any data format)
Software Descriptions
Registered Experimental Designs
Data Management Plans
Software Management Plans
Grant Proposals
Single-media Publications
PostDoc Projects
Project Reports (including milestones and deliverables; especially final reports)
Policy and Communication Briefs
Citizen Science Reports
Replication studies
we are expanding this list on an ongoing basis - get in touch if you
have suggestions.
RIO does not accept for publication:
Teaching Lectures
Other Teaching Materials
Patient Data or other data that would be unethical to publish
Homeopathy or Homeopathy-related outputs
Nuclear or Bioweapons-related outputs
Creationist or 'Young Earth' or other religiously-motivated research outputs
The RIO journal's editorial team reserves the right to reject manuscripts whose content we're uncomfortable publishing.
Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) launch created several, globally unique innovations in both technological and social sides of the academic publishing practice:
RIO is published on ARPHA, the first publishing platform ever to support the full life cycle of a manuscript, from authoring through submission, peer-review, publication and dissemination, within a single online collaborative environment.
The online, collaborative ARPHA manuscript writing tool (formerly Pensoft Writing Tool (PWT)) provides a large set of pre-defined, but flexible article templates covering most types of research outcomes.
Within the ARPHA Writing Tool, authors may work collaboratively on a manuscript with their co-authors, but can also invite external contributors, such as mentors, pre-submission reviewers, linguistic and copy editors, or just colleagues, who may correct and comment on the manuscript before submission. The external contributors are not listed as co-authors of the manuscript.
A rich set of functionalities of the ARPHA Writing Tool allows for search and import of literature/data references, cross-referencing of in-text citations, import of tables, upload of images and multimedia, building plates of images, and many more.
An automated technical validation step will save your time by checking your manuscript for consistency, in addition to human-provided pre-submission technical validation by RIO's Editorial Office.
Pre-submission external peer-review(s) performed during the authoring process in the ARPHA Writing Tool are to be submitted together with the manuscript to speed up evaluation and publication.
During submission, authors may opt for a review process and type of publication that are most suited to their works: (1) Reviewable publication, based on both author-organized external reviews and RIO's technical and editorial checks, and (2) RIO-validated publication following a formal, journal-organized peer-review.
The peer-review process in RIO is public and reviewers may choose from two different kinds of review: (1) Formal review and (2) Informal short review. The formal reviews are assigned with DOIs and citation details. Informal short reviews and links to the formal ones are exported to Twitter after a moderation check to avoid abuse.
The collaborative peer-review process provides easy communication environment through change tracking, comments and replies, and automated, but customizable email and social network notifications.
For editor's convenience, peer-reviews in ARPHA are automatically consolidated into a single online file that makes the editorial process straightforward, easy and pleasant.
Socially Engaged Publishing
Research Ideas & Outcomes (RIO) is committed to connecting research to its potential impact on society. To achieve this, the journal will implement Social Impact labelling and categorization of all published outputs based on internationally-recognised criteria such as the EU Societal Challenges (the priorities of EU Horizon 2020 funding), and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Authors will have the option to choose societal impact badges from a preset list provided by RIO. The badges indicate impact categories that are or may be relevant to their submitted work. Reviewers and editors can assess the appropriateness of these badges, and if accepted, these badges will be pinned onto the published output, so that they are clearly seen on the landing page of the work. For the convenience of interested parties, including funders, researchers from relevant disciplines, and readers, it is also possible to search and browse RIO by way of these impact categories.
Read more on how it will work and about the benefits of social impact labelling in this dedicated blog post.
Core prices include the following services
Manuscript authoring in the ARPHA Writing Tool
Data import tools for references, figures, tables and supplementary materials
Online collaboration with your co-authors and peers during authoring
Pre-submission peer review organised by the author
Technical and editorial checks provided by RIO
Semantic tagging and cross-linking of content
Reviewable publication in semantically enriched HTML, PDF and JATS XML formats
Community-driven post-publication peer review
Publication of a revised version of your article upon request
Articles can be easily returned into editing mode and re-published with CrossMark DOI
Machine-readable, harvestable content via JATS XML and API
Active dissemination and promotion of your article
Indexing in leading aggregation services
Archiving in trusted international repositories
Extensive article and sub-article usage metrics and citation counts
Additional services (optional)
Publication of additional updated versions
Linguistic services
Core Charges Per Publication
Article size
(Character count including spaces)
Via ARPHA Writing Tool
(use the Start a Manuscript button)
Via file submission
(use the Submit a Manuscript button)
Small (up to 8,000) € 99 € 99 + € 50 (conversion fee)
Standard (8,000-80,000) € 299 € 299 + € 100 (conversion fee)
Large (80,000-160,000) € 499 € 499 + € 150 (conversion fee)
Above 160,000 Ask for a quote Ask for a quote
Please note that the above prices do not include VAT (Value Added Tax). VAT is applicable only for VAT NON-registered customers based within the European Union.
Optional Services Per Publication
Optional service
Updated version 50% of
corresponding APC One revised version is included in the core price
Linguistic services € 15 per 1800
characters Relevant if you want your text to be edited by a native English speaker
Tailored PR campaign € 150 Press release, dedicated media and social networks promotion
Tailored PR campaign + Video interview € 450 Video interview organized by RIO
Paper reprint copies On demand Charged at cost
Collections enable conference organizers or project coordinators to publish a number of articles under a common theme and editorship. Depending on the number of articles to be included, Pensoft offers discounts on APCs as described in the table below.
Number of articles
Unlimited within the course of 3 years
Discount on APCs
Flat rate pre-payment of € 4999
By agreement
We are happy to discuss alternative arrangements if there is a better way to suit your needs for a special issue. Please do not hesitate to contact us!
Pre-paid plans allow institutions and / or research groups to deposit a certain amount of funds with Pensoft and make them available to affiliated researchers for covering Article Processing Charges in any Pensoft journal. Member institutions decide whether to cover APCs in full or share the expense with the authors. Depending on the amount members are prepared to commit, Pensoft is offering a discount on APCs per the table below. Additional funds can be added to an account at any point in time within the calendar year of purchasing the plan, while left-over funds are preserved until spent.
€ 1,000 – 3,000
€ 5,000 +
The direct billing plan allows institutions to reduce the complexity of billing and reimbursements. It consolidates all Pensoft invoices for articles authored by researchers affiliated with an institution into a single monthly bill that is sent directly to the institution.
The following articles are published for free
Other discounts and waivers
Discount of 10 % is offered to:
Scientists working privately.
Graduate and PhD students if they are first authors of a manuscript.
Scientists living and working in lower middle-income countries (http://data.worldbank.org/income-level/lower-middle-income) if they are sole authors of a manuscript, or authors' research is funded primarily (50% or more of the work contained within the article) by an institution or organization from the eligible countries.
Discounts are also offered to our editors and reviewers, for more information see here.
Waivers (once per year per (co-) author for manuscripts no larger than 10 printed pages, or for the first 10 pages of a larger manuscript) are offered to:
Retired scientist who are editors or active reviewers for this journal (1-3 reviews provided in the year before the manuscript submission).
Scientists living and working in low-income countries (http://data.worldbank.org/income-level/low-income), if they are sole authors of a manuscript, or authors' research is funded primarily (50% or more of the work contained within the article) by an institution or organization from the eligible countries.
The journal offers also various institutional programs and membership plans to support Open Access scientific publishing. To be eligible, the author must be a corresponding author affiliated with the institution or agency.
Discounts and waivers do not accumulate.
Please note that conversion costs for manuscripts submitted as files are not covered by promotions and waivers.
Promotions, discounts and waivers do not include conversion costs when manuscripts are submitted in a file format.
Post-publication peer review
The manuscripts intended for submission to RIO should be written in the online collaborative ARPHA Writing Tool through flexible article templates to be selected in the tool after clicking on the "Start a manuscript" button. ARPHA provides a rich set of functionalities, which make the collaborative work of the authors and their peers easy and pleasant. The authoring process in ARPHA is described in fine detail in the Tips and Tricks menu of the writing tool.
Alternatively, manuscripts can be submitted as text (e.g., MS Word, RTF, ODT) files that shall be converted to the ARPHA publishing platform by RIO's Editorial Office. Please note that the conversion comes at a small additional cost, therefore the Article Processing Charges (APC) are higher in case the manuscript is submitted as a text file.
There are NO author guidelines in Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) with regard to text formatting. The ARPHA Writing Tool will guide you during the authoring and submission process. Please consider Tips and Tricks if you need some assistance or contact helpdesk@pensoft.net. There are only a few simple rules to follow, so please please read carefully the half page of text below before you start your manuscript:
1. How can I decide which article type to choose?
The article templates in ARPHA are created to facilitate structured publishing of scientific content and ensure discoverability and machine-readability of your work. Please before opening a manuscript in ARPHA visualize the template you want to use by clicking on the Example link of the template to see its structure and ensure it fits your work. You can change the structure of the article template to a certain extent; for example you can add new subsections or change the order of them within the manuscript, however we would recommend applying such changes only if absolutely necessary. There are also less-structured manuscript templates, which may be used for editorials, correspondence, opinion papers, and others.
2. How can I cite references, figures and tables?
Please do not type in-text citations of references, figures or tables manually! The citations will be inserted automatically at the place of your cursor through the "Cite a figure", "Cite a table", "Cite a reference" or "Cite a supplementary material" commands. Once you select the place you want to insert a citation, click on the desired reference, table or figure from the respective list (see next).
Before citing a reference, figure, table or supplementary material, you have to upload these, so that they become visible in the respective list of figures, tables, references, or supplementary materials.
Please do not number captions of figures or tables – they will be numbered automatically and can be re-ordered, if needed.
All uploaded figures, tables and references must be cited in the text and vice versa.
In line with responsible and reproducible research, as well as FAIR data principles, we highly recommend that authors describe in detail and deposit their science methods and laboratory protocols in the open access repository protocols.io.
Once deposited on protocols.io, protocols and methods will be issued a unique digital object identifier (DOI), which could be then used to link a manuscript to the relevant deposited protocol. By doing this, authors could allow for editors and peers to access the protocol when reviewing the submission to significantly expedite the process.
Furthermore, an author could open up his/her protocol to the public at the click of a button as soon as their article is published.
Stepwise instructions:
Prepare a detailed protocol via protocols.io.
Click Get DOI to assign a persistent identifier to your protocol.
Add the DOI link to the Methods section of your manuscript prior to submitting it for peer review.
Click Publish to make your protocol openly accessible as soon as your article is published (optional).
Update your protocols anytime.
All articles published in RIO are available for post-publication review, regardless of them being subject to a pre-submission review or not, or their review status (Reviewable, Reviewed, or RIO-validated). The author may decide to publish a revised version of an article anytime based on feedback received from the community. Putatively, even years after publication of the original work our system allows a review to be published alongside the paper. Moreover, RIO uses an innovative post-publication review process and the CrossMark feature which allows updating published articles.
The ARPHA Writing Tool provides automated technical pre-submission validation step to save your time by checking your manuscript for consistency. At any time, you can click on the Validation button at the bottom left of the sidebar to check for technical consistency.
In addition, a pre-submission technical review is performed for all manuscripts in ARPHA by the Editorial Office against formal checklist criteria such as: technical consistency, language, ethical issues, correspondence to the journal's criteria for publication, focus, and scope. The RIO editors may need to go through several iterations of the technical evaluation process until the manuscript reaches an acceptable level of quality to be submitted to RIO.
To facilitate and speed up the publication process, authors are expected to source at least one or more external peer-review(s) from specialists in their field, prior to submission to the journal via the ARPHA Writing Tool.
Pre-submission reviewers are to be invited via the "Invite reviewer" button in the ARPHA Writing Tool. The "Invite reviewer" button is visualized in the black ribbon on top of the screen only when the manuscript is in status Draft, i.e. prior to its submission for technical review, and it disappears afterward. The open public peer-review process used in RIO requires all pre-submission author-organized peer-reviews and reviewers' names to be made public together with the article, if the manuscript is accepted for publication. Reviews are also provided with DOIs and are individually citable.
Pre-submission review is mandatory for some publication types and optional for others. "Mandatory" means that a manuscript cannot be submitted to RIO, if not completed with a final review statement from at least one external reviewer. "Optional" means the authors may proceed with submission without external pre-submission review, however, in this case they need to provide a public statement to justify their decision by choosing from the following two options:
My manuscript has been previously reviewed by: [names of persons or organisations who have supported the publication of the manuscript]
My manuscript does not need a pre-submission review: [statement]
Good reasons for not providing pre-submission peer-reviews would be cases when a manuscript has already been positively evaluated, for instance when a grant proposal has been funded, or a PhD thesis has been successfully defended. Nonetheless, RIO strongly advises authors to provide pre-submission reviews in all cases.
Outputs that must undergo pre-submission peer-review include:
Research Articles, Review Articles, Replication Studies, Methods, Case Studies, Commentaries, Data Papers, Questionnaires, and Software Descriptions.
Outputs for which pre-submission peer-review is optional include* :
Research Ideas, Research Proposals, PhD Project Plans, PhD Theses, Small Grant Proposals, Grant Proposals, Data Management Plans, Software Management Plans, Single-media Publications, Research Posters, Research Presentations, Conference Abstracts, Correspondence, Project Reports, Policy/Communication Briefs, and Wikipedia Articles.
More information on the pre-submission peer-review process may be found on RIO's blog: Peer-review at RIO: Part 1.
* Even though pre-submission review is optional for a few manuscript types, the authors will be strongly encouraged to seek peer-review.
Manuscripts for RIO should be prepared for submission in the ARPHA Writing Tool. Manuscripts submitted in text files (e.g. MS Word or ODT) via the "Upload a Manuscript" button will be converted into ARPHA by RIO's Editorial Office at a small additional cost.
During the submission process, the author(s) should:
Submit at least one pre-submission external review, together with the manuscript. This requirement holds for several, but not all article types. For some article types pre-submission review is optional, however, authors are strongly advised to provide reviews in all cases. The number of pre-submission reviews is not limited and they can be provided by external reviewers in the online collaborative environment of the ARPHA Writing Tool. As an exception, pre-submission reviews can be submitted as separate files during the submission process, however, this practice is not encouraged by RIO.
Answer a couple of other questions about copyright, authorship, ethical issues, and processing charges.
If desired, one may also select relevant Impact Categories of societal challenges that are pertinent to the manuscript (strongly recommended).
In spite of the thorough pre-submission technical checks and validation, all submitted manuscripts will be briefly checked technically and editorially by the RIO Editorial Office and published as reviewable publication within seven working days after submission.
All technically and editorially approved manuscripts will be published as reviewable publications within seven working days after submission, based on (1) Pre-submission external review(s); (2) Pre-submission technical checks in ARPHA; (3) Post-submission editorial check. The reviewable publication becomes online open access, permanently available to read and/or review non-anonymously by the community. All submitted reviews will be published upon submission and will be given their own DOI and are independently citable.
At any time, an author may request to publish an updated version of the article, which shall be linked to the first and consequently published versions via CrossMark. By requesting a publication of an updated version, the article will be returned to the ARPHA Writing Tool where the authors and peers can work collaboratively on the updated version.
All publications in RIO are openly licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 and marked up in the Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS), so as to facilitate reuse by automated or machine-assisted processes.
A common objection put forward against publishing the research process in more detail is that there already is a deluge of publications, to the point that it has become very rare for researchers to read all the publications that may be relevant to their research.
We think the answer to this flood of information is not to keep some information hidden, but to structure publications for consumption by both humans and machines, and to have the latter help the former in their appraisal of existing knowledge. This works even better if we publish research workflows in more detail than is customary today.
We provide also several email and RSS alerts that allow for automated notification by subject, funder and type of publication.
Authors may revise and update their publications anytime via the "Publish updated version" button. The button is located on the right-hand side of an article underneath any reviews in the Review section. It is visible to the submitting author only (when logged-in).
Any time an author opts to update a publication, the manuscript is returned to the ARPHA Writing Tool (AWT), where the author can correct it. Upon re-publication the revised article receives a new Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which is permanently linked to the original version through CrossMark. Post-publication changes are moderated by the RIO editorial team to ensure that updates are legitimate.
RIO authors are allowed to publish one updated version per article for free. Additional updated versions will be charged according to our policies.
Our journal and the PR team at Pensoft invites authors to contribute to the communication and promotion of their published research, thereby increasing the visibility, outreach and impact of their work.
Authors are welcome to notify us whenever their institution is working on a promotional campaign about their work published in our journal. We are always happy to reshare and/or repost (where appropriate).
You can contact our PR team at dissemination@pensoft.net to discuss the communication and promotion of your research.
(Paid service*)
We encourage authors, who feel that their work is of particular interest to the wider audience, to email us with a press release draft** (see template and guidelines), outlining the key findings from the study and their public impact. Then, the PR team will work with them to finalise the announcement that will be:
Issued on the global science news service Eurekalert! (past examples)
Sent out to our media contacts from the world's top-tier news outlets
Posted on ARPHA's or Pensoft's blog
Shared on social media via suitable ARPHA-managed accounts
Following the distribution of the press announcement, our team will be tracking the publicity across news media, blogs and social networks, in order to report back to the author(s), and reshare any prominent media content.
Visit the Media Center section in the About menu to find past examples of published press releases promoting studies published in our journal, as well as the follow-up publicity from around the world.
Request our Tailored PR campaign service by selecting it while completing your submission form and you will be contacted once your manuscript is accepted for publication. Alternatively, contact our PR team (dissemination@pensoft.net), preferably upon the acceptance of your manuscript.
* The Tailored PR campaign is an extra service charged at EUR 150. However, we would consider discounts and even full waivers for studies of particular interest for the society.
** Please note that our PR team reserves the right to edit your press release at their discretion. No press announcements will be issued until we receive the author's final approval to do so. The service is only available for studies published within the past 3 months.
(Free service)
Authors are strongly encouraged to promote their work and its impact on society to the audience beyond their immediate public of fellow scientists by means of storytelling in plain language. Ideally, such guest blog posts will be:
Written from the author's own point of view, using conversational tone;
Written in fluent English;
Presenting some curious background information, in order to place the discovery in context;
Including attractive non-copyright imagery.
Request our Guest blog post service by contacting the PR department (dissemination@pensoft.net), regardless of the status of your submission, as there are no time constraints for guest blog post publication. Particularly encouraged are follow-up contributions telling the story of, for example, a research paper that has led to an important policy to be set in place; or an article that has met remarkable attention or reactions in the public sphere.
Following the necessary final touches to the guest blog post by the PR team, the contribution will be:
Shared on social media via multiple and relevant ARPHA-managed accounts
Please note that the PR team reserves the right to refuse publication of a guest blog post on the occasion that it is provided in poor English, uses considerable amount of jargon or does not abide by basic ethical standards. Our PR team reserves the right to request changes to the text related to formatting or language. No blog posts will be issued until we receive the author's final approval to do so.
Find past guest blog posts on Pensoft's blog here.
To efficiently increase the outreach of their research, authors are suggested to prepare a video contribution (i.e. elevator video pitch, video abstract or topical video), where they present their work to an audience beyond their immediate public of fellow scientists by means of visual storytelling.
To do so, they are expected to send us a short (up to 02'00'') video clip, presenting their study in a nutshell, in order to spark the viewer's further interest in their findings and work, as well as the research topic as a whole. Ideally, such contribution will be:
filmed in high quality, preferably with .mp4 file extension with the H.264 video codec;
directed from the author's own point of view, using conversational tone and minimal jargon;
presented in fluent English or featuring English subtitles;
accompanied by a transcript in English;
accompanied by a short text introduction for the purposes of a blog post.
Request our Guest video contribution service by contacting the PR department (dissemination@pensoft.net), regardless of the status of your submission, since there are no time constraints for guest blog post publication.
Following the necessary final touches to the guest blog post, the contribution will be:
Shared on Pensoft's YouTube channel;
Posted on ARPHA's or Pensoft's blog;
Shared on social media via multiple and relevant ARPHA-managed accounts.
Please note that the PR team reserves the right to refuse distribution of a guest contribution on the occasion that it is provided in poor English, uses considerable amount of jargon or does not abide by basic ethical standards.
To help increase the visibility and outreach of their research, authors are welcome to suggest custom social media content to be distributed via suitable Pensoft- and ARPHA-managed social media accounts.
Social media posts are expected to:
Be limited to two short sentences or 280 characters (including links);
Be written in a conversational tone;
Contain minimal jargon;
Include the DOI link of the article;
Not duplicate the title or abstract of the article;
Include attractive non-copyright imagery;
Possibly include up to 10 social media accounts, e.g. co-authors (Twitter only), affiliations, funding bodies etc. relevant to the study.
Request our Custom social media content service by contacting our PR department (dissemination@pensoft.net).
Please note that our PR team reserves the right to edit your text at their discretion.
Follow RIO Journal on Twitter and Facebook.
Learn about some of the most notable research published on RIO's blog.
See top news stories from around the globe, mentioning research published in RIO, on Science World Report, Technology Networks, Neuroscience News, Signs of the Times, Primeur Magazine.
Find past press releases for RIO on Eurekalert!
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Why did you create such a publishing model?
What distinguishes your journal from scientific repositories and other OA journals?
The most unique facet of RIO Journal is the option to publish research proposals. Are researchers psychologically ready to take advantage of this option?
Which audience do you want to address with your RIO platform?
Why might an author consider submitting to RIO Journal instead of other journals offering similar article types?
How does placing special emphasis on the societal impact of an article benefit scientists?
How can scientists use your platform to support their research and career?
What is the intended workload for editors?
What benefits does RIO offer for reviewers?
Regarding "public" reviews, do you mean that the review must be signed (i.e. not anonymous), that its content must be open, or both?
If authors organize themselves a pre-submission peer-review of their paper, is it possible to also arrange a post-publication peer-review?
How to guarantee a transparent, open and public peer-review process? Some people worry that if the author can choose peer-reviewers, it might be considered as "cheating".
Do you think RIO might have difficulties in putting the new idea of academic publication into practice?
How will readers, and institutional evaluation mechanisms (for promotion or tenure review) differentiate between the validated and non-validated publications?
How does the ARPHA Writing Tool used by RIO make it easy to cite articles?
Which fees do scientists have to pay for different kinds of articles and publications?
It is unique, no other journal publishes research proposals or entire research cycles. At RIO, we believe it will provide great value and service to scientists (authors), reviewers, funders, project coordinators, and readers. Many research groups around the world right now are inadvertently performing the exact same research because no one communicates what they intend to do until after they have done it and published a paper about it - on a global scale this is very inefficient. We want to publish the full research cycle all in one place to tackle inefficiencies in the system and ensure that society can gain maximum return on the investment in research.
Perhaps the most obvious uniqueness is that we publish a wider variety of research outputs than most others. We are specifically encouraging researchers to publish their research ideas, grant proposals (be they successfully funded, rejected or under non-public review), PhD and PostDoc project plans, methods and methodologies, protocols, data, software, research and review articles, policy briefs, and many more.
Another unique feature of RIO is that it is based on our end-to-end, fully web-based publishing platform ARPHA, which is the first of its kind and takes you from authoring the manuscript through several stages of peer-review to publication and dissemination in human- and machine-readable formats, all in the same integrated system. The draft is the proof, that is proofreading and correcting happens in real time, and there is no need for intermediary platforms.
Publishing your ideas and proposals is perhaps a step from which many researchers still shy away, and it is certainly nowhere near mandatory at this point. At the same time, opening up science has been on the world agenda for quite a while, and the first months of RIO have shown that the concept of publishing not just research outcomes but more of the research process resonates with many in the research community.
The benefits of this could be numerous. A publication of a research idea or proposal will not only give authors credit for their research early on but will also be beneficial for finding new opportunities for collaboration with colleagues around the world as well as attracting the attention of potential students or funders. Publishing your research from the idea stage onwards may also help establish priority, and it demonstrates your commitment of communicating your research. We expect to publish items from a wide variety of fields, as we are not a subject-specific journal. For example, we have already published grant proposals on topics ranging from nanomaterials to clinical trials to collaborative knowledge management to software engineering.
Finally, we plan to map the research published in the journal to societal challenges, thereby providing funders (as well as journalists, educators, students other researchers and of course the wider public) with a way to browse research by the societal challenges it addresses, in addition to the traditional ways of browsing by discipline, geolocation and timestamp.
RIO is attractive to researchers who ─ like our Advisory Board members and Subject Editors ─ are genuinely interested in communicating research not just within their field but also within the broader research community and with the interested public. RIO's scope encompasses all areas of academic research, including science, technology, humanities and the social sciences.
RIO brings to the table several key innovations to the scientific publishing process, namely the ability to publish articles along the entire research cycle (not just at the end), an end-to-end integrated authoring/reviewing/publishing platform, and a fast, open review process. In that context, we believe that our platform will resonate with researchers from all fields of science, project coordinators, conference organizers, funders and institutions alike. Here is why:
Authors benefit from fast publication and seamless writing & formatting, project coordinators and conference organizers are able to curate multiple research outcomes, and reviewers can create open and citable reviews. At the institutional level, RIO makes it easier for funders to engage the public with the research they fund and is a great outlet for institutions that are trying to communicate more than just research results. Finally, RIO's readers will enjoy the benefit of learning not only what researchers have found out, but also how they have done it, and hence can engage with the research process in a deeper way.
RIO is particularly attractive to early-stage researchers who want to sharpen their ideas with feedback from the community, and create new contacts and opportunities for collaboration and funding.
RIO is not just about accepting different kinds of submissions, it is also about explicitly - and visibly - linking them together across the research cycle; about collaborative peer-review and authoring; about mapping societal challenges; about technical innovation; and about giving authors a wider choice of features they actually want from the journal.
The platform is all about innovation, so along with our unique concept, we offer a whole range of features attractive to the respective user groups. These include a technically advanced and user-friendly collaborative authoring environment as well as next-generation peer review processes, including options for pre-submission and post-publication peer-review.
RIO provides three stages of peer review: (1) Author-organized, pre-submission, (2) community-sourced, post-publication, and (3) journal-organized, post-publication (optional). Reviews will be public by default. All of this serves to cultivate quality and to speed up publication and dissemination.
One of the most advanced features of RIO is what we call an a lá carte publishing model that allows authors to select from various decoupled publishing services to best fit their work and needs.
Additionally, RIO offers the possibility to map research to societal challenges ─ specifically the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ─ in order to inspire multidisciplinary collaboration and engage society with research in more and deeper ways than we see presently.
Mapping RIO research to societal challenges was part of the RIO concept from the very beginning. At first, we had planned to categorise research with respect to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But we soon realised that the newer Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) would be more appropriate, so now, people can easily browse RIO's published articles by SDGs or vice versa. Much of research is required to have some kind of societal impact statement ─ publishing in RIO more clearly highlights this proposed social impact, both to the public and to potential funders who are interested in particular societal challenges.
RIO creates a virtuous cycle between allowing scientists to get credit for their work, improving the quality of the scientific process, and shortening the learning curve for young scientists.
By supporting a broad range of publication types, RIO helps people get the due credit for more of the things that they do, e.g. grant proposals, data and software. Grant writing is a skill, and demonstrating that you're good at it is of value to you and the community. By publishing your entire research cycle with RIO, including the early stages, you can display your work in a more timely and accurate manner than the traditional publication process that hides many of these steps.
In addition, publishing ideas, methods, and early-stage results will enable researchers to get feedback from the community at an earlier stage of their work and increase the quality of their results. This more open and collaborative approach to doing science will also help to reduce inherent biases in the way we do research, encourage the publication of "negative" results, and make it a lot easier to conduct replication studies ─ an important aspect of the scientific process we currently do not emphasise nearly enough.
Finally, RIO's readers stand to benefit from the wealth of information that is shared on the platform. Young scientists will gain access to best practice in important aspects of the profession such as grant proposal writing, research planning, interim results presentation, science to policy communication briefs, and engaging the public.
An editor's role would be that of assigning reviewers and overseeing the journal-mediated review process for manuscripts in their area(s). Due to the high degree of automation of the platform, the workload should be lower than at other journals, and the idea is that editors can concentrate on those parts that cannot currently be fully-automated, i.e. reading, commenting and matching reviewers to submissions.
By default, all reviews in RIO are made public to ensure that the reviewers' work is visible and that they can get credit for it. Moreover, RIO assigns DOIs to the reviews, which facilitates their discoverability and citability. On that basis, reviewers readily cooperate, and our editorial board is growing steadily. Reviews are a scholarly output in and of themselves. We want people to be proud of their reviews and to value their intellectual worth, thus we make them publicly available, so they can be read, critiqued and cited by others.
To ensure that reviewers get the necessary credit, RIO is working on integration with platforms specialized in peer review. For instance, if you have a Publons profile and set it to show your reviews by default, reviews you did for RIO will be displayed automatically.
We require that the review content is always openly available and that pre-submission reviewers (endorsers) reveal their identity. We will give journal-invited post-publication reviewers the option to remain anonymous, but we encourage signed reviews by post-publication reviewers. Read more on pre-submission peer-review here.
Yes. All published articles are available for post-publication peer-review, by default. Authors may publish a revised version of their works to consider reviewers' comments at any time. More on peer-review options is available on our blog:
Part 1 Pre-submission
Part 2 Post-publication
The best guarantee against cheating or 'soft' reviewing is openness. We accept that there will be people who will try to bias or cheat the peer-review process, but with such an open and public publishing system it will be easier to catch fraudulent peer-review.
Some academic journals such as Biology Direct or Copernicus journals have been using open peer-review for nearly 10 years now. Open peer-review without doubt helps maintain quality.
No. Many scientists have already uploaded their research proposals to more basic websites e.g. see here.
Many scientists want to publish non-traditional research outcomes, but do not have an online space that is specifically designed for it - to facilitate peer-review and expert scholarly comments. All RIO articles will be assigned a permanent publication identifier, a DOI, so that they can be cited more easily, listed on CVs, and used to openly demonstrate the quality of prior work. Scientists put a lot of effort into writing research proposals, so RIO provides these scientists with new rewards for all that effort. Moreover, it makes the results of this effort available for anyone to cite and use.
RIO validated and reviewable publications will be clearly labeled as such and should be apparent for readers and data miners.
The ARPHA Writing Tool uses the ReFindit tool which enables you to find online most papers you want to cite in a manuscript by searching by DOI, PubMed ID, author names, year of publications or titles. Information about this and many other services of the rich editing functionality set of the ARPHA Writing Tool are available in the Tips and Tricks guidelines.
RIO's pricing is based on the idea of letting authors choose which services they want, and this is reflected in the Article Processing Charges (APCs) for the different individual publication types. Aiming to promote the publishing of entire research cycles, rather than just single publications, the journal also offers research cycle packages that revolve around the needs of different types of users.
General statement
License and Copyright Agreement
Licensing for Data Publication
Open Data and Software Publishing and Sharing
Open and Public Peer-Review
Commenting Policies
Funding disclosure
Ethics and Security Statement
Appeals and Open Debate
Licensing of the Policies
The RIO policies and guidelines are mandatory. Exceptions to elements of the policies may be granted in specific cases, but will require justification that will be made public together with the article.
In submitting the manuscript to RIO journal, the authors certify that:
They are authorized by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
The work described has not been formally published before (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, thesis, or overlay journal), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication has been approved by all the author(s) and by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – of the institutes where the work has been carried out.
They secure the right to reproduce any material that has already been published or copyrighted elsewhere.
They agree to the following license and copyright agreement:
Authors retain the copyright to their article and can choose to make it available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0) or, if requested, of the Creative Commons CC-Zero Waiver (CC-0). Any supplementary materials associated with an article will be made available under the Creative Commons CC-Zero Waiver (CC-0).
RIO Journal uses the Creative Commons CC-Zero Waiver, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ for data in any supplementary materials associated with an article.
Other data publishing licenses may be allowed as exceptions (subject to approval by the editor on a case-by-case basis) and should be justified with a written statement from the author that will be published with the article.
RIO strives to maximize the replicability of the research published in it. Authors are thus required to share all data, code or protocols underlying the research reported in their articles. Exceptions are permitted, but have to be justified in a written public statement accompanying the article.
Datasets and software should be deposited and permanently archived in appropriate, trusted, general, or domain-specific repositories (please consult http://service.re3data.org and/or software repositories such as GitHub, GitLab, Bioinformatics.org, or equivalent). The associated persistent identifiers (e.g. DOI, or others) of the dataset(s) must be included in the data or software resources section of the article. Reference(s) to datasets and software should also be included in the reference list of the article with DOIs (where available). Where no domain-specific data repository exists, authors should deposit their datasets in a general repository such as ZENODO, Dryad, Dataverse, or others.
Small data may also be published as data files or packages supplementary to a research article, however, the authors should prefer in all cases a deposition in data repositories.
For more information and further recommendations about data publishing and sharing with a focus on biodiversity-related and ecological data, see Strategies and guidelines for scholarly publishing of biodiversity data (Penev et al. 2017).
The names and email addresses present on the journal's website will be used exclusively for the purposes of the journal.
The Corresponding Author's Role and Responsibilities are to:
Inform all co-authors of the submission of the manuscript to the journal (note: each co-author will receive a confirmation email upon submission and will need to confirm their authorship).
Manage all correspondence between the journal and all co-authors, keeping the full co-author group apprised of the manuscript progress.
Designate a substitute correspondent for times of unavailability.
Ensure payment of the publication charges at the point of Editorial Acceptance, or before that in case some specific services have been purchased (e.g., conversion to ARPHA or linguistic editing).
Ensure that the manuscript is in full adherence with all RIO policies (including such items as publication ethics, data deposition, materials deposition, etc).
Post Publication: Respond to all queries pertaining to the published manuscript, provide data and materials as requested.
The submission must be created (and completed) by one of the co-authors, not by an agency, or by some other individual who is not one of the co-authors.
RIO adheres to the ICMJE uniform requirements of authorship: All authors on an article must meet these requirements, which are extracted below:
"Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.
When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript (3). These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship/contributorship defined above, and editors will ask these individuals to complete journal-specific author and conflict-of-interest disclosure forms. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments. The National Library of Medicine indexes the group name and the names of individuals the group has identified as being directly responsible for the manuscript; it also lists the names of collaborators, if they are listed in Acknowledgments.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship.
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.
Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
All reviews submitted to RIO will be made public together with the corresponding publications. Reviewers' identities are disclosed by default. In rare cases and at the discretion of RIO editors, reviewers may occasionally be permitted stay anonymous. All reviews will be assigned DOIs and citation details, so as to be made individually citable.
Neutrality to Geopolitical Disputes
The strict policy of Pensoft and its journals is to stay neutral to any political or territorial dispute. Authors should depoliticize their studies by avoiding provoking remarks, disputable geopolitical statements and controversial map designations. In case that this is unavoidable, the journal reserves the right to mark such at least as disputable at or after publication, to publish editor's notes or to reject/retract the papers.
Authors' affiliations
Pensoft does not take decisions regarding the actual affiliations of institutions. Authors are advised to provide their affiliation as indicated on the official internet site of their institution.
Editorial decisions should not be affected by the origins of the manuscript, including the nationality, ethnicity, political beliefs, race, or religion of the authors. Decisions to edit and publish should not be determined by the policies of governments or other agencies outside of the journal itself.
Human and Animal Rights
The ethical standards in medical and pharmacological studies are based on the Helsinki declaration (1964, amended in 1975, 1983, 1989, 1996 and 2000) of the World Medical Association and the Publication Ethics Policies for Medical Journals of the World Association of Medical Journals (WAME).
Authors of studies including experiments on humans or human tissues should declare in their cover letter a compliance with the ethical standards of the respective institutional or regional committee on human experimentation and attach committee's statement and informed consent; for those researchers who do not have access to formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed and declared in the cover letter. Patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers should not be used, not in the text nor in any illustrative material, tables of databases, unless the author presents a written permission from each patient to use his or her personal data. Photos or videos of patients should be taken after a warning and agreement of the patient or of a legal authority acting on his or her behalf.
Animal experiments require full compliance with local, national, ethical, and regulatory principles, and local licensing arrangements and respective statements of compliance (or approvals of institutional ethical committees where such exists) should be included in the article text.
Individual participants in studies have the right to decide what happens to the identifiable personal data gathered, to what they have said during a study or an interview, as well as to any photograph that was taken. Hence it is important that all participants gave their informed consent in writing prior to inclusion in the study. Identifying details (names, dates of birth, identity numbers and other information) of the participants that were studied should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and genetic profiles unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the participant (or parent or guardian if the participant is incapable) gave written informed consent for publication. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve in some cases, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic profiles, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning.
The following statement should be included in the article text in one of the following ways:
"Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study."
"Informed consent was obtained from all individuals for whom identifying information is included in this article." (In case some patients' data have been published in the article or supplementary materials to it).
RIO encourages the use of gender-neutral language, such as 'chairperson' instead of 'chairman' or 'chairwomen', as well as 'they' instead of 'she/he' and 'their' instead of 'him/her' (or consider restructuring the sentence).
All public comments follow the normal standards of professional discourse. All commenters are named, and their comments are associated to their RIO profile. RIO does not allow anonymous or pseudonymous commenting or user profiles.
RIO does not tolerate language that is insulting, inflammatory, obscene or libelous. RIO reserves the right to remove all or parts of Comments to bring them in line with these policies. RIO is the final arbiter as to the suitability of any comments.
RIO requires that all parties involved in a publication (i.e. the authors, reviewers and academic editors) should transparently declare any potential Conflicts of Interest (also known as Competing Interests). The disclosure of a Conflict of Interest does not necessarily mean that there is an issue to be addressed; it simply ensures that all parties are appropriately informed of any relevant considerations while they work on the submission.
Potential Conflicts of Interest should be declared even if the individual in question feels that these interests do not represent an actual conflict. Examples of Conflicts of Interest include, but are not limited to: possible financial benefits if the manuscript is published; patent activity on the results; consultancy activity around the results; personal material or financial gain (such as free travel, gifts, etc.) relating to the work, and so on.
While possible financial benefits should appear here, actual funding sources (institutional, corporate, grants, etc.) should be detailed in the funding disclosure statement.
RIO requires that authors declare the funding which made their work possible, including funding programmes, projects, or calls for grant proposals (when applicable).
Authors provide an Ethics and Security statement detailing the relevant ethical standards that were met when conducting the research.
Ethics and Security statements are required whenever research is conducted on humans or human tissue; on animals or animal tissue; when conducting field studies; or whenever the approval of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) was required.
Where IRB approval was required, the authors must provide an ethics statement as part of their Materials and Methods section detailing full information regarding their approval (including the name of the granting organization, and the approval reference numbers). If an approval reference number is not provided, written approval must be provided as confidential supplemental file.
'Dual Use Research of Concern' is defined by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) as any "biological research with legitimate scientific purpose that may be misused to pose a biologic threat to public health and/or national security."
If an author, editor or reviewer feels that a submission may be subject to concerns surrounding dual use, then it is incumbent on them to report this concern to staff.
The publishing ethics and malpractice policies of RIO Journal follow the relevant COPE guidelines (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines), and in case a malpractice is suspected, RIO Editors will act in accordance with them.
Research misconduct may include: (a) manipulating research materials, equipment or processes; (b) changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the article. A special case of misconduct is plagiarism, which is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit. Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences of opinion. If misconduct is suspected, journal Editors will act in accordance with the relevant COPE guidelines: http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines.
Responses to possible misconduct
All allegations of misconduct must be referred to the Editor-In-Chief. Upon the thorough examination, the Editor-In-Chief and deputy editors should conclude if the case concerns a possibility of misconduct. All allegations should be kept confidential and references to the matter in writing should be kept anonymous, whenever possible.
Should a comment on potential misconduct be submitted by the Reviewers or Editors, an explanation will be sought from the Authors. If it is satisfactory and the issue is the result of either a mistake or misunderstanding, the matter can be easily resolved. If not, the manuscript will be rejected or retracted and the Editors may impose a ban on that individual's publication in the journals for a certain period of time. In cases of published plagiarism or dual publication, an announcement will be made in both journals explaining the situation.
When allegations concern authors, the peer review and publication process for their submission will be halted until completion of the aforementioned process. The investigation will be carried out even if the authors withdraw the manuscript, and implementation of the responses below will be considered.
When allegations concern reviewers or editors, they will be replaced in the review process during the ongoing investigation of the matter. Editors or reviewers who are found to have engaged in scientific misconduct should be removed from further association with the journal, and this fact reported to their institution.
We encourage academic debate and constructive criticism. Authors are always invited to respond to any editorial correspondence before publication. Authors are not allowed to neglect unfavorable comments about their work and choose not to respond to criticisms.
No Reviewer's comment or published correspondence may contain a personal attack on any of the Authors. Criticism of the work is encouraged. Editors should edit (or reject) personal or offensive statements. Authors should submit their appeal on editorial decisions to the Editorial Office, addressed to the Editor-in-Chief or to the Managing Editor. Authors are discouraged from directly contacting Editorial Board Members and Editors with appeals.
Editors will mediate all discussions between Authors and Reviewers during the peer review process prior to publication. If agreement cannot be reached, Editors may consider inviting additional reviewers if appropriate.
The Editor-in-Chief will mediate all discussions between Authors and Subject Editors.
The journals encourage publication of open opinions, forum papers, corrigenda, critical comments on a published paper and Author's response to criticism.
RIO Journal reserves the right to retract articles that are found to be fraudulent or in serious breach of RIO's policies.
Retraction policies
Article retraction
According to the COPE Retraction Guidelines followed by this Journal, an article can be retracted because of the following reasons:
Unreliable findings based on clear evidence of a misconduct (e.g. fraudulent use of the data) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error).
Redundant publication, e.g., findings that have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission or justification.
Plagiarism or other kind of unethical research.
Retraction procedure
Retraction should happen after a careful consideration by the Journal editors of allegations coming from the editors, authors, or readers.
The HTML version of the retracted article is removed (except for the article metadata) and on its place a retraction note is issued.
The PDF of the retracted article is left on the website but clearly watermarked with the note "Retracted" on each page.
In some rare cases (e.g., for legal reasons or health risk) the retracted article can be replaced with a new corrected version containing apparent link to the retracted original version and a retraction note with a history of the document.
Expression of concern
In other cases, the Journal editors should consider issuing an expression of concern, if evidence is available for:
Inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors.
Unreliable findings that are unreliable but the authors' institution will not investigate the case.
A belief that an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been, or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive.
An investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time.
Errata and Corrigenda
Pensoft journals largely follow the ICMJE guidelines for corrections and errata.
Admissible and insignificant errors in a published article that do not affect the article content or scientific integrity (e.g. typographic errors, broken links, wrong page numbers in the article headers etc.) can be corrected through publishing of an erratum. This happens through replacing the original PDF with the corrected one together with a correction notice on the Erratum Tab of the HTML version of the paper, detailing the errors and the changes implemented in the original PDF. The original PDF will be marked with a correction note and an indication to the corrected version of thFerratae article. The original PDF will also be archived and made accessible via a link in the same Erratum Tab.
Authors are also encouraged to post comments and indicate typographical errors on their articles to the Comments tab of the HTML version of the article.
Corrigenda should be published in cases when significant errors are discovered in a published article. Usually, such errors affect the scientific integrity of the paper and could vary in scale. Reasons for publishing corrigenda may include changes in authorship, unintentional mistakes in published research findings and protocols, errors in labelling of tables and figures or others. In taxonomic journals, corrigenda are often needed in cases where the errors affect nomenclatural acts. Corrigenda are published as a separate publication and bear their own DOI. Examples of published corrigenda are available here.
The decision for issuing errata or corrigenda is with the editors after discussion with the authors.
RIO policies and guidelines are available under a CC-BY 4.0 license. Parts of the policies are adapted from those used in other Pensoft journals, others are adapted from PeerJ Policies (which are also made available under a CC-BY 4.0 License).
This document describes the Terms of Use of the services provided by the Research Ideas and Outcomes journal, hereinafter referred to as "the Journal" or "this Journal". All Users agree to these Terms of Use when signing up to this Journal. Signed Journal Users will be hereinafter referred to as "User" or "Users".
The publication services to the Journal are provided by Pensoft Publishers Ltd., through its publishing platform ARPHA, hereinafter referred to as "the Provider".
The Provider reserves the right to update the Terms of Use occasionally. Users will be notified via posting on the site and/or by email. If using the services of the Journal after such notice, the User will be deemed to have accepted the proposed modifications. If the User disagrees with the modifications, he/she should stop using the Journal services. Users are advised to periodically check the Terms of Use for updates or revisions. Violation of any of the terms will result in the termination of the User's account. The Provider is not responsible for any content posted by the User in the Journal.
Account Terms
For registration in this Journal or any of the services or tools hosted on it, Users must provide their full legal name, a valid email address, postal address, affiliation (if any), and any other information requested.
Accounts created via this journal automatically sign in the User to the ARPHA Platform.
Users are responsible for maintaining the security of their account and password. The Journal cannot and will not be liable for any loss or damage from failure to comply with this security obligation.
Users are solely responsible for the content posted via the Journal services (including, but not limited to data, text, files, information, usernames, images, graphics, photos, profiles, audio and video clips, sounds, applications, links and other content) and all activities that occur under their account.
Users may not use the service for any illegal or unauthorised purpose. Users must not, in the use of the service, violate any laws within their jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright or trademark laws).
Users can change or pseudonomyse their personal data, or deactivate their accounts at any time through the functionality available in the User's personal profile. Deactivation or pseudonomysation will not affect the appearance of personal data in association with an already published work of which the User is author, co-author, editor, or reviewer.
Users can report to the Journal uses of their personal data, that they might consider not corresponding to the current Terms of Use.
The User's personal data is processed by the Journal on the legal basis corresponding to Article 6, paragraph 1, letters a, b, c and f. of the General Data Protection Regulation (hereinafter referred to as GDPR) and will be used for the purpose of Journal's services in accordance with the present Terms and Use, as well as in those cases expressly stated by the legislation.
User's consent to use the information the Journal has collected about the User corresponds to Article 6(1)(a) of the GDPR.
The 'legitimate interest' of the Journal to engage with the User and enable him/her to participate in Journal's activities and use Journal's services correspond to Article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR.
The Provider reserves the right to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the services provided by the Journal. Plans and prices are subject to change upon 30 days notice from the Provider. Such notice may be provided at any time by posting the changes to the relevant service website.
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Pensoft is an independent academic publishing company, well known among biodiversity scientists worldwide for technologically cutting-edge open access journals, such as: ZooKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ), PhytoKeys, MycoKeys, Nature Conservation, NeoBiota, and Comparative Cytogenetics. Founded in 1992 in Bulgaria, "by academics, for academics", initially focusing on book publishing, it has grown to become an innovative and leading open access journal publisher. Pensoft has published more than 1000 books and over 4,000 open access articles, mostly in the field of natural history.
Pensoft is a member or partner of: CrossRef, OASPA, CLOCKSS, Research Data Alliance (RDA), OpenAIRE, Dryad Data Repository, GBIF, Encyclopedia of Life, and others.
Pensoft journal content is indexed by: PubMed Central, ISI Web of Science, Scopus, BIOSIS, Google Scholar, DOAJ, Zoological Record, CAB Abstracts, Wikispecies, Vifabio, BHL Citebank, Globalnames, JournalMap and others.
In 2010, Pensoft was the first publisher to implement semantic tagging and enrichment of published articles as a routine editorial practice. The company is actively developing novel tools, workflows and methods for text and data publication, dissemination of scientific information, and technologies for semantic enrichment of content. In 2013, Pensoft launched the first ever end-to-end XML-based authoring, reviewing and publishing workflow, as demonstrated by the Pensoft Writing Tool (PWT) (now upgraded to the ARPHA Writing Tool) and the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ). The company has also developed several tools for semantic publishing, such as the Pensoft Markup Tool (PMT), Pensoft Taxon Profile (PTP), Pensoft Wiki Converter (PWC), the literature and data discovery tool Refindit.org, and others.
Pensoft is actively looking to expand the subject-scope of its publishing with the launch of Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) - an open access journal that publishes ALL research ideas & outcomes that constitute the research cycle, including: project proposals, data, methods, workflows, software, project reports and research articles. RIO uses a novel collaborative platform integrating manuscript authoring with the most transparent, open and public peer-review process for publishing and dissemination. The scope of RIO encompasses all areas of academic research, including science, technology, humanities and the social sciences.
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America's Most Trusted Man, Jon Stewart wrapped logical loops around Bill Kristol's private insurance-supporting stance last night on The Daily Show. And boy, oh, boy was it a sight to see. This interview, along with his highly-publicized quarrel with Jim Cramer will go down as some of his finest and most important IMO.
"Wow, was it really that easy?"
You are right about that son, I peeped this on CC when it was on. You just reminded me to watch the whole thing online, cause it sure was cut up on the tube.