13 February 2014

QScience.com has announced that they are waiving Article Publication Charges (APCs) for all authors who submit their work to QScience Connect and input their ORCID identifiers on submission.

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) provides a nonproprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely identify scientific and scholarly authors. ORCID addresses the problem that a particular author's contributions to the scientific literature can be hard to discover online as most personal names are not unique and can change (such as with marriage, spelling preferences, transliteration etc.) ORCID provides a unique and persistent identifier, similar to that created for content-related entities on digital networks by digital object identifiers (DOIs).

QScience has made this decision to encourage researchers in Qatar and the Middle East to participate in the ORCID initiative. The APC waiver will present authors with the opportunity to experiment with OA publishing and in turn contribute to an increase in Open Access (OA) publications, as well as improving their discoverability through use of a persistent identifier.

Dr. Christopher Leonard, Editorial Director at QScience.com, said, "We are strong supporters of the idea of unique author IDs, as it not only helps now with attributing credit to those who publish, but it also opens up new opportunities for academic evaluation in the future, maybe by taking into account other online activities of researchers. However we didn't want to sit back and take a passive role in this, so we decided to encourage uptake of ORCID by waiving publication fees for accepted articles for those authors who have registered with ORCID".

Laurel Haak of ORCID, said, "We are excited about QScience's decision to encourage adoption of persistent author identifiers as part of their OA initiative.  We look forward to collaborating with QScience on outreach and engagement of researchers in Qatar to improve access and discoverability."

QScience.com already hosts fourteen scholarly journals covering diverse subject areas such as information & library studies, sustainable energy, education, medicine and bioscience, Middle Eastern healthcare, design and Islamic studies. Additional journals are scheduled for launch later this year.

About Qatar Foundation  
Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development is a private, non-profit organization that is supporting Qatar on its journey from carbon economy to knowledge economy by unlocking human potential for the benefit of not only Qatar, but the world. www.qf.org.qa

About QScience.com  
Launched in December 2010, QScience.com is a peer-reviewed online publishing platform that offers a unique and collaborative research environment for scientists in Qatar and the rest of the world. This new platform publishes a range of peer reviewed, high quality, open access journals, databases and repositories which adhere to international publishing standards.
www.QScience.com