ANS webinar spotlights NSTOR

The American Nuclear Society recently hosted a webinar that served as an introduction to Nuclear Science and Technology Open Research (NSTOR), the Society's platform that is reshaping how nuclear research is shared and accessed globally.

The presentation featured discussion from John Fabian, director of publishing at ANS; Kaleigh Sunday, senior publisher at Taylor & Francis; Emma Smith, associate publisher at Taylor & Francis; and Derek Haas, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Texas-Austin.

The ANS perspective: Fabian started the discussion by giving some background on the Society's transition into open research publishing. "In the 2020s, we began modernizing our journals, looking toward the future by removing page charges from our three hybrid journals," he explained.

With page charges removed, the barrier of paying for publication in ANS journals was gone, letting ANS set its eyes on the next accessibility question: whether or not to offer a fully open-access option for published research. At that point, Taylor & Francis approached ANS with the idea of partnering with T&F subsidiary F1000 to create a new, online publishing platform using open research methodology.

As Fabian explained, NSTOR is a complement to the Society's established journals rather than a replacement for them, and it comes with several meaningful benefits. It allows for a quicker and broader dissemination of research through its open-access nature and publishing process.

At the same time, it also helps publishers meet funder mandates for open-access publishing. While such mandates are more common in Europe than they are in the United States, Fabian described NSTOR as a hedge against U.S. funders adopting similar rules. "We haven't seen funders in the United States require this just yet, but this future-proofs our portfolio against any potential changes," he said.

Beyond these benefits, Fabian also walked through a variety of other benefits that drew ANS to the F1000 model, especially flexibility and open research principles, open peer review, and the range of article types.

The concept of an open peer review "was a totally new concept to us when we launched the platform," Fabian said. Basically, that concept works as follows: an author submits an article; it is reviewed for suitability by an ANS advisory board then checked by F1000's editorial team for ethics, readability, and author guidelines; and then it is published in NSTOR with clear demarcation that it is awaiting peer review. No editors make an accept-or-reject decision, and the peer review process happens in the public view.

"There are about 15 article types on the platform, whereas in our three technical journals, we typically publish only research articles and the occasional technical note," Fabian noted, explaining that final benefit. These types include everything from case studies to editorials, and they allow the Society to publish work that would otherwise never reach the public.

A user's perspective: Haas was next up in the discussion. As a nuclear engineering professor, he has significant experience in publishing articles and provided his perspective on the user-end regarding the difference that NSTOR brings. He explained that the traditional publication system feels "designed to accommodate timelines of mailing physical copies of articles, and we just stuck with it because that's how we've always done it." From his view, NSTOR can help alleviate some of the delays that traditional system causes.

Haas then provided some more specific anecdotes about his experiences publishing on the platform, highlighting not only the speed of publication (which was to be expected) but also the quality of the peer reviews that work received (which, for him, came as more of a happy surprise).

As he explained, the peer review process can be a discouraging one. Often, an article can receive vague, unhelpful responses that amount to "I would have done this study very differently than you did" or "I'm not going to give you technical feedback, but I will show you 20 ways you can improve your use of the English language," as he put it. However, "the open review process discourages people from giving that kind of feedback. If you have to put your name on the review, you're much more likely to spend time to give actually valuable feedback."

For those interested in learning or more or to submit your research to the first open research platform dedicated to the nuclear community, visit nstopenresearch.org.