More papers are being published now than ever before. Not only that, but the sheer amount of data that goes into the publication has also increased dramatically [1]. Coupled with longer publishing times and preference for exciting findings, this makes it less likely for individual findings, even of a high scientific standard, to see the light of day.
Micropublications are meant to combat this problem, by offering a platform to share single, validated results that include novel, negative and/or reproduced results, as well as findings which may lack a broader scientific narrative. Europe PMC teams up with microPublication.org to bring this novel content to a wider audience. You can now find the full text of brief research communications from microPublication Biology alongside other peer reviewed articles and preprints in Europe PMC.
Each article of a microPublication journal is open access, peer-reviewed and citable via a DOI. Most importantly, the data contained in the microPublication is curated and deposited to appropriate life science databases, such as WormBase.
In Europe PMC these microPublications are integrated into the search, citation network, text-mining pipeline, ORCID claiming and other tools and services.
Supporting innovation in scholarly communications is part of Europe PMC’s mission. We hope that including micropublications will bring more valuable open scientific findings to the attention of readers.
1. Vale RD. Accelerating scientific publication in biology. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2015 Nov;112(44) 13439-13446. PMC4640799.
2. Raciti D, Yook K, Harris TW, Schedl T, Sternberg PW. Micropublication: incentivizing community curation and placing unpublished data into the public domain. Database (Oxford). 2018 Jan;2018. PMC5836261.
3. Bowles A, Wynne D, Kenton R. Vibrio vulnificus iron transport mutant has normal pathogenicity in C. elegans. microPublication Biology. 2019. CTX:M1052
This is terrific news! Well done uPubs and Europe PMC.