27 April 2021
F1000 is collaborating with two Chinese customers to develop open research publishing platforms dedicated to the research and application of collaborative robots and ‘Digital Twin’ technologies. Both will be the world’s first open publishing platforms in their fields and will launch for submission in July 2021.
The platforms will utilise F1000’s innovative open research publishing model, enabling all research outputs to be published open access, as well as combining the benefits of pre-printing (providing rapid publication with no editorial bias) with mechanisms to assure quality and transparency (invited and open peer review, archiving and indexing). They also offer researchers an open and transparent peer review process and have a mandatory FAIR data policy to provide full and easy access to the source data underlying the results.
Rebecca Lawrence, Managing Director, F1000 said: “The vision behind F1000 has always been to develop approaches to scholarly publishing that better support the needs of today in communicating new findings, regardless of output format. We have made significant traction and seen strong growth and uptake especially in Europe and the US, but much less so to-date in one of the other most significant markets, China.
“We are therefore absolutely delighted to collaborate with our first partners in China to build two open research publishing platforms that will help accelerate the reach of innovative technologies. By opening up all aspects of the research from the article, to the data, to the peer review, these publishing platforms will create a transparent, open and fair environment for research and innovation to flourish.”
Collaborative robots
The contract signed with AUBO (Beijing) Intelligent Science and Technology Co. Ltd aims to provide a communication outlet of innovative technologies for technicians, researchers, scholars and experts, who are engaged in the interdisciplinary research field of collaborative robots.
Collaborative robots, or “cobots” are robots intended to work side-by-side and in collaboration with humans. These machines focus on repetitive tasks, such as inspection and picking. They help workers focus more on tasks that require problem-solving skills and enable industries to achieve better efficiency, flexibility and production capability.
Hongxing Wei, Professor at Beihang University and President of AUBO (Beijing) Intelligent Science and Technology Co. Ltd said: “It’s our pleasure to cooperate with the world leading publisher Taylor & Francis Group and its partner F1000, to set up Cobot, the first academic and technological communication platform in the field of collaborative robots. Cobots are a kind of new versatile robots widely applied in industrial production and social services. The birth of Cobot will surely promote the scientific research and technical developments in the related fields.”
The scope of the platform will include, but is not limited to, scientific and technical research topics in intelligent robots, artificial intelligence, human-machine collaboration and integration, machine vision, intelligent sensing, smart materials, and more.
It will also include the design, development and testing of collaborative robots and relevant software, as well as case studies focused on their wide-ranging use and applications. In addition, the platform will also feature a variety of article types including method articles, study protocols, software tools, systematic reviews, data notes, brief reports, and opinion articles.
Digital twin technologies
F1000 is also collaborating with Beihang University in China to create a global hub to accommodate new research outputs on digital twin, which will hopefully become the go-to international publication venue for work in this field.
Digital twin refers to a complex virtual model that constitutes the exact counterpart (or twin) of a physical thing. Data obtained from the physical ‘thing’ by means of advanced sensors can be fed back to the virtual model. Through immersive cyber-physical integration, digital twin makes visible the crucial information about the states, behaviours, and health of the physical ‘thing’ in the real world. It has great potential in applications like smart manufacturing, aerospace, smart cities, healthcare, robotics, shipbuilding, marine engineering, agriculture, energy, environment, etc.
Fei Tao, Professor and Vice-Dean of Institute of Science and Technology at Beihang University, commented: “It is a privilege to partner with F1000 to create the Digital Twin, the world’s first academic publication platform dedicated to digital twin research and applications. Since 2016, the subject matter of digital twin has been investigated by researchers and practitioners from more than 50 countries with academic publications in various fields, including smart manufacturing, aerospace, smart city, healthcare, robotics, shipbuilding, marine engineering, agriculture, energy, environment, etc. The new platform is designed to facilitate researchers and engineers to exchange ideas and share research findings, to accelerate the innovations of digital twin, and put it in the hands of those who will reshape the future.”
The platform will cover all fields across STM, in all forms, from traditional research articles to study protocols, registered reports, data notes, case studies and much more.
Visit the splash pages of these upcoming platforms for more information.
Cobot - https://collaborative-robot.org/
Digital twin - https://digitaltwin1.org/