F1000 working on 'digital twin' platform launches

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 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., 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 technic 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.