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In this blog post, Ashley Farley, Program Officer of Knowledge and Research Services at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, explores the publishing activity for the last year, whilst looking ahead at the future of Gates Open Research.  

A summary of 5 years  

2022 marks 5 years of Gates Open Research, the open access publishing venue created for all Gates-funded researchers across a variety of disciplines. As the world continues to navigate life during a global pandemic and other pressing issues, it continues to strengthen our belief that a better model of disseminating information is one that is fully open with post-publication peer review. Gates Open Research has continued to be an integral part of how the foundation and its grantees communicate information with the research community, something that was paramount during the COVID-19 pandemic.  

During 2021, Gates Open Research has achieved significant milestones; with 361 articles and 1050 peer review reports published. Authors globally continue to choose to publish with us, with the platform now hosting work from over 2,600+ authors from a diverse range of institutions. We also scaled the platform to include Open Plus Books, enabling Gates funded authors to publish a book open access on the Platform within just a few days of submission, providing another dynamic way for knowledge to be rapidly shared and built upon. 

COVID-19 research  

For the second year in a row, our author-led publication model has provided Gates Foundation grantees a place to rapidly publish their articles, with the platform hosting more high-profile and impactful COVID-19 papers, including: 

• A Research Note by Dasgupta A et al. illustrates the potential impacts COVID-19 could have to the access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including family planning. To date, it has more than 4,200 views and 650 downloads.  
• An Open Letter by Ankita Mukherjee and Rakesh Parashar, which explored the effect of COVID-19 on the health workers in India, reviewing the gaps in the health system and the challenges the workforce had to face. To date, it has more than 2,800 views and 241 downloads.  

“We believe open research helps achieve rapid dissemination of the complete article hence benefiting by reaching more audience than the subscription-only model. We think it’s a welcome approach for the research community to engage in open research as it allows the authors and reviewers to share their thoughts in public on the content of the articles, while the readers benefit from the scientific debate and discussions that are usually not available for them,” says Ankita Mukherjee and Rakesh Parashar. 

Impactful publishing 

Last year, articles published on Gates Open Research received over 800 citations, resulting in an increase of 73% in a single year. The number of citations since launch now amounts to over 1,900, demonstrating that the platform is a credible outlet for researchers and a reliable source of high-quality information. Article views surpassed 86,000, rapidly raising total article views to over 266,000 since Gates Open Research launched. 

The value of research outputs 

At Gates Open Research, we have several ways researchers can publish the full breadth of their studies, from the preliminary idea, method and strategy to data sets, as well as the full traditional research article. Research Articles remain our most popular peer reviewed article type, representing 68% of the published work during 2021. We also continue to see the utilization of other article types, publishing Study Protocols and Open Letters, at 11% and 8% respectively.  

We also believe that all outputs are worth sharing, which is why Gates Open Research supports the publication of alternative content types, including documents, posters, and slides. By offering several publishing options through different article types, Gates Open Research serves the community by allowing researchers to get credit for all their research whilst boosting the discoverability of their work by showcasing more of their project. 

With over 1,700+ non-traditional outputs published with us, views of these article types have risen to 75,000 since launch in 2017, underlining the impact of publishing all your research outputs openly on Gates Open Research. 

The future ahead 

2022 is set to be another exciting year for Gates Open Research. We aim to continue to expand the capabilities of the platform while engaging more closely with both readers and authors. 

We are open to hearing from the community on how to improve Gates Open Research and what we can do to create a better publishing experience. Please do get in touch as we welcome all ideas and feedback, so that we can provide services that reflect the needs of our users. 

As you can see, there are many reasons why you should consider publishing your next article with us. If you have any questions about the Gates Open Research platform, please don’t hesitate to email us at info@gatesopenresearch.org, and we’d be happy to help.