Cogent OA – an Open Access publisher backed by Taylor & Francis – has today released a major upgrade to its user interface. Cogent OA’s new platform focuses on assisting authors in ensuring their work gets found and read by the broadest possible audience; and readers in making interesting new connections – both within and also from outside their direct fields of interest.
Cogent OA was launched with a mission to put authors at the centre of the publishing process. The programme has grown from two to ten journals over the past year, with five more titles scheduled for launch by the end of the year. Topics covered by the Cogent OA journal series range from education and engineering through to arts & humanities, biology and medicine.
“Our ambition is to give authors the best possible publishing experience and broadest possible impact for their work”, said Bryan Vickery, Director at Cogent OA. “Our new platform includes a range of features designed to help showcase our authors’ work and encourage interaction and collaboration. We’ve been influenced by news and magazine sites – we will start to present snippets of content and highlights to help readers quickly find articles of interest, and enjoy that process of discovery.”
The new platform has a simple and intuitive interface, designed to meet the expectations of a generation with high design standards and limited time. New faceted browsing features and a structured taxonomy assist readers in quickly identifying relevant content. Cogent OA’s editorial team identifies interesting connections between articles from diverse fields – helping build inter-disciplinary networks. Authors are encouraged to add video abstracts and public interest statements to explain their work, and they can also personalize their articles with profile and social media information.
“We want researchers to see Cogent OA as a place to extend the reach of their work and help build their careers,” continued Vickery, “not just publish articles. The coming months will see us continue to add features to our platform that help authors explain and share their research, and benefit from the interconnectivity that we offer. The work of our authors doesn’t stop after they have published with Cogent OA, so why should it stop for us? Publishing is the beginning of a process of knowledge exchange, and our new platform is designed to help ensure that the articles we publish go on to have lasting impact.”