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Teaming Up With iGEM

PLOS Blogs Synthetic Biology

An opportunity to publish results from iGEM 2015 in a PLOS Collection.

PLOS is pleased to announce a call for papers resulting from the iGEM 2015 competition. All teams who took part in the iGEM 2015 jamboree are able to submit their work for inclusion in the PLOS iGEM Collection. We are excited to say this will be a new experiment for us in open peer review. All submissions are welcome and will be available online; participants have the option of submitting a full research article, for eventual consideration in PLOS ONE, or an iGEM Report. Importantly, all the content will be published together on PLOS Collection. You can find out more about submission options here.

The aims of the iGEM Foundation – the advancement of synthetic biology through the development of open community and collaboration – are shared by PLOS, whose mission is to advance scientific communication and peer review through increased openness and sharing. The organizations share a belief that all sound science should be published and made openly available for anyone to access and reuse.

The two organizations have teamed up to offer iGEM 2015 participants the opportunity to publish their research according to these principles.

“PLOS is thrilled to be working with iGEM to offer these talented young researchers the opportunity to publish their work. We want them to experience the process of peer review and publication as it should be—a positive, constructive and collaborative experience” says Veronique Kriemer, Executive Editor, PLOS.

The Collection will share the discoveries and ideas of the iGEM Competition participants, and will explore ways of collaboratively improving papers through the peer review process. Submissions to the PLOS iGEM Collection will be posted for open review on the PLOS Collections blog, where members of the PLOS and iGEM communities are invited to review them. Reviews will be posted as comments on the blog and all reviewers will be asked to sign their review. Submissions will undergo technical checks by PLOS staff prior to being posted.

PLOS need YOU!

To make open community review work, we will need the Syn Bio Community’s help. We strongly encourage everyone to get involved with the review process, and ask teams submitting to be kind enough to review the work of other teams. Please keep an eye on Twitter (@PLOSCollections, @PLOSynBio), where we will tweet each submission to the collection, and look out for weekly blog round ups to see what’s been submitted and what’s in need of review – and then jump in and get reviewing! Instructions for reviewing can be found here and, once submissions roll in, a full list of papers can be accessed on the PLOS iGEM Collection page.

PLOS and iGEM look forward to working together with the Syn Bio Community on this project and experimenting in open, community-led peer review. More information about the project, the review process and, most importantly, how to submit your work can be found here.

PLOS 2016 iGEM Blogger Prize

For this year’s contestants we would like to take this opportunity to announce the PLOS Synbio 2016 iGEM blogger prize. In the spirit of encouraging open science and science communication we will be offering a $200 prize to the best iGEM blogger or vblogger, with chances to win PLOS Synbio T-shirts for runners up. We will be promoting iGEM bloggers via our website and twitter, so if you would like to get involved please get in touch!

Steven Burgess and Nathaniel Gore

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