“The democratization of science and the spread of knowledge” – An interview with MyScienceWork

Virginie Simon CEO and Co-Founder MyScienceWork

At PeerJ we often find that when we are out on our travels spreading the word about open access that we also see other companies communicating their own missions on open access to research too. MyScienceWork is one of those very companies. We spoke to CEO & Co-Founder Virginie Simon to hear more about the work they are doing to make access to research more available for global researchers:

Please tell us more about how you came to be a founder of MyScienceWork

During my thesis, I came across some difficulties that are very common for researchers, such as the limited access to research publications and the difficulties of communicating with scientists from a discipline other than my own speciality. Indeed, I did my PhD in a startup on the subject of nanotechnology for cancer therapy, which means that I was studying a very multidisciplinary field and that I didn’t have easy access to subscriptions to major journals. Thus, at the end of my thesis, I decided to create MyScienceWork, to provide digital solutions for research and researchers.

In a nutshell what does MyScienceWork offer?

We recently launched Polaris, our digital platforms for research institutions. On top of that, our team provides communication services (article and news writing, science video production), and, of course, the MyScienceWork global platform which provides our community of 500,000 members access to more than 30 million research publications and a science news outlet.

What problems does Polaris solve for research institutions?

Polaris is the easiest way for labs and research institutions to centralize, disseminate and promote their research automatically. It also provides dashboards for the monitoring of their research and its impact and includes communication services to enhance the international visibility of their researchers and their expertise. The LBMCC is one of the first labs that started using it [see the LBMCC Polaris platform]. For universities such as UPMC, the IHP or Stanford, Polaris is also the way to promote and consolidate a scientific community around a scientific theme or a career path to industry.

Why do you believe open access journals like PeerJ are such an important part of the publishing ecosystem for researchers?

Communicating research broadly and quickly is important, both to allow research institutions to make their research known, cited and reused, but also to speed up the process of developing new results, new therapies or applications in the industry. Institutions and researchers should provide easy and cheap access to research with the help of publishers and sharing platforms. On our platforms, researchers can share their work on their www.mysciencework.com profile and institutions can centralize all their research in their own customized Polaris.

What else do you see MyScienceWork and Polaris offering for researchers in the future?

Polaris is designed for all research communities. We want to promote the building of bridges between academic research and the world of industry. In addition, as our teams are based in San Francisco, Luxembourg and Paris, we want to encourage collaborations between research in the US and in Europe. At the same time, we continue to develop innovative tools for the dissemination and promotion of publications in open access. MyScienceWork is fighting for the democratization of science and the spread of knowledge.

That last sentence resonates well with our own mission too here at PeerJ – we believe that it is imperative for access to scientific research to be democratized, and for the world to benefit from the dissemination of this knowledge. We will continue to spread this word on our travels too and no doubt meet other companies like MyScienceWork with the same mission.

Why not join PeerJ as an author and help to keep access to scientific research more open?