PeerJ to publish the International Whale Shark Conference

PeerJ is pleased to announce that we will be publishing the proceedings of the 3rd International Whale Shark Conference, IWSC3 (to be held on Oct 6-10, 2013 at Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta USA).

[Image credit – ©2013 Alistair Dove/Georgia Aquarium]

One of the unique features of the PeerJ system is our integrated preprint server (PeerJ PrePrints). This means that a conference like IWSC3 can direct their delegates to submit their abstracts to PeerJ PrePrints, and with our commenting functionality they can use that service as a way to evaluate and showcase the submissions to their conference. The full articles that result from the conference can then be submitted to PeerJ, formally peer-reviewed by our normal process, and published as part of the scholarly literature.

A ‘landing page’ will be created at PeerJ, which will build up as preprints and articles are published (a significant advantage over a traditional ‘special issue’ which would hold back all accepted articles until it can publish them all at once). The end result is a complete record of the ‘abstracts plus final publications’ of a conference. And the best bit – all published articles are entirely open access and freely available to be read and re-used by anyone who was not able to attend the conference in person.

This service is entirely free for conference organizers – the only costs are to the authors of each article who just need to pay the normal Membership fees of PeerJ (and don’t forget that all authors can submit at least one preprint for free). As such, PeerJ represents an extremely cost effective way (for both organizers and authors) to facilitate the publication of a conference.

We encourage any whale shark researchers to consider submitting their abstracts to IWSC3 and if any other conferences would like a similar arrangement then please contact us at info@peerj.com