Discover journals celebrate five years of growth and impact
Author: Dylan Parker
Publishing Director, Discover
It has been five years since the first Discover journals began publishing papers across many fields of research. Designed from the outset with community needs in mind, these journals have evolved to become a central part of a growing community. What started as a vision is now a thriving ecosystem of knowledge sharing, built upon the dedicated work of our editors and the trust of our authors.
Representing the publishing team and editorial community supporting the Discover journals, I’m very proud to look back at what we’ve accomplished with the support of the research communities we serve. Let’s look at how we’ve been supporting impactful research over the past first five years and get insights from journal editors supporting Discover’s vision.
“I joined Discover Food and Discover Environment because I wanted to support platforms that connect different fields and promote quality research on complex issues in food systems and environmental sustainability. I also believe in open access science, which makes knowledge freely available and encourages real societal impact beyond academia.” — Charis M. Galanakis PhD, Editor in Chief of Discover Food and Discover Environment, Galanakis Laboratories, Chania, Greece
Discover was launched with a simple mission: To create broad-scope, high‑quality journals that represent and fully include all members of the research communities that they serve. Now, as we celebrate the fifth anniversary of our first journals, we are struck by how much the community supporting Discover has grown.
Here are the 13 Discover journals that are celebrating their five-year anniversary Discover Artificial Intelligence, Discover Chemical Engineering, Discover Education, Discover Energy, Discover Food, Discover Internet of Things, Discover Materials, Discover Mental Health, Discover Oncology, Discover Psychology Discover Social Science and Health, Discover Sustainability, Discover Water.
“What drew me to Discover Mental Health was the vision behind the series itself: broad-scope, community-driven, and genuinely open. Mental health research sits at the intersection of so many disciplines, and I wanted to help shape a home where that breadth could be celebrated.”
— Professor Ma-Li Wong MD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief, Discover Mental Health, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, United States
Discover journals serve authors from all countries across the globe, publishing articles that advance knowledge and prompt social discussion. On this five-year anniversary, we recognise the momentum we’ve gathered to shape the next chapter of inclusive scholarly communication in the future.
Making research meaningful: Visibility for inclusive research
Nearly all of the first Discover journals are now fully indexed in Scopus, and the majority are already included in Web of Science (R) and have Impact Factors. As fully open access journals, this broad indexing increases further the visibility and discoverability of the research our journals publish and reflects the dedicated work of our editorial boards.
By becoming the Editor-in-Chief of Discover Psychology, I have been working on increasing submissions from both Western and non-Western countries, including Pacific Islands, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. I am now proud to say our editors, reviewers, and authors come from different parts of the world. And this is still working in progress. Our team is still expanding more and more to other regions of the world, to reflect on the status of psychology research and practice in other countries.”
— Prof. Ahmed Moustafa PhD, Editor-in-Chief, Discover Psychology, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia
Over the past five years, more than 3,000 editorial board members from over 100 countries have joined these journals. This demonstrates how our journals are fulfilling our mission to provide a home for all valid research from researchers everywhere across the globe.
Even more exciting is that these journals represent the first generation of the many titles we have continued to introduce to serve all fields of research. With over 70 Discover journals, we support more researchers and more communities across the world.
“The need for sustainable development research is becoming even greater, especially due to the urgent need to address many of the current socio-economic problems seen today. Discover Sustainability will continue to play a key role in documenting and promoting scholarly research, being one of the journals of choice to the sustainability community.”
— Walter Leal Filho PhD, Editor-in-Chief, Discover Sustainability, HAW Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Societal impact across Discover journals: Explore articles from the past five years
One detail readers highlight repeatedly is the quality of the summaries themselves.
Rather than simply repeating a headline or first paragraph, Nature Briefing provides context: what the finding is, why it matters, and how it fits into a broader conversation. For readers, this difference is significant.
Several note that this thoughtfulness allows them to understand unfamiliar topics quickly, and makes the reading experience more rewarding, even when they don’t click through to the full article.
Respecting readers’ intelligence
Discover journals would be nothing without the authors who choose to publish with us. Over the past five years, Discover articles helped shape the inclusive publishing landscape our journals aim to fulfil, and have had measurable impact in their communities.
One way of measuring this impact is by articles’ Altmetric score. Altmetrics offer a valuable way to understand the broader impact of research beyond traditional citations. They capture attention from news outlets, blogs, social media, Wikipedia, policy documents, and more.
Altmetric scores are naturally shaped by trending social topics and can vary widely across disciplines, so we recommend they be interpreted within that broader context. At Discover we aim to highlight to contributions that all research can make to both science and society and consider Altmetric scores an important complementary perspective on research influence.
Here’s a taste of leading papers from various Discover journals (with their Altmetric scores):
“I hope to see the journal continue broadening its reach into interdisciplinary and translational work, and to become a place where early-career researchers and colleagues from underrepresented regions feel genuinely at home. Ultimately, I'd like the research we publish to move more quickly from page to practice, benefiting the people and communities who need it most.”
— Professor Ma-Li Wong MD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief, Discover Mental Health, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, United States
The journey continues: To the next years of Discover journals
Five years have passed quickly and Discover journals have evolved rapidly in that time. I am grateful to each and every author that has chosen to publish with us, and to our editors and board members who support those authors in finding a home for their research with Discover. When I see what we have done since our first journals launched, it makes me excited to see what will come in the next five years, and many more to come.
Find the right Discover journal for your research and join the ever-growing Discover community.
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Author: Dylan Parker
Publishing Director, Discover
Dylan Parker is the Publishing Director for Discover, one of the newest research publishing imprints at Springer Nature. He joined Springer Nature in 2016 and leads a global publishing and editorial team dedicated to the development of open access journals under the Discover imprint, covering all fields of research.
He is a long-time champion of open access, and throughout his career he has supported the publication of journals and books in communities across many fields of research, from medicine, genetics, and life sciences to chemical engineering, agriculture, and the environmental sciences.
Dylan has over fifteen years of STM publishing experience, and most recently is focused on promoting sustainable models of open access and open research. Dylan has also previously worked in broadcast and consumer media and is dedicated to using his collective experience to help promote the findings of the scientific research communities he serves.
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