Introducing Chronos - a unique service providing an open-access publishing workflow and support platform for researchers, universities and funders

Authors & Affiliation

Simon Thomson and Christian Grubak - Chronos

Abstract

In recent years, significant solutions have been introduced to the support the dissemination of invaluable academic research output throughout the world. Open Access Publishing, Open Repositories, Research Funder and Government open access mandates. There are now excellent resources available to find, share and use content. But as these resources and facilities have increased there has been a knock-on effect which has increased responsibilities and created time and cost inefficiencies for individual researchers, collaboration teams and their universities.
Chronos is an online workflow service which originated from a meeting with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2014. The Foundation were introducing a new open access policy and realised that they would be adding to some of the complexity, time and expense outlined above. Added to this they felt they were disconnected from their grantees and distant sub-grantees as their funding was shared from one organisation to another through improved collaboration.
Chronos significantly speeds up the reporting flow allowing research trends and cost expenditure to be analysed instantly rather than historically after publication.
Chronos has been introduced to provide an infrastructure for the academic community and their funders, to automate and manage a wide spectrum of required activities. But its core mission is to enable researchers to spend more time and effort (and money) researching rather than on administration.