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F1000 and Beihang University to launch world’s first open research publishing platform dedicated to ‘Digital Twin’ technologies

F1000 and Beihang University Logos

Today, Beihang University has signed a contract with F1000, Taylor & Francis Group’s open research arm, to develop the first open access publication platform that is dedicated to ‘Digital Twin’ technologies.

Digital twin refers to a complex virtual model that constitutes the exact counterpart (or twin) of a physical thing. In principle, the ‘thing’ could be instantiated as any object in the physical world such as a car, a tunnel, a bridge, or even a jet engine. Data obtained from the physical ‘thing’ by means of advanced sensors can be fed back to the virtual model. Through immersive cyber-physical integration, digital twin makes visible the crucial information about the states, behaviors, and health of the physical ‘thing’ in the real world.

Since digital twin encompasses many disciplines across STM, Beihang University is collaborating with F1000 to create a global hub to accommodate new research outputs on digital twin, which will hopefully become the go-to international publication venue for work in this field.

The platform, known as ‘Digital Twin’ will enable all research outputs to be published open access, as well as combining the benefits of pre-printing (providing rapid publication with no editorial bias) with mechanisms to assure quality and transparency (invited and open peer review, archiving and indexing).

The platform which is due to launch for submissions in July 2021, will also offer researchers an open and transparent peer review process and have a mandatory FAIR data policy to provide full and easy access to the source data underlying the results. It will cover digital twin research spanning the STM fields and in all forms, from traditional research articles to study protocols, registered reports, data notes, case studies and much more.

Fei Tao, Professor and Vice-Dean of Institute of Science and Technology at Beihang University, commented: “It is a privilege to partner with Taylor & Francis Group and F1000 to create the Digital Twin, the world’s first academic publication platform dedicated to digital twin research and applications. Since 2016, the subject matter of digital twin has been investigated by researchers and practitioners from more than 50 countries with academic publications in various fields, including smart manufacturing, aerospace, smart city, healthcare, robotics, shipbuilding, marine engineering, agriculture, energy, environment, etc. The new platform is designed to facilitate researchers and engineers to exchange ideas and share research findings, to accelerate the innovations of digital twin, and put DT in the hands of those who will reshape the future.”

Rebecca Lawrence, Managing Director, F1000 said: “We are absolutely delighted to partner with Beihang University to create the world’s first open research publishing platform dedicated to digital twin research. Digital twin technology epitomizes innovation. By opening up all aspects of the research from the article, to the data, to the peer review, this publishing platform will create the best environment for research and innovation to flourish”.

This publishing model is also used on the customized platforms that F1000 provides to major global funders such as the European Commission, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and many others.

View more information about the upcoming Digital Twin platform here.

About F1000

F1000 fosters a culture of innovation to accelerate the reach of knowledge and put it in the hands of those who will shape the future. They achieve this through providing open research publishing platforms and services to research funders and institutions, including the European Commission, Wellcome and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as directly to researchers through its own open research publishing platform, F1000Research.

F1000 is wholly owned by the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Group company.

 

About Taylor & Francis Group

Taylor & Francis Group partners with researchers, scholarly societies, universities and libraries worldwide to bring knowledge to life. As one of the world’s leading publishers of scholarly journals, books, eBooks and reference works, its content spans all areas of Humanities, Social Sciences, Behavioural Sciences, Science, Technology and Medicine.

From our network of offices in Oxford, New York, Philadelphia, Boca Raton, Boston, Melbourne, Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo, and New Delhi, Taylor & Francis staff provide local expertise and support to our editors, societies and authors and tailored, efficient customer service to our library colleagues.

 

About Beihang University

Beihang University (BUAA), previously known as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, was founded on 1952. Since its founding, BUAA has excelled as one of the first 16 key universities in China, given priority for development. BUAA has evolved into an open, comprehensive, research-oriented university with focuses on aeronautics, astronautics and informatics. BUAA is deeply committed to an education that fosters innovation and intercultural awareness. For now, over 200,000 BUAA graduates have become an active part of various industries, fully showing the features of integrity, sincerity, innovation, responsibility and being a doer with achievements.

Beihang was the earliest start in the digital twin research. The Digital Twin Research Group at BUAA, which is leading by Prof. Fei Tao, has published two books, more than 50 papers of which including an article in Nature, and holds more than 20 patents about digital twin. The group proposed the concept of digital twin shop-floor (DTS) and published the first paper about DTS in January 2017, which has been cited and studied by many institutes worldwide, and also have been used in practice by more than 20 group companies.  Besides, The Group proposed a novel five-dimensional digital twin model, which has been applied in more than 20 different industrial fields. For further development and industrial application of digital twin, the systems of theories, technologies, tools and standards of digital twin are established by the Group at BUAA together with other institutes. Furthermore, the group initiated the first academic conference on digital twin, the Conference on Digital Twin and Smart Manufacturing Service, together with 12 universities in 2017. Since then, the conference has been successfully organized annually for four years, directly benefiting over 1,000 participants. The 5th conference will be held in July 2021, which will be complemented by a Global Forum to be held on October in Xi’an China