Journal Submission and Web Hosting – Journal of Replication and Reproducibility

Sources Sought Notice 75N98026SSN00756 Attachment 1 – Draft PWS Journal Submission and Web Hosting Platform Development (JRR) Page 1 of 11 PERFORMANCE WORK STATEMENT JOURNAL SUBMISSION AND WEB HOSTING – JOURNAL OF REPLICATION AND REPRODUCIBILITY NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH 1. BACKGROUND: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is preparing to launch a new scholarly journal and publishing platform focused on the reproducibility space. The Journal of Replication and Reproducibility (JRR) will address a major gap in scientific publishing: the lack of incentives, visibility, and infrastructure for replication research. By sponsoring replication studies as well as publishing studies from outside groups and authors, and combining full-service publication with an integrated open and interactive repository for data, methods, software, and materials for both internal and external studies, JRR will become a trusted global platform for transparent and verifiable science. JRR will be an online only, diamond open-access scientific journal and platform dedicated to publishing direct replication studies, conceptual replication studies, reproducibility analyses, null results and negative findings, and registered replication reports. Each paper will be accompanied by a mandatory, permanent repository hosted by JRR that includes all supporting materials necessary to replicate and validate the claims made in the paper. As a diamond open-access journal, JRR will have no author publication charges, no pay-per-view purchases, and no subscriptions. All content will be freely available to anyone visiting the website, as all costs will be covered by the NIH. 1.1. Current Processes and Specifications: As a new endeavor, there are no existing articles, archives, platforms, data, or requirements that must be incorporated into this project. All content to be published in the journal will be created specifically for this platform. 2. OBJECTIVES: The basic service objective is to provide a fully integrated journal submission, manuscript review, and web publishing/hosting platform for the website on a third-party, separately hosted journals-publishing platform; this platform will not live on a government server and will not have a “.gov” URL. The platform must be able to accept submissions from authors; post papers as preprints ahead of final publication; route papers to reviewers; allow reviewers to upload comments; allow papers to be published in both a preprint and a “final” format that both include full-text XML; allow for the hosting and archiving of all supporting material in an integrated, interactive manner; and offer uninterrupted access to users worldwide. The service must also be robust enough to serve users throughout the world, including those with poor or limited internet access in low- and middle-income countries. Being a diamond open-access journal, the site must offer unfettered access to all readers in all countries. Rough estimates of publication numbers for the journal are 20-40 articles in the first year of work. 3. TASKS & DELIVERABLES: The Government will not exercise any supervision or control over the contract service providers performing the services herein. Such contract service providers shall be accountable solely to the contractor who, in turn is responsible to the Government. The contractor, in turn, shall be accountable to the Government for contractor personnel, subcontractors, or contract service providers. 3.1. TASKS: The contractor shall provide the following services: Task 1 – General Support Services: The contractor shall:  Provide web hosting for the JRR journal program, meeting all requirements listed in the Web Hosting section.  Provide a platform capable of receiving submissions from authors, meeting all requirements listed in the Submission System section.  Provide a platform capable of posting papers as preprints ahead of final publication, meeting all requirements listed in the Preprints section. -- 1 of 11 -- Sources Sought Notice 75N98026SSN00756 Attachment 1 – Draft PWS Journal Submission and Web Hosting Platform Development (JRR) Page 2 of 11  Provide a platform capable of routing papers for open peer review and receiving reviewer comments, meeting all requirements listed in the Open Peer Review section.  Provide a platform capable of single-source XML publishing, meeting all requirements listed in the Single-Source XML Publishing section.  Provide a platform capable of hosting code in Git-style repositories, with each paper having its own Git-style instance, meeting all requirements listed in the Code Repositories section.  Provide a platform capable of hosting containerized software environments running software provided by the author, meeting all requirements listed in the Containerized Compute section.  Provide a platform capable of continuous publication, meeting all requirements listed in the Article-by-Article Publishing (Continuous Publication) section.  Provide a platform that allows for interface customization, as detailed in the Customizable User Interface section.  Provide a platform that supports full-text search with facets and a taxonomy, as detailed in the Search and Taxonomy section.  Provide a platform that supports social media integration, as detailed in the Social Media Integration section.  Provide a platform that is mobile responsive, and not dependent on apps for mobile views, as described in the Mobile-Responsive Site section.  Provide a platform that allows related articles to be linked together for the benefit of users and readers, as described in the Related Article Linking section.  Provide a portal for JRR staff to access back-end systems and reports from the platform, and to manually manipulate content, as detailed in the Customer Administration Portal section.  Provide a platform that allows access to all content for people with disabilities such as but not limited to blindness, deafness, and colorblind, as detailed in t…