It’s no secret that there are significant structural problems in the scientific publishing ecosystem, both in publication quality and confidence in the process of publication. There have been many analyses provided by the scientific community and the publishers themselves regarding this crisis.^{1 2 3 4}

This post will briefly analyse the current issues and potential solutions before presenting a technical solution designed to improve scientific publishing. We are actively developing an end-to-end, open-source scientific publication and peer-review system, called Reflx. If you’re interested in contributing, then please get in touch!

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If you’ve ever noticed the 3D images of brain structures on Wikipedia, you may have been curious where they are sourced from.

It turns out that they are generated from a freely accessible Japanese database, the Life Sciences Database Archive. This database is licensed under Creative Commons.

It includes anatomical models that can be downloaded as well as other public databases including gene expression databases. The anatomical models can be downloaded and browsed online at the Body Parts 3D site.

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