by Beatriz del Rincón Alonso,

Over 30 ideas submitted and 69 participants, including students, PhD students, researchers and professors, is the result of the first edition of actúaloop.

Actúaloop competition aims to stimulate innovation in social research networks and to promote ideas that improve the functionality of Loop research network while generating new and innovative applications for academic and publishing. It has the support and mentoring of the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and of the Swiss open-access publisher Frontiers.

This initiative is part of the activities carried out by Frontiers  in collaboration with the Center for Support of Technological Innovation (CAIT) – UPM.

In the first phase of the competition, a total of 31 ideas were submitted by 69 participants from UPM (including students, PhD students, researchers and professors).

In its initial phase, actúaloop selected the three best ideas. The team for each idea  received a prize of 1.000 euros. Another five ideas were recognized for their development. They too will move to the next stage of the competition.

Two of the three winning ideas, Journal Advisor and Formalization of experimental protocols, came from the ETSI Informáticos (UPM). The other one, IDeM, came from the ETSI Telecomunicación (UPM).

**Awards****Journal Advisor:**Orientation visualization system for would-be authors to advise them in choosing the most appropriate venues for publication of a paper; also serving editors and reviewers to guide their decision about submitted papers.

**IDeM(Innovation, Dissemination et Multimedia):**This idea proposes to introduce in Loop a new layer that enables online paper enrichment using advanced multimedia resources, as well as real-time communication and discussion facilities between authors and readers.

**Formalization of experimental protocols:**SMART Protocols allow researchers to accurately generate and retrieve information from experimental protocols. It makes possible for publishers to expose ready-to-use data/content over the web as well as to deliver a content-based recommendation service for researchers.

**Finalists**Research Hub (ETS Ingeniería de Sistemas Informáticos UPM).“A network to rule them all.” A social hub – search tool, focused on researchers. The goal is to increase researchers productivity through an unified social network viewer, search engine and publication tools.

ARES, Available Research Equipment for Sharing (ETS Ingenieros Industriales UPM).This idea proposes sharing between researchers not only different papers and publications but also the equipment that they have used to research. The application of the purposed idea is directly related with institutions as universities, laboratories, institutes or research centres.

Loop App (ETS Ingenieros de Telecomunicación UPM).This idea attempts to include all Loop services in a mobile application. With the app, users can quickly consult articles, manage contacts and so on. Besides, one of the main features is to allow users to identify themselves with Facebook.

FrontiersTranslate (ETS Ingeniería de Sistemas Informáticos UPM).This is a Community idea focused on Translation that proposes to create a reward system based on points, which will allow everyone on the platform to have the same opportunity to grow in it.

Shareforgood (ETS Ingenieros de Telecomunicación UPM).A direct connection between researchers and charitable foundations. Foundations that have money to research their illnesses, they can create their profiles on the platform and introduce their needs through tags. Researchers can put tags on their research.

Next phases:

Selected ideas (awards and finalists) will enter into the second phase, where UPM and Frontiers will organize “check-in” meetings with each participating team in order to evaluate the evolution of the ideas.

Then, the third phase will be the awards ceremony, where the three best projects from phase 2 will be selected as finalists. The best project will receive a prize of 5.000 euros, the second a prize of 3.000 euros, and the third a prize of 2.000 euros.

From this moment, the teams will devote the resources necessary to prepare for their participation in a Demo Session. This session that will be included in the UPM_innovatech International Workshop so that the whole initiative can achieve as much promotion as possible.

Finally, actúaloop competition has a fourth phase, where the organization formed by UPM and Frontiers will provide some incubation services in order to support the technology transfer and/ or the creation of start-ups for the selected projects. It gives them the possibility of having a physical space in a professional environment, contact with investment figures and venture capital, licenses for the use of technology… and even the possibility of job or internship offers at Frontiers.