Two New PLoS Journals Launched

Shipud writes "The Public Library of Science journal series is expanding. After PLoS biology and PLoS Medicine we are now getting a geek's favorite: PLoS Computational Biology. Another addition is PLoS Genetics. Both are published open-access under the creative commons license. A history of open access licence publications in science can be found here."

Comments

OSS?

[Squatchman]

Open Source Science?

Note on price

[Daniel Dvorkin]

As a grad student, for financial reasons I'd given up on the idea of publishing in open-access journals until I get my Ph.D., and hopefully a position at a university that would pay the publication fees. I'm a strong believer in the open-access models, but the fact that traditional subscription journals don't charge authors is a real point in their favor. (NB: I'm also a fiction author, and in the fiction world, you should never ever ever pay a publisher to publish your work. EVER. But academic publishing has always worked by different rules.) However, maybe I wasn't reading the fine print carefully enough; PLoS Comp. Bio. has this to say:

Authors are asked to pay $1500 upon acceptance of their article, to help defray the costs of publication (see the FAQs on publication fees). However, if you have insufficient funds to cover this payment, we allow payment of whatever amount you can afford or waive the charge entirely if necessary. Inability to pay never influences the decision of whether to publish a paper.

That's a good start. Ideally, I'd like to see a formal multi-level pricing structure: some nominal fee for grad students, with progressively higher fees for faculty at various levels, and corporate authors. But it does assuage some of my fears about the open-access publishing model in general.

Re:Note on price

[Shipud]

As a grad student, for financial reasons I'd given up on the idea of publishing in open-access journals until I get my Ph.D and hopefully a position at a university that would pay the publication fees

I don't know what field you are Ph.D.-ing in, but in most science fields it is extremely rare that a grad student publishes anything on her own. Research takes place in a lab, and the principal investigator who runs the lab and is often the student's advisor is a co-author. The PI also springs for publication funds, which normally run upwards of 500$ in many high impact journals, regardless of copyright license. Oh, and that money comes out of the PIs research grant, universities normally only pay researcher's salary, lab space, and common equipment.

Re:Note on price

[Idarubicin]

As a grad student, for financial reasons I'd given up on the idea of publishing in open-access journals until I get my Ph.D., and hopefully a position at a university that would pay the publication fees. I'm a strong believer in the open-access models, but the fact that traditional subscription journals don't charge authors is a real point in their favor.

For what it's worth, all of the PLoS journals will waive the $1500 publication fee for authors who cannot afford it. It also sounds like a good chunk of money, but for just about any biological or medical lab, it's pretty small potatoes. Cost may be more of an issue if and when PLoS launches journals in other fields.

Meanwhile, it should be noted that some closed-access journals do charge for publication, in the form of page or colour charges.

Ideally, I'd like to see a formal multi-level pricing structure: some nominal fee for grad students, with progressively higher fees for faculty at various levels, and corporate authors.

Once again, this may be more of a concern later, but it's very rare for someone not affiliated with either a university or a corporation to publish in the existing PLoS journals. Relatively few graduate students will publish works without at least a faculty supervisor's name on the paper, too. Besides, the $1500 probably is reasonable for defraying PLoS' costs; it's not meant to be a progressive taxation system. As long as they are willing to waive or reduce fees according to the author's financial circumstances, then a formal schedule of fees probably isn't necessary.

Re:Note on price

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Comp. bio. is my field; I'm the first author on a paper that's hopefully coming out this summer -- and yes, my adviser is a co-author; I probably could have asked him to cover publication fees, but I'd rather not. And in this particular field, publication fees seem to be pretty rare unless you go over the journal's page count or you have exotic requirements for your illustrations.

Re:Note on price

[Salis]

I find that most journals charge per page and charge per color figure. Typical costs can run to $2000 easily.

Ever try to cram results into a readable black and white figure? It's really hard! I think journals should offer free online color figures. Anyways, that's just about the only way I retrieve articles anymore.

Fyi, my advisor wants me to publish in PLOS Comp. Bio., but (if I have a choice) I'd rather send papers to PNAS. Another open access journal (6 months after publication). I like the idea of PLOS though and I think it'll make a good contribution to the field.

Re:Note on price

[Dioscorea]

NB: I'm also a fiction author, and in the fiction world, you should never ever ever pay a publisher to publish your work. EVER. But academic publishing has always worked by different rules.

The different rules in this case are because academic publications are peer-reviewed, whereas other publications (excepting Slashdot posts) ain't.

Re:Note on price

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... really, if you were good enough to have a paper in the Proceedings, no one would be suggesting PLOS.

Sorry, bud.

Re:Note on price

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the exact opposite of the truth for any well-connected lab, which can easily find an acadamy member to get their PNAS paper in with minimal or no review.

Re:Note on price

[minkwe]

PNAS is free after 6 months because of PLoS. The PLoS journals were formed because PLoS contacted other journals and demanded that they open-access at least after 6months. Most refused. A few like PNAS accepted.

Isn't it interesting that I posted a story to Slashdot about Open Source Science when all this started, which was promptly rejected.

Re:Note on price

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I don't believe you (I only have experience in math which is usually totally different from other sciences in their traditions) but don't some members of NAS (which is really really fucking hard to get into) take objection to papers getting into their Proceedings with "minimal or no review"?

I certainly would.

Re:Note on price

[Salis]

Don't feel bad about being rejected by Slashdot. It's like a monkey throwing away caviar. The editors sometime overlook obviously interesting stories (to us) that, in due time, become obviously interesting to them.

And then I sometimes think they just randomly select stories. Shakespeare via 1 million submitters.

open access issue aside....

[bikerguy99]

the coolest thing about plos is that every table, figure and any other bit of info has its own URL and can be accessed or linked directly by the reader. In this regard, Plos represents a huge step forward compared to old school of scientific publication.

Re:open access issue aside....

[chihiro]

> the coolest thing about plos is that every table, figure and any other bit of info has its own URL

Actually, better than using URLs PLoS uses DOIs.

http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=g et -document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0000057
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0000057

I'm not an expert in this field but, this is taken from http://www.doi.org/

"The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a system for identifying content objects in the digital environment. DOIs are names assigned to any entity for use on digital networks. They are used to provide current information, including where they (or information about them) can be found on the Internet. Information about a digital object may change over time, including where to find it, but its DOI will not change."

The crucial part here is the last line. even if URLS change the DOI will not, so will remain a stable identifier for that online article.

More and more of the open source and other Internet Journals are adopting this system, but it is by no means universal yet, though probably should be.

Chihiro