Beyond the PDF: New modes of dissemination Experiments from PLOS Theo Bloom, Editorial Director for Biology, PLOS Amsterdam, March 2013

Take-home / talking points / provocation Trying to fix a big interconnected system - it’s not easy or fast One change at a time brings people along Steps are good if they’re in the right direction Partner with others wherever it makes sense Experiments are good: adapt to the results 2

3 Do some science Write a description Share it with the world Read/use other people’s work Discuss ideas The idealised cycle of research communication

Do some science Write a description Do more work as requested Read / use other people’s work Submit it to a journal Resubmit Publication Be judged by publications Get grants Get promoted Discuss ideas Rejection. Try another journal The real-life cycle is more complicated

Do some science Write a description Do more work as requested Read / use other people’s work Submit it to a journal Resubmit Publication Be judged by publications Get grants Get promoted Discuss ideas Rejection. Try another journal The real-life cycle has some big problems Problem 2: publication venue as a measure of publication quality and/or impact Problem 3: because of problem 2, repeat cycles at different journals; publication is delayed Problem 4: poor links from underlying data and methods to write-up Problem 1: Access to what you want to read and (re) use Problem 5:

Do some science Write a description Do more work as requested Read / use other people’s work Submit it to a journal Resubmit Publication Be judged by publications Get grants Get promoted Discuss ideas Rejection. Try another journal The real-life cycle has some big problems Problem 2: publication venue as a measure of publication quality and/or impact Problem 3: because of problem 2, repeat cycles at different journals; publication is delayed Problem 1: Access to what you want to read and (re) use Problem 4: poor links from underlying data and methods to write-up All subject areas; not assessing ‘impact’ Problem 5:

We haven’t ‘solved’ problems 1-3 Beyond CC-BY: explore better ways to do openness (metadata, data, reusability); and accessibility Beyond ALMs: make altmetrics optimally useful and encourage wider adoption Beyond PLOS ONE: more formal experiments with peer review this year – increase openness; structure reviewer information; portable reviews? … We have made some progress in these areas 8

Do some science Write a description Problem 4: poor links from underlying data and methods to write-up

Do some science Write a description Store some of the data somewhere…

Do some science Write a narrative description that is inextricably linked to the data and methods Integrated collection of methods, results, data, metadata Store all of the data somewhere useful and link to publication

Steps towards better data handling Partnership with Dryad ( Unstructured data ‘packages’ associated with published articles Freely available - CC0 A unique identifier (DOI) for each package Statistics for access Seamless tying together of article and data Partnership with figshare ( figshare widget displays Supporting Information files directly in the article search, magnify, download singly or as a package Planning in hand for ‘data papers’ ( Describes reusable dataset to support reuse Publishes associated metadata Ensures valuable data is actionable for reuse Data accessible in a recognized, stable repository What to do with ‘homeless’ data?

Can we revolutionize speed? 13 Problem 5: Seeking Lessons in Swine Flu Fight “Another problem is communication. Officials and experts say they have learned a lot about human swine influenza. But relatively little of that information...has been reported and published. Some experts said researchers were waiting to publish in journals, which can take months or longer.” New York Times, August 10 th, 2009 Lawrence K. Altman, M.D. PLOS Currents: Influenza - Inspiration

A single, integrated direct-authoring and publishing platform

Authors may revise but can be published almost immediately post-review Rapid technical and scope review Content is peer-reviewed, citable, publicly archived, and included in PubMed

What comes out: flexible (familiar) format

PLOS Currents as an experiment Swine flu epidemic faded away - then a new one started We said “submissions do not have to be full-length articles” – but what did we get? What use-cases make most sense for Currents? Can we try harder with non-traditional article formats? –Single findings –Negative results –Replications –Methods and protocols Publish all results with as little delay as possible 17

Back to issue 1: Access vs. accessibility Readable by machines as well as people Intelligible 18

Where do people go for information? 19 open review via wiki PLoS Comput Biol article “version of record” A high-quality Wikipedia article that can be edited and updated

20 Take-home / talking points Trying to fix a big interconnected system - it’s not easy or fast One change at a time brings people along Steps are good if they’re in the right direction Partner with others wherever it makes sense Experiments are good: adapt to the results We need to work with real people – authors, readers – as well as with machines

21 Open Access

What do we mean by “associated with the article”? Layer 1: essential: the data needed to replicate the major findings. Must be available to reviewers, readers, etc. Layer 2: all the data that went into the pot: raw, unprocessed, replicated, etc Layer 3: from beginning to end, everything collected by the lab, recorded, time-stamped and linked-out to the narrative article 22

Where should it go? Curated, subject-specific, open access, long-term databases (GenBank, ArrayExpress) General non-specific repositories: Dryad, FigShare, Institutional (bigger is better? Can we have a ‘kite-marked’ list?) Supplementary files with the article (heterogeneous, poorly formatted, hard to collate/mine) NOT: the author’s website or file drawer 23