1. Committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature
a public resource
“Re-engineering the scientific journal”
Mark Patterson, Director of Publishing

2. The functions of journals
Registration
Who’s done what and when?
Certification
Is the work sound? How important is it?
Awareness
The right information to the people who need it
Archiving
Preservation for future generations
Roosendaal and Geurts

3. The life cycle of a research article
Submission
2-3 Experts
Is it rigorous?
Good enough?
Right audience?
Takes months/years
Rejects
Peer review
Journal name is key
Publication

5. How can the functions of a journal be re-engineered online?
Awareness
Open access
Discoverability
Certification
Focusing on scientific rigour before publication
Assessing importance/relevance after publication

6. Awareness Part 1 Open Access

7. Free access ≠
Open access

8. What is open access?
Free, immediate access
Unrestricted reuse
Deposition in a digital public archive
Bethesda definition, 2003

9. No permission required for any reuse
Coursepacks
Translation
A word about copyright – this is the license we use.
It’s very important that authors do pay attention to this issue – the signing of a more restrictive license limits the uses to which the literature can be put.
Deposit in
databases
Photocopying
No permission required for any reuse
Downloading
data
Reproduction
of figures
Text mining
Redistribution

10. PLoS publishing strategy
This summarizes the broad aims that we have for our publishing operation.
Establish high quality journals
put PLoS and open access on the map
Build a more extensive OA publishing operation
an open access home for every paper
achieve sustainability
Make the literature more useful
to scientists and the public

11. PLoS Community Journals June-September, 2005
PLoS Biology October, 2003
PLoS Medicine October, 2004
PLoS Community Journals June-September, 2005
October, 2007
PLoS ONE
December,
2006

12. PLoS Progress Report, June 2009

13. PLoS Progress Report, June 2009

15. Awareness Part 2 Discoverability

16. What is open access?
Free, immediate access online
Unrestricted use

17. What is open access?
Free, immediate access online
Unrestricted use

18. What is open access?
Free, immediate access online
Unrestricted use

19. What is open access?
Free, immediate access online
Unrestricted use

23. Text mining

24. A network of literature
Document
A network of literature

25. A network of literature and data
Document
Database
A network of literature and data

26. Linking Open Data

28. Certification Part 1 Focusing on rigour

30. What makes PLoS ONE different?
Editorial criteria
Scientifically rigorous
Ethical
Properly reported
Conclusions supported by the data
Editors and reviewers do not ask
How important is the work?
Instead, that question can be answered after the work is published.

31. What else is different? Inclusive scope
A publication for all science and medicine
Encouraging discussion and debate
At PLoS ONE – community commenting, rating and annotation
Elsewhere – Editorial Board discussion forum; EveryONE blog; Twitter; FriendFeed; Facebook etc
Streamlined production
Publication on every weekday

32. PLoS ONE – statistics Year Subs Pubs % of annual PubMed 2006 473 138
0.02%
2007
2497
1231
0.16%
2008
4401
2723
0.34%
2009*
6619*
4310*
0.52%*
*Targets for 2009
Figures to April 2009
9,195 submissions
5,314 publications
31,700 Published authors
11,021 peer reviewers

33. Certification Part 2 Adding value after publication

34. Measuring impact of research output
Different levels of granularity for different purposes
Research groups / institutions - to know who to fund
Individual researchers - to know who to promote
Individual articles - to know what to read

35. How do we measure impact?
We judge the worth of a paper on the basis of the impact factor of the journal in which it was published.
Recommended reading:
Adler, R., Ewing, J. Taylor, P. Citation statistics. A report from the International Mathematical Union.

36. How can impact be measured?
Citations
Web usage
Expert rating
Community rating
Media/blog coverage
Policy development
Commenting activity
and more…

37. Impact metrics at PLoS Journals
At the article level
All PLoS Journals
Provide range of metrics
not just citations and usage
Preference for open data

38. Current View (March ‘09)

39. Current View (March ‘09)

40. CiteULike Landing Page

41. Current View (March ‘09)

42. Postgenomic Landing Page

43. Next steps for article-level metrics
More sources for each data type
Citations, blog coverage
New data sources
F1000, Mendeley
Web usage data
Provide data and tools
Adhere to standards
Not a PLoS-only initiative

48. The life cycle of a research article
Submission
2-3 Experts
Is it rigorous?
Good enough?
Right audience?
Takes months/years
Rejects
Peer review
Journal name is key
Publication

49. The life cycle of a research article
Publication
Research
Submission
Peer review
Rejects
Enhanced
Article
More info on impact and relevance
Based on activity of an entire community
Is it rigorous?

50. The landscape is changing