PLoS Biology launches

Open-access journal hits the Web with a splash | By Robert Walgate

The first of a proposed cluster of journals from the Public Library of Science, PLoS Biology, will hit the Web on Monday (October 13) and has already stimulated widespread media attention.

Some of the attention was for PLoS itself and the principles of open-access publishing, but some was for the four papers already published by the journal in what they call a “sneak preview.” Of these, a paper showing that Borneo elephants parted ways with their Asian relatives 300,000 years ago, making them a species worth conserving, gained most attention.

Publicity for the research papers is an important part of what the publisher is doing, said Mark Patterson, senior editor in PLoS Biology's UK office, in Cambridge (October 10).

“Open access provides the possibility of maximizing an author's impact, but if someone is submitting an important piece of work I think it's our duty to promote the work as well, so it's also covered in the media,” said Patterson. “And if the general public are interested in seeing the details further, they will be able to go directly to the paper on the Web.”

Garnering publicity for papers will also attract authors, said Patterson. “Scientists will know that they are going to gain visibility by publishing here. It's not enough to be open access, if you are running a very high-quality scientific journal like PLoS Biology.”

Viven Siegel, executive director of PLoS Biology and former editor of Cell, told The Scientist "our media campaign gave profile for the journal itself, but at this point it's our view the science ought to speak. Let people judge the quality of what we are doing on that."

High quality also means a high rejection rate among submitted papers. But while nine papers will be published in the first edition, the numbers are still too small to give a figure on the papers submitted so far, said Patterson.

Authors of papers in the journal will pay $1500 to publish, which PLoS has projected will be enough to cover costs long term. “Remember, we're at the beginning of a substantial program of open-access publishing, with PLoS Medicine and a series of journals aimed at specific communities.”

Open-access publisher BioMed Central (a partner with The Scientist) publishes over 100 journals, charging authors $500 a paper, without yet breaking even financially. Editorial Director Peter Newmark told The Scientist that the most selective of them, “as selective as Cell, Nature, and Science,” was the Journal of Biology. It comes out in print as well as online, free to a controlled circulation of around 80,000.

The Journal of Biology currently has no author charges at all, partly because “we haven't solved the question of how much they should be,” Editor Theodora Bloom, told The Scientist.

The BioMed Central charges of $500 are based on the fact that an average of 40% of the submitted manuscripts are rejected, said Bloom. But the Journal of Biology rejects over 90%, having accepted only 10 papers of 190 received so far. Since all are refereed, the Journal of Biology's fee to cover costs should be considerably higher. Charges will be applied eventually, but not yet, said Bloom.

According to Patterson, competition with other open-access journals like the Journal of Biology will work better than it does with existing subscription journals. “Once there's a big range of these journals, authors will have a choice about where to submit their work. They'll be the people making the purchasing decision, unlike now where the purchasers [libraries] are not the same as those submitting.”

The author's choice will be based on the profile of the journal, the price of publishing, and the quality of the editorial and peer review service, said Patterson. By having experienced professional editors in-house working with academic editors, PLoS Biology hopes to give authors more constructive guidance than existing journals about why their paper might be being rejected, said Patterson.

Bloom told The Scientist she welcomed the new competition. “If you had the choice between having no competition and having someone out there talking up the principles of open access, I'd much rather have the latter.”

Martin Raff, of University College London and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biology, supported this view. He told The Scientist: “I think this will have a huge impact in getting people to think about open access and hopefully starting to publish that way. So it's a very good move.”

However, said Raff, “It's taken us a little over a year to get 10 really outstanding papers. The question is, will PLoS Biology, because of the high profile they've chosen, be able to accelerate in the way they hope? My suspicion is it will be very difficult, and the question is, how will they respond?”

“They're committed to publishing every month, they want 10 to 15 papers per issue, and my sense is that to keep the threshold as high as we have set it at Journal of Biology is going to be extremely difficult. It depends on the support they get from the senior scientists, and whether they are willing to do it. We'll see.”

“They've got high-salaried people on their payroll and a lot of money going on advertising. And they have a fixed amount of capital, so they don't have a lot of time to do this,” said Raff.

“What I would hope is that they would end up slightly down in threshold from where we are, not from the Nature, Science, and Cell level we've set, down to the next tier, which is extremely high still.”

“It would be a pity if the two high-quality, open-access journals competed head to head. It would be unfortunate,” he said.