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Open Access and PLOS: The Future of Scholarly
Publishing
Ginny Barbour
Medicine Editorial Director, PLOS
vbarbour@plos.org
@ginnybarbour
0000-0002-2358-2440
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Scholarly publication is old business
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Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal
Society:
Started in 1665; first journal
devoted exclusively to
science publishing

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Scholarly publishing is big business
• More than 2000 publishers
– Commercial: Elsevier, Springer, Wiley Blackwell, etc
– University Presses: OUP, CUP, ACS, AIP
– Scholarly societies
– Independent not for profit, eg PLOS
– Open access, Subscription, Hybrid
• More than 25,000 journals
• More than 1.5 million articles published per year
• Worth many billions of dollars
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This is the world that we live in….

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The internet changed everything
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There are three things that we need to understand
about the web. First, it is more amazing than we
think. Second, the conjunction of technologies that
made the web successful was extremely unlikely.
Third, we probably would not create it, or any
technology like it, today. In fact, we would be more
likely to cripple it, or declare it illegal.
James Boyle, Web’s never-to-be-repeated revolution, Financial Times, November 2, 2005

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Open Access: the revolutionary idea
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Kiwi Open Access Logo by the University of Auckland, Libraries and Learning
Services is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
License.

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Open > Free
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• Free, immediate access online
• Unrestricted distribution and re-use
• Author retains rights to attribution
• Papers are immediately deposited in a public
online archive such as PubMed Central
• Bethesda Principles, April 2003
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Gold Open Access

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Green Open Access
• Publication in a non-gold OA journal
then>>
• Deposition in a repository, either institutional, eg a
university; subject specific, or more general
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Copyright: © 2013 Machingaidze et al. This is
an open-access article distributed under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original author and
source are credited.
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Various flavours of licenses
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www.plos.org
All PLOS journals are gold open access
• Free, immediate access online
• Unrestricted distribution and re-use
• Author retains rights to attribution and copyright
• Papers are deposited in a public online archive
such as PubMed Central
Bethesda Principles, April 2003

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No permission
required
for any reuse
Translation
Redistribution
Photocopying
Coursepacks
Reproduction
of figures
Deposit in
databases
Downloading
data
Text mining

15.
PLOS
• Founded in October, 2000
• December, 2002, $9M grant from Moore Foundation
• October 2003, 1st journal, PLOS Biology, launched
• Now has seven journals
• Now has diverse sources of revenue
– Publication charges
• $2900 for PLOS Medicine and Biology
• $2250 Community journals
• $1350 PLOS ONE
– Publication Fee assistance programme
– Institutional and individual memberships
– Advertising
• 2011 posted first surplus

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The PLOS journals are about more than Open Access
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PLOS ONE: a key Innovation - the editorial
process
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• Editorial criteria
• Scientifically rigorous
• Ethical
• Properly reported
• Conclusions supported by the data
• Editors and reviewers do not ask
• How important is the work?
• Which is the relevant audience?
• Everything that deserves to be published, will be published
• Therefore the journal is not artificially limited in size
• Use online tools to sort and filter scholarly content after
publication, not before

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The megajournals…

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OK, why do I need to care
about OA?
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Open Access Momentum
—Top Open Access Publishers
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#ofArticles

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Open Access Momentum—Growing Percentage
of STM Articles Published Open Access
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Source: Web of Science and Scopus databases, Mikael Laakso and Bo-Christer Bjork

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Your funders care:
ARC/NHMRC policies
• ―… requires that any publications arising from an [ARC/NHMRC]
supported research project must be deposited into an open access
institutional repository within a twelve (12) month period from the date
of publication‖.
• Say all metadata must be deposited in IR with a link to OA version as
soon as possible after acceptance
• Prefer the deposit of Accepted or Published version into an IR
• Permit the deposit into a subject repository (linking to the IR)
• Permit publication in an OA journal (linking to the IR)
• Both the ARC and the NHMRC do allow some of their grant allocation
to be directed to publication costs:
• NHMRC relates to any publication after 1 July 2012, regardless of the
grant that supported the research;
• ARC policy only affects publications arising from Funding Grants and
Rules 2013
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Many institutions care:
11/39 Australian universities have Open
Access mandates
• ANU
• Charles Sturt
• Deakin
• Edith Cowan
• James Cook
• Macquarie
• Newcastle
• QUT
• University of South Australia
• Victoria
• University of Queensland
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Most importantly, it’s good for your research…
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http://aoasg.org.au/

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Make it easy, please…
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http://aoasg.org.au/
What process do
I follow?

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How can I tell if it’s Open?
• Illustrates a continuum of ―more open‖
versus ―less open‖
• Enables anyone to compare and
contrast publications and policies
• Broadens the understanding of OA
• Determines how open a publisher
and/or publication is by using the grid
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PLOS journals on the spectrum
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International Journal and
Research Academy
Invitation for Paper Submission
Publish your Paper through International Journal & Research Academy (IJARA)
IJARA�stands for International Journal & Research Academy. We are searching for scholars
from all over the world and from all fields of studies in order to bring them into a common
platform.�IJARA�is an international organization for promoting research and for providing a
common platform for research scholars from all disciplines.IJARA�is formed by group of
researchers, academicians and scholars based in many different countries (such as USA, UK,
Canada, Australia, Sweden, Italy, France, Poland, China, Nigeria, South Africa, Pakistan, India,
Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong) working with various esteemed
educational institutions, government and research organizations across the world.
We strive to promote �E-Publishing� by publishing our journals in Electronic
form,�IJARA�invites scholars, researchers, professionals and academicians to publish their
research papers in our journals.�IJARA�is keen to publish papers from researchers all over the
world.
Paper Submission Deadline:�May 20, 2013
Review Results (Acceptance/Rejection) Notification: Within 10 working days (maximum) of
paper submission.
Publication Date:�June 01, 2013
Send manuscripts to the assigned email address for each journal.
Submit articles for 2nd Issue, Volume 01 of following Journals
The author(s) can submit their manuscripts for the following journal categories:
International Journal ofBusiness & ManagementResearch [ISSN 2306-9165]
Research Journal ofFinance and Accounting [ISSN 1888-7373]
International Journal for Research and Developmentin Engineering [ISSN 2113-5468]
Research Journal on Distance Learning [ISSN 2113-7968]
Special Issue "Advances in Clinical Trials"
Dear Dr. Editors,
Please pay attention to our upcoming Special
Issue on "Advances in Clinical Trials"
( www.scirp.org/journal/ijcm), which will be
published in the "International Journal of
Clinical Medicine"(IJCM, ISSN: 2158-2882), a
peer-reviewed open access journal. We cordially
invite you to submit your manuscript to this
special issue through our Online Submission
System.
About Our Journal
■ Full peer review: All manuscripts submitted to
our journals undergo peer review.
■ Fast publication: Fast peer review process of
papers within approximately one month of
submission.
■ Low price: Publication Fee Assistance to
Authors from Low Income Countries.
To authors who cannot afford a full payment of
the fee, we may offer partial or total fee waivers
on the sole condition that the papers they submit
be of high quality. Article ProcessingCharges
for Low and Lower Middle Income Countries
are calculated according to the SCIRP Global
Participation Initiative.
Journal Introduction
■ IJCM has 315 papers in 19
issues so far
■ The downloads of articles in
IJCM exceed 171,000
■ The visits of the journal
exceed 340,000
■ The journal has been indexed
by 64 databases
Other Special Issues
on IJCM
■ Pediatric Surgery
Submission Deadline:
May 15th, 2013
■ Shoulder Surgery
Submission Deadline:
May 22th, 2013
>>More
Connect with Us
■ E-mail: ijcm@scirp.org

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―Open Access‖ does NOT tell you about
• The scope of the journal
• The quality of the journal
• The language of the journal
• The review process of the journal
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―The dark side of open
access‖

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―science‘s
version of the
Nigerian
banking scams‖

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Is blacklisting a solution?
We can‘t police the
internet
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WAME
How can I judge trustworthiness?

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p://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Principles_of_Transparency_and_Best_Practice_in_Scholarly_Publishing.p
df

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What’s next?
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Technology is enabling major changes
in publishing
• Open Access to publications ✔
• Open Access to data
• Bringing authorship out of the shadows
• ORCID
• Contributorship
• Enabling correction of the literature
• Post publication peer review
• New ways of measuring impact

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We need the data behind the science to be
visible

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New PLOS Data Policy
• Ensuring access to the underlying data should be
an intrinsic part of the scientific publishing
process
• To ensure that all steps, from authoring to
publication, capture data and its associated
metadata well and then present them in optimal
human and machine-readable formats to all
readers and users of PLOS-published research
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Key elements
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• Update PLOS-wide data sharing policy (at
http://www.plosone.org/static/policies#sharing)
• Establish clarity with respect to authors‘ obligations
• New policy highlights author‘s responsibility to determine
and describe a data sharing plan
• New policy contains enhanced enforcement mechanism
• Therefore ensures transparency of data sharing, i.e.
compliance with policy is externally visible to readers (and
to Academic Editors/referees in peer review)
• Aim to ensure policy is workable across scientific
fields, and takes account of special considerations for
privacy (in relation to human-subject research, and other
issues)

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We need to track contributions properly

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Helping Science evolve 1: Version of Record

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Helping science evolve 2: Post publication
review and commenting
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PubMed Commons—Post-
publication, Community Commenting

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Evaluation, Structured, Community
Experiment
I have some concerns about the
validity of this work
This is an exceptional example of
science done well
I see one or more clear problems
with the validity of this work
I believe this work is reliable
If the user selects either of these two
options, display the following:
If the user selects either of these two
options, display the following:
The authors have made an exceptional effort to
validate their conclusions
This work provides an abundance of data for the
community
This dataset has potential for further analysis in the
community
This study is exceptionally well-designed
I have successfully reproduced this work in whole or
in part
Insufficient detail to support argument
Inconsistent or erroneous logic
Problematic methodology and/or study design
There is no way the experiments could be
reproduced or tested
There were insufficient experimental controls
The data do not sufficiently justify the conclusions
Inappropriate statistical design or data analysis
OPTIONAL: OPTIONAL:
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We need to talk about impact
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5
4
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0.3%
100%
22.2%
Citations are only a small fraction of
how a paper is reused
Article-Level Metrics
from November 8, 2012
for 63,771 PLOS Papers

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Papers in PLOS from QBI
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PLOS ALM Usage Patterns
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"Scholarly User" "Broader Impact"
PDF Downloads HTML Views
PubMed Central PLOS Website
Citations Facebook, Twitter

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Dear Dr Barbour:
Based upon data in part from our PLOS
article on lethal injection and testimony
from our co-author David Lubarsky, lethal
injection has been ruled (at least for now)
unconstitutional in the state of
Tennessee.

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―The Dirty War Index (DWI) method has been adapted for use in
NATO military environments to monitor civilian, woman and child
casualties. This version of the DWI is called a ‗Civilian Battle
Damage Assessment Ratio‘ (CBDAR).
Since October 2009, the CBDAR methodology has been used by
NATO forces in Southern Afghanistan in order to reduce the
possibility of injuring Afghan civilians. The methodology has
identified a number of military activities that historically lead to
civilian mortality that has led to NATO changing procedures.‖

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In short…
The internet has changed academic publishing for good
Publishing is, more than ever, a service industry
Open (not just free) Access is a means to an end – the
next (interesting) bit is in your hands

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Other things I’d happily talk about…
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Thank you – from PLOS in Brisbane!
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