Rethinking the Functions of a Journal - some case studies from PLoS by Mark Patterson

Committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource “Re-engineering the scientific journal” Mark Patterson, Director of Publishing EDIT Meeting, Copenhagen: Oct, 2010 www.plos.org

The functions of journals • Registration – Who’s done what and when? • Certification – Is the work sound? • Dissemination – The right information to the people who need it • Preservation – Archiving for future generations Roosendaal and Geurts www.plos.org

Journals are a giant Organization sorting mechanism www.flickr.com/photos/sewpixie/2374778051/

Re-engineering • Dissemination – Open access • Organization of content – Impact and audience • Authoring and certification – Eliminating all unnecessary delays www.plos.org

Re-engineering dissemination Open Access www.plos.org

PLoS Founding Board of Directors Harold Varmus PLoS Co-founder and Chairman of the Board President and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Patrick O. Brown PLoS Co-founder and Board Member Howard Hughes Medical Institute & Stanford University School of Medicine Michael B. Eisen PLoS Co-founder and Board Member Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory & University of California at Berkeley www.plos.org

PLoS publishing strategy • 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 www.plos.org

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

Growth in submissions and publications 14000 12000 10000 Publications Submissions 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 www.plos.org

Financial growth % Operating expense covered by operating revenue 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 www.plos.org

www.oaspa.org

What is open access? • Free, immediate access online • Unrestricted use

Document A network of literature www.plos.org

Document Database A network of literature and data www.plos.org

Open access • Free, immediate access • Unrestricted reuse www.plos.org www.flickr.com/photos/chris_short/79656776/

Re-engineering organization of content www.plos.org

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

What do we need to do before research is published? What is best left until after publication? www.plos.org

www.plos.org

PLoS ONE’s Key Innovation – The editorial process • 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? • Use online tools to sort and filter scholarly content after publication, not before www.plos.org

PLoS ONE – statistics Year Submissions Publications % of annual PubMed 2006* 473 138 0.02% 2007 2497 1231 0.16% 2008 4401 2723 0.34% 2009 6819 4404 0.52% 2010** 9060 4642 Y/E 0.83% *Started publishing Dec 20th, 2006 **Up to Oct 5th Community acceptance – largest peer-reviewed journal – >50,000 authors – >1300 Academic Editors www.plos.org

www.plos.org

What do we need to do before research is published? What is best left until after publication? www.plos.org

Researchers (authors and Institutions readers) Who cares Librarians about measuring Funders research impact? The public Publishers www.plos.org

How do we measure ‘impact’? The impact factor of the journal in which an article is published. Recommended reading: Adler, R., Ewing, J. Taylor, P. Citation statistics. A report from the International Mathematical Union. http://www.mathunion.org/publications/report/citationstatistics/ www.plos.org

How could we measure ‘impact’? At the ARTICLE LEVEL, we could track: • Citations • Web usage • Expert Ratings • Social bookmarking • Community rating • Media/blog coverage • Commenting activity • and more… Current technology now makes it possible to add these metrics automatically www.plos.org

(http://tiny.cc/ALM1)

CrossRef Landing Page

www.plos.org

CiteULike Landing Page

www.plos.org

Downloading the data http://www.plosone.org/static/plos-alm.zip

Evaluating the (usage) data

Next steps for article-level metrics • More sources for each data type – Citations, blog coverage • New data sources – F1000, Mendeley • Expert analysis and tools • Broader adoption – By publishers – By tenure committees, funders etc • Develop and adhere to standards www.plos.org

The goals of PLoS Hubs • Aggregate open access content – Wherever it is published • Add value to content by connecting with data • Build communities around content Demonstrate the power of open access

ITIS Flickr Wikipedia NCBI GBIF

The Hub Curators Edward Vanden Berghe Community Ocean Biogeographic Information System Thomas Brooks NatureServe Steering Committee Brian Fisher California Academy of Sciences Michael J. Donoghue Yale University Robert Guralnick University of Colorado, Boulder Jonathan A. Eisen Peter Kareiva University of California, Davis The Nature Conservancy Georgina Mace Patricia Miloslavich Imperial College, London University Simon Bolivar David Mindell Hugh Possingham California Academy of Sciences Univerity of Queensland Roderic D. M. Page Andy Purvis University of Glasgow Imperial College London Richard Pyle Peter Roopnarine Bernice P. Bishop Museum California Academy of Sciences Quentin Wheeler Arizona State University

Next steps for PLoS Hubs • Enhance and automate content enrichment • Develop Hubs community – allow users to ‘follow’ a curator • Extend literature sources beyond PMC – ideally to non-OA content • Extend Hubs concept to other disciplines • Make Hubs easy to replicate

Re-engineering authoring and certification www.plos.org

New models of scholarly communication Conventional PLoS ONE PLoS Currents 1 day 100 days 1 year Publication www.plos.org

PLoS Currents: Key features • An innovative forum for the rapid exchange of results and ideas • Registration – Articles are date-stamped and citable • Certification – Reviewed by expert researchers • Dissemination – All content is open access • Preservation – Archived at PubMed Central www.plos.org

PLoS Currents – Inspiration 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 10th, 2009 Lawrence K. Altman, M.D. www.plos.org

PLoS Currents – Workflow Google Knol: Author(s) assemble content and control access and editing. PLoS Currents: Authors submit content Expert reviewers control to PLoS Currents. posting of content, commenting and version control. PubMed Central: Immediate transfer from PLoS Currents site; stable identifier and permanent archiving. www.plos.org

www.plos.org

• Quick prescreen by Editors • Submission sent to Board of Reviewers. • Is it legitimate science and does it contain any obvious methodological, ethical or legal violations? • Editors review comments before decision sent to author. www.plos.org

From submission to publication in a few days www.plos.org

www.plos.org

PLoS Currents • Very fast • Cost-effective • Reviewed by experts • Citable • Version control • Archived at PubMed Central • Included in PubMed • Flexible and easy to replicate www.plos.org

PLoS Currents – New sections • Launched on Sept 2nd – PLoS Currents: Huntington Disease (produced with support from CHDI Foundation) – PLoS Currents: Evidence on Genomic Tests (in collaboration with the CDC) • To be launched in a few weeks – PLoS Currents: Tree of Life (phylogenetic analyses) www.plos.org

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

New models of scholarly communication Research 2-3 Experts Rejects Submission Is it rigorous? Good enough? Peer review Right audience? Takes weeks/months PLoS Publication Focus on the article Currents Enhanced article Article-level metrics Integrated with data Organization in Hubs

The landscape is changing www.plos.org www.flickr.com/photos/keepitsurreal/1884615328/

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Rethinking the Functions of a Journal - some case studies from PLoS by Mark Patterson

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