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367 peter binfield
- 1. Committed to makingthe world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource PLoS ONE and the rise of the Open Access Mega Journal Peter Binfield, Publisher PLoS, pbinfield@plos.org www.plos.org
- 2. Who are thePublic Library of Science? • Eight years old and the largest not-for- profit Open Access publisher • The publisher of 7 Open Access journals including PLoS ONE • Staffed by professional publishers from the likes of Nature, BMJ, Springer etc • Based in San Francisco, and Cambridge UK • Self Sustaining since late 2010 www.plos.org
- 3. The Public Libraryof Science – our 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 • Make the literature more useful – to scientists and the public – accelerate science www.plos.org
- 4. PLoS Biology October, 2003 PLoS Medicine October, 2004 PLoS Community Journals June-September, 2005 October, 2007 PLoS ONE December, 2006 www.plos.org
- 5. PLoS ONE’s KeyInnovation – The editorial process • Objective Editorial criteria – Scientifically rigorous – Ethical – Properly reported – Conclusions supported by the data • Editors and reviewers do not ask subjective questions such as: – 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 • Online tools are then used to evaluate, sort & filter the content after publication, not before www.plos.org
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- 8. What else isdifferent? • Scalability – each submission ‘pays for itself’ – the journal itself benefits from ‘economies of scale’ (e.g. it only peer reviews papers once; it presents all content in a single online environment) • Inclusive scope – all of science and medicine • Encouraging discussion and debate – on PLoS ONE: Commenting, Rating and Annotation – elsewhere: Editorial Board discussion forum; EveryONE blog; Twitter; FriendFeed; Facebook www.plos.org
- 9. The ‘Open AccessMega Journal' First, some statistics. There are: • Approx 10,000 publishers • Publishing approx 25,000 journals • Which publish approx 1.5 million articles per year (almost 1 million of which appear in PubMed) • In an industry which historically changes very slowly www.plos.org
- 10. The ‘Open AccessMega Journal' can be defined as: 1. Very very large – Publishing thousands of articles per year – and benefiting from economies of scale 1. Open Access – Because no one will pay a subscription fee for a journal that large (and growing that fast) – and using an OA Business Model where each article pays for its own costs 1. (Preferably) without any ‘artificial’ constraints on its ability to grow – For example, a desire to only publish ‘high impact; www.plos.org papers
- 11. Publications by PLoSONE per quarter since launch
- 12. 3500 Publications by PLoS ONE per 3000 quarter since launch Publications by PLoS ONE per quarter since launch 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 10 11 07 07 07 07 08 08 08 08 09 09 09 09 10 10 10 11 www.plos.org 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 3 1 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 4 2 Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q
- 13. 3500 Publications by PLoS ONE per 3000 quarter since launch Publications by PLoS ONE per quarter since launch 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 10 11 07 07 07 07 08 08 08 08 09 09 09 09 10 10 10 11 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 3 1 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 4 2 Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q
- 14. PLoS ONE –statistics Year Annual Annual % of Annual Submissions Publications PubMed 2007 2,497 1,231 0.16% 2008 4,401 2,723 0.34% 2009 6,734 4,310 0.52% 2010 13,567 6,784 0.7% 2011 >22,000* >12,000* ~1.5%* *Projections for 2011 • By publication volume, PLoS ONE was the largest journal in the world in 2010, and will be the largest by a factor of 2-3 in 2011 www.plos.org
- 15. “Open Access MegaJournals” – One Name, Two Flavours • ‘Clones’ of PLoS ONE (not selective) – SAGE Open – BMJ Open – Scientific Reports (Nature) – AIP Advances (Am Inst Physics) – G3 (Genetics Soc of America) – Biology Open (Company of Biologists) • ‘Pseudo-Clones’ of PLoS ONE (probably selective) – Physical Review X (Am Physical Society) – Open Biology (Royal Society) – Cell Reports (Elsevier, Cell Press) www.plos.org
- 16. The Conclusions… • The‘full’ PLoS ONE model is wildly successful – On current trends, PLoS ONE will be publishing 3% of the STM literature in 2012 • Major publishers are rapidly launching PLoS ONE clones • Some others have held back from the full PLoS ONE model, but have still launched ‘OA MegaJournals’ – For various reasons, it remains to be seen if this model will be as successful • Rumour has it that many others are in the works… www.plos.org
- 17. The Conclusions… • Ibelieve we have entered the era of the OA mega journal – Such journals can choose to be selective, or not – From early trends, they will mostly form around large disciplines and attempt to ‘own’ entire fields of science – They will grow rapidly! • The opportunity to launch new OA mega journals is now – Some basic modeling predicts that in 2016, almost 50% of the STM literature could be published in approx 100 OA mega journals… www.plos.org
- 18. The Consequences… • Contentwill rapidly concentrate into a small number of very large titles • Filtering based solely on Journal name will disappear and will be replaced with new metrics • The content currently being published in the universe of 25,000 journals will presumably start to dry up • There are many open questions… www.plos.org
- 19. Peter Binfield Publisher, PLoSONE and the Community Journals http://www.plos.org email: pbinfield@plos.org twitter: @p_binfield www.plos.org
Editor's Notes
- #4 This summarizes the broad aims that we have for our publishing operation.