News Release: Former Editor of BMJ Joins the Public Library of Science
Dr. Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group, has joined the Public Library of Science Board of Directors. Dr. Smith has long championed the causes of increased access to research articles, particularly in the developing world, improved ethical standards for researchers and authors, and most recently, open access publishing models. In May of 2004, Dr. Smith announced his resignation from the BMJ to become chief executive of the European arm of UnitedHealth Group, the largest healthcare company in the United States. In joining PLoS, Dr. Smith is calling for a complete overhaul of current biomedical publishing models.
In recent years, Dr. Smith, while running a for-profit commercial publishing business, has encouraged the development of new business models that would maintain publishing revenues while offering free access to full-text versions of original research. His commitment to open access publishing at the BMJ, and now at PLoS, reflect a growing movement towards making biomedical research a truly public resource.
In other news, PLoS has issued a response to the report from the Science and Technology Committee of the United Kingdom House of Commons, "Scientific Publications: Free For All?" available at < http://www.plos.org/about/openaccess.html >.
[SPARC E-NEWS June-July 2004 http://www.arl.org/sparc/core/index.asp?page=g37]
[PLOS News Release on same topic: http://www.plos.org/news/announce_smith.html]
