Shaping the Future of Scientific Scholarly Communication: PLoS One
Discussion with Chris Surridge, Managing Editor of PLoS ONE and Mark Funk, Head of Collection Development at Weill Cornell Medical Library, President-Elect of the Medical Library Association, and new PLoS ONE Advisory Board Member
MARK: Can you briefly explain what PLoS ONE is?
CHRIS: PLoS ONE is a journal which will take full advantage of the functionalities that the Web offers to make the publishing of primary research as efficient, effective and just plain useful as possible. ‘Journal’ may in fact be the wrong word to use. When we were designing PLoS ONE we tried to forget what we traditionally understood to be features of a ‘journal’. We wanted to create a way of publishing research to satisfy the needs of today’s scientists.
It turns out that a lot of things that are associated with journals are at best redundant and, at worst, actually unhelpful. For example, PLoS ONE isn’t going to cater to any particular subject area. Scientists already find the papers they need to read from a large number of journals using search engines. They don’t worry about the individual scopes of individual journals, and yet the editors of those journals spend a lot of time deciding which submissions fall within the scope of their journal. Having a large and broad corpus of material in a single venue makes the job of searching for the papers you want to read, and discovering papers that you didn’t realize that you needed to read, that much easier.
For PLoS ONE we are looking at creating the broadest possible journal. PLoS ONE will be happy to consider submissions from any scientific discipline. Given that PLoS’ other journals and its reputation are focused around biological and medical research, it is little surprise the bulk of submissions are from those areas, but we are open to all. In fact we have just received our first submission in geophysics.
That is just one example of how PLoS ONE, by not being a slavish recapitulation of a standard journal in electronic form, can meet the needs of readers far more effectively. In a sentence, PLoS ONE is a high volume, inclusive and highly efficient medium for publishing research from any scientific discipline
Other questions answered in the interview:
What makes PLoS ONE unique compared to other journals?
Is PLoS ONE peer-reviewed?
Will it be indexed?
Will there be a volume or issue number assigned to them?
Is it Open URL compliant?
Open access is an important new development in scientific publishing. Above and beyond increased access, what else do you hope PLoS ONE can contribute to science?
Read the whole interview: http://mailings.plos.org/strat/html/20061111.html#one
PLoS E-Newsletter for Institutional Members, November 14, 2006
