PLoS One, an author-pays open access journal, has achieved great success while offering a new model for peeer review and rapid publication. It is tied for second among journals in frequency of publication by Iowa authors, and comes in third for number of citations to articles published by Iowa researchers. Michael Eisen in this blog post comments on its success and the imitators it has spawned in its wake:
“So it has given me considerable pleasure to watch, over the past year or so, as one traditional publisher after another has responded to the smashing success of PLoS One by launching direct ripoffs that seek to capitalize on the business model we have established.”
See “PLoS Won” http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=686
Clones mentioned by Eisen include:
- The American Society for Microbiology’s mBio
- The Genetics Society of America’s G3
- BMJ Open
- Company of Biologists Biology Open
- Nature’s Scientific Reports
- Cell Press’s Cell Reports
- The Royal Society’s Open Biology
- SAGE Open
