Transcript Document
Committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource “Re-engineering the scholarly journal” Mark Patterson, Director of Publishing Arcadia Seminar, Cambridge: Nov, 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 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
Free access
≠
Open access
www.plos.org
What is open access?
• Free, immediate access • Unrestricted reuse • Deposition in a digital public archive
Bethesda definition, 2003
www.plos.org
Creative Commons Attribution License
Copyright: © 2004 Moorthy et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium , provided the original work is properly cited.
Goal: make clear to humans (and machines) what can be done www.creativecommons.org
www.plos.org
Translation Coursepacks Photocopying Deposit in databases
No permission required
for any reuse
Downloading data Text mining Reproduction of figures Redistribution www.plos.org
What is open access?
• Free, immediate access online • Unrestricted use
What is open access?
• Free, immediate access online • Unrestricted use
What is open access?
• Free, immediate access online • Unrestricted use
What is open access?
• Free, immediate access online • Unrestricted use
A network of literature Document www.plos.org
Document Database A network of literature and data www.plos.org
Silos of information www.flickr.com/photos/chris_short/79656776/ www.plos.org
Open access
• Free, immediate access • Unrestricted reuse
www.flickr.com/photos/chris_short/79656776/ www.plos.org
http://www.flickr.com/photos/photos_clinker/295038831
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 – publication fee business model – achieve sustainability • Make the literature more useful – to scientists and the public
www.plos.org
Subscription journals € Pay-per-view
Researcher
€
Publisher
€ €
Library
Subscription
Gov Funders Industry
€
Institutions Reader
www.plos.org
Open access journals
Publishing is the final step in a research project Researcher
€
Publisher Public Digital Library Gov Funders Industry
€
Institutions Reader
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 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 Publications Submissions 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
Re-engineering organization of content
www.plos.org
The life cycle of a research article Research Submission Peer review 2-3 Experts Is it rigorous?
Good enough?
Right audience?
Takes months/years 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 2006* 2007 2008 2009 2010**
473 2497 4401 6819 10526 138 1231 2723 4404 5265
% of annual PubMed
0.02% 0.16% 0.34% 0.52% Y/E 0.8%?
*Started publishing Dec 20 th , 2006 **Up to Oct 31 st
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 readers) Institutions Funders Who cares about measuring research impact?
Librarians 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
www.plos.org
www.plos.org
CiteULike Landing Page
www.plos.org
www.plos.org
Downloading the data
http://www.plosone.org/static/plos-alm.zip
Evaluating the (usage) data
Evaluating the (usage) data
“The Dirty War Index (DWI) method has been adapted for use in NATO military environments to monitor civilian, woman and child casualties. This version of the DWI is called a ‘Civilian Battle Damage Assessment Ratio’ (CBDAR). Since October 2009, the CBDAR methodology has been used by NATO forces in Southern Afghanistan in order to reduce the possibility of injuring Afghan civilians. The methodology has identified a number of military activities that historically lead to civilian mortality that has led to NATO changing procedures.”
www.plos.org
Next steps for article-level metrics
• More data sources – F1000, Mendeley, media coverage, tweets • Impact that is hard to measure • 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
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 10 th , 2009 Lawrence K. Altman, M.D.
www.plos.org
PLoS Currents – Workflow
Google Knol:
Author(s) assemble content and control access and editing. Authors submit content to PLoS Currents.
PLoS Currents:
Expert reviewers control 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
www.plos.org
www.plos.org
• Prescreen by Editors • Submission sent to Board of Reviewers.
• Does the work contain any obvious methodological, ethical or legal problems?
www.plos.org
From submission to publication in a few days
www.plos.org
www.plos.org
www.plos.org
www.plos.org
www.plos.org
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 2 nd – 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 Submission 2-3 Experts Is it rigorous?
Good enough?
Right audience?
Takes months/years Peer review Publication Journal name is key
New models of scholarly communication Research Submission Peer review PLoS Currents Publication 2-3 Experts Is it rigorous?
Good enough?
Right audience?
Takes weeks/months Focus on the article Enhanced article Article-level metrics Integrated with data Organization in Hubs
The landscape is changing www.flickr.com/photos/keepitsurreal/1884615328/ www.plos.org