From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a
nonprofit open-access scientific
publishing project aimed at creating a library of open access
journals and other scientific literature under an open content license.
It launched its first journal, PLoS Biology, in October 2003 and has
steadily created another seven journals. One has since been
discontinued and as of May 2009 PLoS publishes seven journals, all
peer reviewed.
History
The Public Library of Science began in early 2001 as an online
petition initiative by Patrick O. Brown, a biochemist at Stanford
University and Michael Eisen, a computational biologist at the University of
California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory. The petition called for all scientists to
pledge that from September 2001 they would discontinue submission
of papers to journals which did not make the full-text of their
papers available to all, free and unfettered, either immediately or
after a delay of several months. Some now do this immediately, as
open access journals, such as the BioMed Central stable of journals, or
after a six-month period from publication, as what are now known as
delayed open access
journals, and some after 6 months or less, such as the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences. Many others continue
to rely on self-archiving.
Joined by Nobel Prize winner and former NIH-director Harold Varmus, the PLoS organizers next
turned their attention to starting their own journal, along the
lines of the UK-based BioMed Central, which has been
publishing open-access scientific papers in the biological sciences
in journals such as Genome Biology and the Journal of
Biology since late 1999.
As a publishing company, the Public Library of Science began
full operation on October 13, 2003, with the publication of a peer-reviewed print and
online scientific journal entitled PLoS Biology, and has since launched
seven more peer-reviewed journals. One, PLoS Clinical
Trials, has since been merged into PLoS ONE. Following the merger, the
company started the PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials to collect journal
articles published in any PLoS journal and relating to clinical
trials.
The PLoS journals are what it describes as "open access
content"; all content is published under the Creative
Commons "attribution" license (Lawrence
Lessig, of Creative Commons, is also a member of the Advisory
Board). The project states (quoting the Budapest Open Access
Initiative) that: "The only constraint on reproduction and
distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain,
should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work
and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."
Business
model
To fund the journal, PLoS charges a publication fee to be paid
by the author or the author's employer or funder. In the United
States, institutions such as the National Institutes of
Health and the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute have pledged that recipients of their grants will be
allocated funds to cover such author charges. PLoS still relies
heavily on donations from foundations to cover the majority of its
operating costs. PLoS was launched with large grants from the Gordon and Betty Moore
Foundation and the Sandler Family
Supporting Foundation which combined made up 13 millions US
dollars.[1]
Impact
The initiatives of the Public Library of Science in the United
States have initiated similar proposals in Europe, most notably the "
Berlin Declaration" developed by the German Max Planck Society, which has also
pledged grant support for author charges (see also the “Budapest Open Access
Initiative”).
PLoS journals, hubs, and
currents
(all ISSNs are "EISSNs", for the electronic
edition)
- PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials [8], launched third
quarter 2007
- PLoS Currents: Influenza [9], 2009-08-21[2]
See also
References
- Adam, David. "Scientists Take on the
Publishers in an Experiment to Make Research Free to All"
The Guardian, 6 October 2003.
- Albanese, Andrew. "Open Access Gains with PLoS Launch:
Scientists Call for Cell Press Boycott; Harvard Balks on Big Deal."
Library Journal, 15 November 2003, 18-19.
- Bernstein, Philip, Barbara Cohen, Catriona MacCallum, Hemai
Parthasarathy, Mark Patterson, and V. Siegel. "PLOS Biology-We're Open"
PLoS Biology 1, no.2 (2003): 3
- Brower, Vicki. "Public Library of Science
Shifts Gears." EMBO Reports 2, no. 11 (2001):
972-973.
- Brown, Patrick O., Michael B. Eisen, and Harold E. Varmus. "Why PLoS Became a
Publisher." PLoS Biology 1, no. 1 (2003): 1-2.
- Butler, Declan. "Public Library Set to Turn
Publisher as Boycott Looms." Nature, 2 August 2001,
469.
- ———. "Scientific Publishing: Who
Will Pay for Open Access?" Nature, 9 October 2003,
554-555.
- Case, Mary. "The Public Library of Science." ARL: A
Bimonthly Report on Research Library Issues and Actions from ARL,
CNI, and SPARC, no. 215 (2001): 4. http://www.arl.org/newsltr/215/plos.html
- Case, Mary M. "Public Access to Scientific Information: Are
22,700 Scientists Wrong?" College &
Research Libraries News 62, no. 7 (2001): 706-709, 716. http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2001/julyaugust2/publicaccess.htm
- Cohen, Barbara. "PLoS Biology in Action." PLoS Biology
2, no. 1 (2004): 1. http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020025
- ———. "PLoS Medicine." PLoS Biology 2, no. 2 (2004):
139. http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0020063
- Doyle, Helen. "Public Library of Science (PLoS): Committed to
Making the World's Scientific and Medical Literature A Public
Resource." ASIDIC Newsletter, no. 87 (2004): 9-10. http://www.asidic.org/meetings/newsletters/spring2004.pdf
- Doyle, Helen J. "The Public Library of Science—Open Access from
the Ground Up." College & Research Libraries News 65,
no. 3 (2004): 134-136. http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2004/march04/publiclibraryscience.htm
- Eaton, Lynn. "'Free' Medical Publishing Venture Gets Under
Way." BMJ, 4 January 2003, 11. http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/326/7379/11/b
- Eisen, Michael. "Publish and Be Praised." The
Guardian, 9 October 2003. http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/opinion/story/0,12981,1058578,00.html
- Foster, Andrea L. "Scientists Plan 2 Online Journals to Make
Articles Available Free." The Chronicle of Higher
Education, 10 January 2003, A29.
- Gallagher, Richard. "Will Walls Come Tumbling Down?" The
Scientist 17, no. 5 (2003): 15.
- Kleiner, Kurt. "Free Online Journal Gives Sneak Preview."
New Scientist, 19 August 2003, 18. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994071
- Knight, Jonathan. "Journal Boycott Presses Demand for Free
Access." Nature, 6 September 2001, 6.
- Malakoff, David. "Opening the Books on Open Access."
Science Magazine, 24 October 2003, 550-554.
- Mantell, Katie. "Open-Access Journal Seeks to Cut Costs for
Researchers." SciDev.Net, 15 January 2004. http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=1194&language=1
- Mason, Betsy. "Cell Editor Joins PLoS." The Scientist,
13 January 2003. http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030113/05/
- ———. "New Open-Access Journals." The Scientist, 20
December 2002. http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20021220/06/
- McLaughlin, Andrew. "Senior Scientists Promise to Boycott
Journals." The Scientist, 2 November 2000. http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20001102/03/
- Medeiros, Norm. "Of Budgets and Boycotts: The Battle over Open
Access Publishing." OCLC Systems & Services 20, no. 1
(2004): 7-10.
- Mellman, Ira. "Setting Logical Priorities: A Boycott Is Not the
Best Route to Free Exchange of Scientific Information."
Nature, 26 April 2001, 1026.
- Ojala, Marydee. "Intro to Open Access: The Public Library of
Science." EContent 26, no. 10 (2003): 11-12. http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=5552&Query=intro%20open
- Olsen, Florence. "Scholars Urge Boycott of Journals That Won't
Join Free Archives." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 6
April 2001, A43.
- Peek, Robin. "Can Science and Nature Be Trumped?"
Information Today 20, no. 2 (2003): 19, 50-51.
- ———. "The Future of the Public Library of Science."
Information Today 19, no. 2 (2002): 28.
- ———. "The Scholarly Publisher as Midwife." Information
Today 18, no. 7 (2001): 32.
- Pickering, Bobby. "Medical Journals to Get Open Access Rival."
Information World Review, 21 May 2004. http://www.iwr.co.uk/iwreview/1155321
- Public Library of Science. "Open Letter to Scientific
Publishers." (2001). http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html
- Reich, Margaret. "Peace, Love, and PLoS." The
Physiologist 46, no. 4 (2003): 137, 139-141. http://www.the-aps.org/news/PloS.pdf
- Russo, Eugene. "New Adventures in Science Publishing." The
Scientist 15, no. 21 (2001): 12.
- Schubert, Charlotte. "PLoS Snaps Up Cell Editor." Nature
Medicine 9, no. 2 (2003): 154-155.
- Stankus, Tony. "The Public Library of Science Passes Its First
Biology Test." Technicalities 23, no. 6 (2003): 4-5.
- Suber, Peter. "The Launch of PLoS Biology." SPARC Open
Access Newsletter, no. 67 (2003). http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/11-02-03.htm#launch
- Thibodeau, Patricia L., and Carla J. Funk. "Quality Information
for Improved Health." PLoS Biology 2, no. 2 (2004):
171-172. http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020048
- Twyman, Nick. "Launching PLoS Biology?Six Months in the Open."
Serials 17, no. 2 (2004): 127-131.
- Velterop, Jan. "Vendor View." Information World
Review, 1 December 2001. http://www.iwr.co.uk/iwreview/1150688
- Wadman, Meredith. "Publishers Challenged over Access to
Papers." Nature, 29 March 2001, 502.
- Walgate, Robert. "PLoS Biology Launches." The
Scientist, 10 October 2003. http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20031010/10/
External
links
| Public Library of
Science |
|
| Organizers: |
|
|
| Journals: |
|
|
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
