Public Library of Science
URL = http://www.plos.org/
Description
PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.
Status
By Catriona J. MacCallum et al:
"On the 13th of October in 2003, with the first issue of PLoS Biology, the Public Library of Science realized its transformation from a grassroots organization of scientists to a publisher. Our fledgling website received over a million hits within its first hour, and major international newspapers and news outlets ran stories about the journal, about science communication in general, and about our founders—working scientists who had the temerity to take on the traditional publishing world and who pledged to lead a revolution in scholarly communication. It was not only scientists and publishers who wanted to see what this upstart start-up was doing; we had somehow captured the imagination of all sections of society. Not all of the reactions were positive, of course, especially from those in the scientific publishing sector with a vested interest in maintaining the subscription-based system of journal publishing. But thanks in no small part to the efforts of the founders—Pat Brown, Mike Eisen, and Harold Varmus—and an editorial team that included a former editor of Cell and several from Nature, our call for scientists to join the open-access revolution did not go unheeded. Five years on, the publishing landscape has changed radically. How much have PLoS Biology and PLoS contributed to that change and what might the future hold for us and for publishing?
PLoS Biology is the flagship journal that gave PLoS its initial credibility as a publisher, paving the way for the equally successful launch of the flagship medical journal PLoS Medicine, four leading subject-specific journals (PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Neglected Tropical Disease), and its most radical, interdisciplinary peer-reviewed upstart, PLoS ONE.
By any traditional measure—authority of the editorial board, impact factor, professional staff editors, rejection rate, downloads, media attention, and so on—PLoS Biology is successful and has achieved that success rapidly. The proximate reason for our success lies in our establishing a high-quality journal that covers all aspects of biology, from molecules to ecosystems. This glib statement belies the fact that it has taken the commitment and dedication of our editorial board, our newly appointed Academic Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Eisen, and the courage of our pioneering authors to contribute to a new journal with an unproven publishing model because they believed in making the scientific literature a freely available public resource. And behind these visible individuals are the thousands of others who have reviewed and submitted articles, and who continue to do so. Without this remarkable community support, we would not be here. This groundswell of support is also the reason behind the most significant achievement of PLoS: not the journals themselves, but rather their larger impact on publishing, on funding agencies, and on scientific communication more generally." (Source: PLoS Biology at 5: The Future Is Open Access [1])
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