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Published online 2 July 2008 | Nature 454, 11 (2008) | doi:10.1038/454011a
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PLoS stays afloat with bulk publishing
Science-publishing firm struggles to make ends meet with open-access model.
Public Library of Science (PLoS), the poster child of the open-access publishing movement, is following an haute couture model of science publishing — relying on bulk, cheap publishing of lower quality papers to subsidize its handful of high-quality flagship journals.
Since its launch in 2002, PLoS has been kept afloat financially by some US$17.
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I believe the open-access model, at least in the Western world, will survive (a) as long as the perception (and reality, hopefully) of a robust, fair peer-review process remains intact, and (b) authors are willing (and able) to pay for their papers. Nagesh Ragavendra, MD
The whole idea of PLoS One 9as I understood it) was to allow researchers to publish data which they consider "of general interest", but which the big "general interest" journals do not consider important enough. In my opinion that is not the same as being "a dumping ground" or "sub-standard". Yes - they do publish a "mixed bag", but again that is not the same as publishing scientifically invalid data. And the truth is, that while the article tries to show it is neutral and unbiased it is in fact very one-sided and amounts to an unfair attack on a rival journal. Maybe "Nature" should be more careful not to publish sub-standard commentary...
I can understand that a for-profit company like the publisher of Nature might primarily be interested in the "bottom line" of PLoS. But the purpose of PLoS is not to make money. If government and foundation subsidies are necessary for the PLoS journals, so be it. The goal of open access is worth it. That's why organizations like NIH and the Wellcome Trust subsidize open access, even though it won't make them any money.
You may want to look at installing a plugin to collect comments from FriendFeed: this article is getting a lot of discussion there. For example: http://friendfeed.com/e/e731c5a7-2a55-40bb-895d-75ee14101f9b/PLoS-stays-afloat-with-bulk-publishing/ Incidentally, the commenting system here is just awful - you could at least allow limited HTML formatting.
I think that PLOS should be ecstatic about this attack piece. The fact that Nature has unleashed one of its in-house rottweilers to spread scorn and innuendo suggests that PLOS is actually beginning to worry the powers-that-be at NPG... For the record, the papers in my field that I have seen on PLOS One are for the most part worthy of interest and deserving of publication.
this should have come with a competing financial interests statement
I find it rather distasteful that Nature would publish such a slanted attack piece on one of its competitors, and leak confidential information about the sale of one of its other competitors, and try to pass it off as news. If you ask me, this looks like a desperate attack with the sole purpose of protecting Nature's financial interests.
I find the statement "relying on bulk, cheap publishing of lower quality papers to subsidize its handful of high-quality flagship journals" rather surprising, given that in the 2007 Journal Citation Report that was just published, the PLoS Community Journals received some of the highest Impact Factors in their respective fields. In fact, Nature has a very similar journal portfolio to that of PLoS, with one or two very high impact flagship journals and a collection of strong subject-specific journals with slightly lower Impact Factors. PLoS ONE is indeed a departure from the pervasive impact-oriented publication culture, but I find it absurd to portray PLoS's Community Journals as low impact publications.
ScienceBlogs has more criticism of this slanted attack by Nature on one of its competitors...go to... http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/2008/07/nature_offers_a_completely_obj.php The blogger (DrugMonkey) is is an NIH-funded biomedical research scientist.
Oh, naughty Nature editors! How dare you publish a piece about your rivals that is in any way critical! Hang your collective heads in shame!
As a member of the PlosOne editorial board who dedicates a fair amount of his time to the handling of munuscripts, I was shocked by the nasty overall tone of Declan Butler's commentary. To all the above reactions, I will simply add a few questions: - Once research funded by taxpayers money has been carried out, is it normal that anyone (including taxpayers ) should have to pay to access the results ? - At least in the life sciences, who would ever pretend to produce data for a scientific manuscript for an overall cost of less than 200.000 € ? - How does 2000 or 3000 € compare to this ? - What is the average cost of page charges for papers published in pay-for-access journals ? - What percentage of their time do scientists spend in successive resubmissions of their manuscripts to journals ? - How much does this cost ? - Does impact of research really equate to its quality ? - If findings and ideas are ahead of their time, will they have an immediate high impact ? - Is Nature really proud of the numerous papers it has rejected in the past which later turned out to be ground breaking papers ? - How many of the thousands of papers already published in PlosOne will turn out to represent significant advances ? - Next year, will there be more papers leading to Nobel prizes published in Nature or in PlosOne ?
Paul Peters writes: "Nature has a very similar journal portfolio to that of PLoS, with one or two very high impact flagship journals and a collection of strong subject-specific journals with slightly lower Impact Factors." This is not so. Nature and the 14 monthly research journals publishing original research all have the highest or are among the highest impact journals in their respective categories. Some of them higher than Nature itself, because Nature is an interdisciplinary journal and so publishes in "lower citing" fields, though it is the highest of its category. (2 of the monthly research journals do not yet have impact factors). Similarly, the 7 Nature Reviews titles have the highest or among the highest impact in their fields. See here for a list of Nature journals and impact factors: http://www.nature.com/authors/author_benefits/author_benefits.html. There are also 8 Nature Clinical Practice journals which received their first impact factors this year, most in the top 10 of their disciplines. In addition to the Nature journals, Nature Publishing Group also publishes slightly more than 40 more specialist, academic and society journals. PLOS publishes 6 research journals, 1 clinicial trials journal and PLOS One.
Disclaimer: I am an editor at the journal Nature.
Yeah, there's no conflict of interest here... I wonder how Nature will be doing over the next few years now that the NIH is demanding free access to all research articles published using its grants. This will basically turn Nature into PLoS. This article is a poor move on Nature's part, it just comes off as arrogant and, really, this sort of analysis isn't fair when you consider how old PLoS is...
Dr. Clarke - Methinks you doth protesteth overmuch. But since you seem to set such store by impact factors and ISI categories, I note with some amusement that PLOS Biology is ranked first in the 'Biology' category of IF's at ISI, PLOS Computational Biology is ranked first in the 'Mathematical & Computational Biology' category, and PLOS Genetics is amongst the top 5 primary research journals listed in the "Genetics & Heredity" category. Pray do tell us where is the IF ranking for the NPG journal 'Vital' (http://www2.nature.com/catalog/vital)??
Dear colleagues, the main fact on this way of publishing (PLoS One), in my opinion, has been clearly stated by Paul Peters' posting above: 'PLoS ONE is indeed a departure from the pervasive impact-oriented publication culture'. ANYTHING that can be done to annihilate impact factors from the realm of science is worth pursuing. What is also clear is that nothing changes with their manner of accepting experimentally sound studies regardless of (subjective)importance for the readership, for in the end, all sound articles end up being published sooner or later, the only requirement is to waste time re-submitting a few times to different journals. Eliminating the subjective importance and focusing on the general quality of the study is thus a blessing.
This was very disappointing: mean in spirit and poor in execution. I expect better from the company that brought us Precedings, NNetwork, early experiments in peer review, blogs, podcasts and more. My response is here: http://tinyurl.com/6rdrvq
This slang story cynically attmpts to dump the hundreds of paradigm-shift articles that have been published by PLoSONE. It is a very simple fact that the ~300 scientists who publish in PLoSONE every month and the 500 Editors who devote their time on rounds of peer reviewing are certainly not the fools out there.
Editor Clarke, Perhaps you could then elaborate on just what the intent with this piece? Clearly many of those reading it saw it as a naked and blatantly self-serving screed against open-access publishing. In short, an attempt to undercut the business of a competitor by the method of reputation-trashing. Can you confirm or deny that this was the intent? If you confirm that this was the intent, please let us know why it was ethically sound not to make a firm declaration of COI in the piece? If you deny this was the intent, by all means please let us know what the intent actually was...?
Apparently the "bulk, cheap ... lower quality papers" published by PLoS aren't beneath the notice of Nature. Three of the Research Highlights articles in this issue (p 5) report on articles published in PLoS journals (two from PLoS One! and one from PLoS Genetics). If it is not interesting enough to publish in Nature, at least it provides enough free copy to help round out an issue.
Good point Scott. It's tough to spin something as unimportant when you cite it so much. It's even tougher to put a spin on PLoS based on its finances when it wasn't really started as a way to make money. Now that you mention it... is that why Nature was started? I guess that would be a better Elsevier joke...
maxine complains over at friendfeed (see link above) that the comments here do not rise above "internet outrage" to actually making factual points. ok, so here is an attempt at that: first off, declan's article is generally speaking interesting, and some "peer-review" outside of nature would have eliminated its more jarring aspects that has led to the "internet outrage". a) the live link you (maxine) gave us only shows the impact factors of the "nature xxx" journals, not those of the >40 other lower impact factor journals that npg publishes. where are the financials of the npg group that allow one to perform the direct comparison to the plos business model that declan seems to be sneering at ? (bill hooker at friendfeed and michael fainzilber here make the same point). the PLOS accounts are public, and nature is entitled to publish the results of its sleuthing, but for the analysis to be convincing or useful, a comparison with the publishing models of other groups (or at least that of NPG) is essential. b) declan talks about PLOS "relying on bulk, cheap publishing of lower quality papers to subsidize its handful of high-quality flagship journals" and later on "PLoS One uses a system of 'light' peer-review to publish any article considered methodologically sound". how exactly is evaluating a paper for methodological soundess "light" review ? this evaluation is probably the more objective part of peer review; what remains is a subjective assessment of potential impact (a self-serving assessment for impact-factor junkies like the nature journals), and somehow adding this assessment to the review makes the review "heavy" (or "rigorous") ? and how exactly does impact assessed by peer-reviewers (or much more often, by nature's stable of fresh out of science professional editors, since most submissions are not even sent out for peer-review) decide the quality of a paper ? for those who believe that impact factors matter, it stands to reason that the no. citations or h-index or some such measure of the paper itself (relative to others in its field) that matters, not the impact factor of the journal it appears in. i.e. PLOS One or other archives of peer-reviewed (for methodological soundness, YES !!) material is the future, possibly with several ways to indicate currently assessed importance of the paper to the field (papers' impact factor, voting by scientists in the field, appended peer reviews etc). journals like nature can exist as news magazines commenting on the scientific output deposited there... ps. i am sure nature believes that it is the ahem, high quality of its publication process (umm.. the fonts and design are nice, i guess) that enabled its new journals (and they are multiplying like rabbits) titled "nature xxx" to rise to the top of the impact factor pile, and not the unfortunate susceptibility of scientists to branding (and this, i hope and pray, will change, as a result of such discussions and PLOS One certainly accelerates this process).
does anyone really still think impact factors are a reliable indicator of the quality of any given paper? that ship sailed years ago. to pretend that IFs are anything but a correlate of trendiness (and likelihood of being retracted) is a joke. what is the evidence that PLoS One publishes "lower quality" papers? we should just take this arrogant stipulation at face value?
Brian K writes: "I wonder how Nature will be doing over the next few years now that the NIH is demanding free access to all research articles published using its grants." In fact, Nature and other Nature and Nature Publishing Group journals have long been encouraging authors to deposit in PubMedCentral, or relevant archive, six months (not NIH's 12 months) after publication. By "long", I mean for more than 5 years, some considerable time before NIH developed its archiving policy. To those who have responded to my correction above, please re-read the comment and the correction. My correction did not offer an opinion on the metric of impact factors, which is a separate question(there is a Nature Network discussion group discussing citation science, which all are welcome to join, and to which I contribute). To "mad": Your first point: this is a news story, not a peer-reviewed article. Your point (a): see my correction. Your point (b), please compare stated peer-review processes on the jounrnals' websites for an explanation of the differences.
A lot of the commentators seem to have misinterpreted this newspiece as an attack on the quality of all PLoS journals, when it was simply an update on the financial viablility of this particular open access model. The bottom line is that the editorial process at any highly selective journal is expensive, especially when it includes an involved production process - this is true for Nature journals as much as PLoS journals. The discussion should be about how these funds are raised in way that is fair to both reader and author. In the same issue of Nature three of ten research highlights covered PLoS papers (2 PLoS One and 1 PLoS Genet), which is not atypical and may go some way to assure the community that the quality of the PLoS journals is not in question. You may also be interested to read this month's Nature Cell Biology editorial for a discussion of PLOS One and Nature Precedings, particulary if you are concerned about hypothetical mud-slinging. (posted by an NCB editor)
The article and this whole discussion here and in the blogosphere always makes me wonder: Why do we, with today's technology, still have about 20,000 different 19th century journals around? Nature Neuroscience editor Noah Gray points it out: "Nature Neuroscience aims to send 30-35% of papers out to review, so getting past that stage is the biggest hurdle." http://network.nature.com/forums/askthenatureeditor/721 Why does this step come *before* peer-review? Shouldn't this come afterwards? Why is this considered "non-light"? Let scientists decide what is good science in their field and then have ex-scientists which usually are smart, knowledgeable, experienced and eloquent decide what is "hip" right now? Let's exaggerate our current system slightly: "non-light" peer-review is mainly a review by ex-professional scientists (either voluntary or involuntary ex-) for popularity. Publication in such journals usually decided who gets grants, tenure, a life. So basically, we have a system going in which ex-members (either members who left or didn't cut it) decide which members get promoted and which get fired. How many corpporate managers do you think would want to implement that in their company? Conflict of interest statement: I have published in Science and PLoS One; I volunteer as academic editor for PLoS One.
maxine, indeed, it is a non-peer-reviewed news article and not a research article, and the resulting lack of quality shows. also a) you still haven't even hinted at the nature of NPG's income derived from the "haute couture" Nature stable and the "workhorse" stable of 40 other journals it actively maintains. in other words, what is NPG's business model in comparison to that of PLOS ? b) i am well aware of the peer-review processes in both journals: Nature and PLOS One. i am sure bjorn brembs is too. the critical difference is that PLOS One does not include a subjective assessment of the paper's impact. could you please explain why that constitutes "light" peer review ? is there a lower guarantee of *scientific soundness* when one reads a PLOS One paper as opposed to a Nature paper ?
bernd, i am inclined to agree that the article was intended to be mainly about the financial viability of PLOS. this seems to mainly be about declan butler gloating that PLOS had a flawed business model, and he had pointed it out all along, and they are only finally getting clued in, but are trying to extricate themselves through PLOS One. and this is where much of the damage begins: the digs about "light" peer review and other loaded remarks are what is driving much of the outrage, as you can see.
bjorn, great points. and i think nature has taken an editorial position somewhere that treating publication in nature (by extension, the decisions of nature editors whether or not to publish) as the holy grail for scientific decisions represents a failure of decision-making by the scientific community, and has little to do with nature itself. i agree with them here.
bjorn, great points. and i think nature has taken an editorial position somewhere that treating publication in nature (by extension, the decisions of nature editors whether or not to publish) as the holy grail for scientific decisions represents a failure of decision-making by the scientific community, and has little to do with nature itself. i agree with them here.
See PLOS ONE: take two, a post at NPG's Nascent blog, for further comment on this article, at http://blogs.nature.com/wp/nascent/2008/07/plos_one_take_two.html.
See http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/07/nature_reattacks_open_access_a.php for a blogger's response to that comment and further discussion... Dr. Clarke - Perhaps you and other Nature/NPG writers should bear in mind that the style and tone of NPG writing is at least as important as the facts of the case. Rightly or wrongly, the various NPG attempts to defend or explain Mr. Butler's little essay are having an effect akin to that observed when pouring flammable liquids on hot coals...
Michael Fainzilber said: "I think that PLOS should be ecstatic about this attack piece. The fact that Nature has unleashed one of its in-house rottweilers to spread scorn and innuendo suggests that PLOS is actually beginning to worry the powers-that-be at NPG." I think Declan Butler's piece is aimed more at open access in general. I'm not so sure that NPG is all that worried about PLOS. I think it's more like NPG sees itself as practicing for a little dance on the grave of open access.
For those still following this debate, which is spreading over many different blogs and websites, some interesting factoids on Nature's business model can be found at http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/07/nature_publishing_groups_publi.php If I understand the numbers correctly, Nature's net profit is ~£ 20,000 per published research article. If open access is biting into this profit margin, that would be a powerful motive for Mr Butler's above piece...
The "...cheap publishing of lower quality papers..." characterization for PLOS One right in the first paragraph, can be applied to hundreds of journals with low impact factors out there. What I see to this is an attack to open access (see the extended presentation in this article of PLOS sinking bussiness model). Especially if you think that all the large journal publishing houses have been raising their subscription fees over the last years, having libraries canceling subscriptions (well at least in smaller schools than VT). Maybe they used PLOS One as a weak point, since the rest of PLOS are high-impact: and if a couple more high-impact but open access sprung into existence, what would happen to pay-to-read Nature and Science ?
Is the figure a mistake? From 2002-2004, the expenses are much higher than the income, yet the balance is positive.
The figure, as I understand it, also takes into account charitable contributions.
I am the Founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Pathogens and take exception to the tone of the article as well as several of Declan Butler's assertions. The first is that PLoS Pathogens is a second-tier journal. The editorial board of that journal has always strived to make it a top-tier journal, one that is on a par with both PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine, so that authors could decide where to send a paper depending upon the desired target audience. The latest journal impact factors make it clear that we (and the other community journals) are accomplishing that goal even despite the inherent flaws that exist with that journal rating system. The second assertion which I dispute is that PLoS One is a "dumping ground" for low quality papers. There are many fine papers published in PLoS One, some which have garnered the attention of many media outlets. I myself have published several articles in PLoS One and I consider these also to be fine pieces of work. If Mr. Butler would like to dispute this latter claim he is welcome to contact me for an open discussion. In closing, one expects less bias and more objectivity from a journal like Nature.
A better publishing system for truth-seeking--------- As a grand father of open-access scientific publishing (published the first open-access and open review scientific journal –Logical Biology (http://logibio.com) - in 2000) who does not subsidize its high-quality flagship journals with bulk publishing of low quality papers, I would say that this PLoS poster child of open-access publishing has been spoiled to such an extent that its expense increased too fast and thus it is now living on financial deficit that even any great philanthropic grant cannot meet its greedy./// When I established the double open (open access and open review) journal of Logical Biology I was not supported by any grant or even any other person. At that time, it was thought that the financial support might not even need to come out of the publications per se but from the "peripheral" things. However, over the years, I found that some people loved reading the open access papers but really did not pay true respect to them. Some even took the good ideas from Logical Biology and then converted them into their "own" goods for "sales" (I will take all the legal responsibility for making this statement)./// Thus, from 2005, I converted Logical Biology into a tractable open access journal which means that honest people can still read every publication in full-length but have to leave a "signature". I also tried to run this new form of scientific publishing as a business and even created more journals and placed them into a common location called Truthfinding Cyberspace (TFCP; http://im1.biz). TFCP journals do not charge author(s) any money and will even give a certain percentage (at least15%) of its profit back to the author(s) for their good work(s). However, TFCP does wish to charge the readers but that charge can be paid in different forms. For example, some readers can choose to pay it with money. Some readers may choose or be forced to pay it with a service such as writing a review or a comment on the paper given so that other people can benefit from their views (positive or negative are both valuable) on the paper./// So far TFCP has not gained any profit. But its financial cost has not been over-blown to such a high level as seen in PLoS. Certainly, TFCP journals so far have not gained their deserved respect in the scientific communities. But I can proud to say that many of its publications are truly ground-breaking and pioneering (proven by its publication of many world first discoveries that were echoed only years later by the traditional "top" journals). Thus, if people wish to have a better publishing environment, why not give TFCP journals some supports??? Shi V. Liu (SVL@logibio.com; http://im1.biz)
That was a great advertisement Shi... Maybe I'll start plugging Labspaces in all of my nature posts.
I find particularly comical the denigration of PLoS using philanthropic funds. I suspect that a large proportion of the subscription and publication fees garnered by most journals is ultimately coming out of government coffers in the form of research grants, or out of non-profit institutions like universities. Are those not also philanthropic/socialistic funds? The difference is in the case of PLoS, the contributors are volunteering to pay, instead of being coerced.
I found this a truly disappointing piece, in substance as in style. The main message was one of poorly disguised competitive 'told you so': the old model of for profit publishing and limited access is the only one feasible and academics should have never challenged it in the first place. It is not surprising that PLoS struggles financially, it's a new business breaking into a busy market. The main news is that PLoS is still around despite these challenges. So why is that? Because it has an enthusiastic following among scientist who are willing to support it. Personally I have worked with PLoS Pathogens as an author, reviewer and member of the editorial board. It is my experience that the speed, collegial spirit and transparency of the review process and the interactions with the journal sets it truly apart. As John Young before me, I vehemently subject to the notion of PLoS Pathogens as a second tier journal, this journal has made a name for itself in essentially no time, and the quality of the work is excellent. I enjoy reading PLoS and I enjoy the idea that everybody else in the world can read it as well. Lastly, I was tickled by the fact that after bashing PLoS over poor scientific quality, Nature chose to pick no less than three PLoS papers (out of ten total) for it's Research Highlights section. Interestingly, two of them published in the "sub-standard" PLoS One.
PLoS journals may not survive once their inflated impact factors are reduced to their true impact level.----- In a real financial world, out-of-control spending for so many years in such a huge degree is unthinkable and no business can sustain such a huge loss for so long. Then how could PLOS still stay in business?/// I guess it is largely due the existence of a "strong demand" of some professional "scientists" to build their "career" quickly and easily./// Let me ask this question: how many would select PLoS journals as the first try to publish their work rather than hoping for publication in other traditional "top" journals? But if other "top" journals are space-limited, then the next "good" places would be those journals which can still give some good "impact factors" and meanwhile to reach wide readership even if it will cost a lot./// PLoS journals have learned and used all the "tricks" to increase the "citation value" of their articles and even found some ways to negotiate their impact factor up (as seen in the case of PLoS Medicine' impact factor "jump"). This early "inflation" of the impact of their journals is very critical for the success of their journals./// Another way of maintain the "success" of their publications is to suppressing criticisms on their publications. Over the years I have found several reinventions of the wheels in PLOS publications but each time I tried to expose these incidences I was rejected firmly. PLoS journals also rejected scientific criticism on their publication and they even do not have something like Communications Arising in Nature or Technical Comment in Science./// PLoS journals' "success" is in sharp contrast with the hardship experienced by a grand child open access journal - Biology Direct. Why fewer "scientists" have been enthusiastic to Biology Direct which actually runs on the same business model as PLoS journals? /// My observations tell me that it is because Biology Direct has followed the same double openness in scientific publishing as TFCP journals. This Open Access and Open review combination actually becomes an intimidation to some "scientists" whose findings may be shaky or even fakery. So these "scientists" wanted a way of broadcast their "discoveries" to a wide readership quickly without worry of the after mess of "success". But the Open Review/Comment policy of the double open journals would just present them with some nightmare that will company them for a long time./// However, I have found good news for the double-open journals. So far, these journals have published none retraction. How could this happen? Why couldn't CNS journals preventing themselves from making retractions all the time, despite their reluctance in doing that?/// Let us think deeply about the problems in today's "scientific" publishing business AND ethics. If some one really sees through the problem and wishes a real change, a REVOLUTION in scientific publishing has already started. See MANY efforts already made by TFCP (Truthfinding Cyberpress) at http://im1.biz. ----- SVL@logibio.com (http://im1.biz)
The whole point of PLoS ONE is to allow the scientific community to decide the value of a paper-- NOT editors who've been filtering,controlling and restricting the science that gets published. Why do you think PLoS ONE added the ranking and annotation/commenting capabilities? It's a completely different publishing model and calling it a dumping ground of sub-standard papers is completely off the mark (and by the way, I can't tell you how many times I've heard an academic complain about the fluff that gets published in Nature and Science-- ALL journals are subject to publishing bad papers. Nature and the like still seem to be missing the point of open-access. They hammer on the issue of "quality" (as if they are the only authorities on the issue) and conveniently neglect to acknowledge the global benefits of providing FREE access to scientific research. Wake up!
From reading a selection of these comments it seems Nature may regret the publication of this piece, as it seems only to highlight that they are out of touch with a large sector of the academic community who support them. There seems to be a slow realisation dawning among many academics that, as the people who work laboriously to produce research articles, and then put in hours reviewing the output of our peers, there is a certain farse in then being charged hefty subscription fees to access it again. With the growth of internet access to articles, the need for printed journals and the overheads involved is also diminished (it has been a very long time since I flicked through an issue of an actual printed publication), to the point where I wonder why big publishers need to monopolise our research output at all, other than to act as a hub to send it to. It seems to me that the growth of open access is only a matter of time, in the same way that music sales have moved from the high street to the web. While not cost free to authors, such costs go down as users go up and can easily be worked into grant proposals as an inherent cost of research. However, from a personal perspective the ethical aspect of open access is its selling point. I work with conservation organisations who would benefit greatly from access to the most current research to inform their work, but cannot afford institution subscriptions to the likes of Nature. Surely academia is in the business of generating scientific understanding for the purposes of everyone, not just those First World institutions who can afford to pay for it? That's certainly why I, and many researchers I know do what we do. On a final note I think that the big journals should be very careful about derisory comments on the quality of their competitors. We as the scientific community decide what work is worthy of merit and what is not, not the editors of the scientific tabloids...that is the principle of a citation index. Provided the rigour of peer review is maintained there is no inherent reason why open access material should be of inferior quality. At the moment Nature sit on top of the pile for citation reports, but for no other reason than authors of quality material accept publishing in Nature as a way to get acknowledgement, not because we like the website or the type of paper they use. If those same authors realise that in a world of google searches and downloads, it is the scope and quality of their work that gets acclaim, irrespective of the title it is printed under, then Nature could find their top spot slipping away. After all, when searching the literature for material relevant to your interests do you start with the tabloids, or do you start with a database search, irrespective of where it appears? And if you could always get it free with no "subscription required. Add to cart", well how nice would that be? Maybe Nature could learn from the PLoS model rather than writing childish critiques. I think it is the inevitable route for research publication in the internet era.
To be accepted for publication in PLoS ONE, research articles must satisfy the following criteria: 1) The study presents the results of primary scientific research. 2) Results reported have not been published elsewhere. 3) Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail. 4 Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are supported by the data. The article is presented in an intelligible fashion and is written in standard English. 5) The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity. 6) The article adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines (e.g. CONSORT, MIAME, STROBE, EQUATOR) and community standards for data availability. So the claim by Declan that reviewers look only for serious flaws is inaccurate. I have a paper that was accepted by PLoS One and I can tell you that it has been thoroughly reveiwed as I can tell from the reviewers critiques. Abdu