Public Library of Science
Encyclopedia
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a nonprofit open-access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of open access journal
s and other scientific literature
under an open content
license. It launched its first journal, PLoS Biology
, in October 2003 and publishes seven journals, all peer reviewed
, as of May 2009.
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 journal
s, 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 National Institutes of Health
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-review
ed 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."
have pledged that recipients of their grants will be allocated funds to cover such author charges.
PLoS was launched with grants totalling US$13 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
and the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation. It still relies heavily on donations from foundations to cover the majority of its operating costs.
, 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
”).
(all ISSNs are "eISSNs" for the electronic edition)
Open access journal
Open access journals are scholarly journals that are available online to the reader "without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself." Some are subsidized, and some require payment on behalf of the author.Subsidized journals...
s and other scientific literature
Scientific literature
Scientific literature comprises scientific publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences, and within a scientific field is often abbreviated as the literature. Academic publishing is the process of placing the results of one's research into the...
under an open content
Open content
Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
license. It launched its first journal, PLoS Biology
PLoS Biology
PLoS Biology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology. Publication began on October 13, 2003.It was the first journal of the Public Library of Science. All content in PLoS Biology is published under the Creative Commons "by-attribution" license...
, in October 2003 and publishes seven journals, all peer reviewed
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
, as of May 2009.
History
Patrick O. Brown
Patrick O. "Pat" Brown M.D., Ph.D., born 1954 in Washington, DC, is a Professor of biochemistry at Stanford University. He got his B.S., M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. His research uses DNA microarrays to study the gene expression patterns associated with especially cancer...
, a biochemist
Biochemistry
Biochemistry, sometimes called biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes in living organisms, including, but not limited to, living matter. Biochemistry governs all living organisms and living processes...
at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, and Michael Eisen
Michael Eisen
Michael Eisen is an American biologist. He is currently an Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Associate Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development at University of California, Berkeley...
, a computational biologist
Computational biology
Computational biology involves the development and application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems...
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...
. 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
BioMed Central
BioMed Central is a UK-based, for-profit scientific publisher specialising in open access journal publication. BMC, and its sister companies Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central, publish over 200 scientific journals. Most BMC journals are now published only online. BMC describes itself as the...
stable of journals, or after a six-month period from publication, as what are now known as delayed open access journal
Delayed open access journal
Delayed open access journals are traditional subscription-based journals that provide open access or free access upon the elapse of an embargo period following the initial publication date...
s, and some after 6 months or less, such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, usually referred to as PNAS, is the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences...
. Many others continue to rely on self-archiving
Self-archiving
To self-archive is to deposit a free copy of a digital document on the World Wide Web in order to provide open access to it. The term usually refers to the self-archiving of peer-reviewed research journal and conference articles as well as theses, deposited in the author's own institutional...
.
Joined by Nobel Prize winner and former National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
director Harold Varmus, the PLoS organizers next turned their attention to starting their own journal, along the lines of the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
-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-review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
ed print and online scientific journal entitled PLoS Biology
PLoS Biology
PLoS Biology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology. Publication began on October 13, 2003.It was the first journal of the Public Library of Science. All content in PLoS Biology is published under the Creative Commons "by-attribution" license...
, and has since launched seven more peer-reviewed journals. One, PLoS Clinical Trials, has since been merged into PLoS ONE
PLoS ONE
PLoS ONE is an open access peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science since 2006. It covers primary research from any discipline within science and medicine. All submissions go through an internal and external pre-publication peer review but are not excluded on the...
. 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
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
"attribution" license
Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...
(Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence "Larry" Lessig is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications, and he has called for state-based activism to promote substantive...
, of Creative Commons, is also a member of the Advisory Board).
The project states (quoting the Budapest Open Access Initiative
Budapest Open Access Initiative
The Budapest Open Access Initiative was a conference convened by the Open Society Institute on December 1-2, 2001. This small gathering of individuals is recognised as one of the major historical, and defining, events of the open access movement....
) 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 InstituteHoward Hughes Medical Institute
Howard Hughes Medical Institute is a United States non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded by the American businessman Howard Hughes in 1953. It is one of the largest private funding organizations for biological and medical research in the United...
have pledged that recipients of their grants will be allocated funds to cover such author charges.
PLoS was launched with grants totalling US$13 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation seeks to develop outcome-based projects that will improve the quality of life for future generations. The private foundation focuses upon portfolios of large-scale initiatives and encourages collaboration so as to achieve the most significant and enduring outcomes...
and the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation. It still relies heavily on donations from foundations to cover the majority of its operating costs.
Impact
The initiatives of the Public Library of Science in the United States have initiated similar proposals in EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, most notably the "Berlin Declaration
Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities is a major international statement on open access / access to knowledge. It emerged in 2003 from a conference on open access hosted in Berlin by the Max Planck Society. Organizations that commit to implementing this...
" developed by the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Max Planck Society
Max Planck Society
The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes publicly funded by the federal and the 16 state governments of Germany....
, which has also pledged grant support for author charges (see also the “Budapest Open Access Initiative
Budapest Open Access Initiative
The Budapest Open Access Initiative was a conference convened by the Open Society Institute on December 1-2, 2001. This small gathering of individuals is recognised as one of the major historical, and defining, events of the open access movement....
”).
Publications
- PLoS BiologyPLoS BiologyPLoS Biology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology. Publication began on October 13, 2003.It was the first journal of the Public Library of Science. All content in PLoS Biology is published under the Creative Commons "by-attribution" license...
http://www.plosbiology.org, ISSN 1544-9173; launched in 2003 - PLoS MedicinePLoS MedicinePLoS Medicine is a peer-reviewed medical journal covering the full spectrum of the medical sciences. It began operation on October 19, 2004. It was the second journal of the Public Library of Science , a non-profit open-access publisher. All content in PLoS Medicine is published under the Creative...
http://www.plosmedicine.org/, ISSN 1549-1676; October 2004 - PLoS Computational BiologyPLoS Computational BiologyPLoS Computational Biology is a peer-reviewed computational biology journal established in 2005 and published by the nonprofit Public Library of Science in association with the International Society for Computational Biology. Its Editor in Chief is Philip Bourne...
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/, ISSN 1553-7374; June 2005 - PLoS GeneticsPLoS GeneticsPLoS Genetics is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that reflects the interdisciplinary nature of genetics and genomics research by publishing contributions in all areas of biology. The journal is indexed in PubMed Central, PubMed, and ISI Web of Knowledge, and was originally created by Wayne...
http://www.plosgenetics.org/, ISSN 1553-7404; July 2005 - PLoS PathogensPLoS PathogensPLoS Pathogens is an open-access scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science. It publishes research and reviews on the biology of pathogens and host-pathogen interactions. The 2010 impact factor is 9.079....
http://www.plospathogens.org/, ISSN 1549-1676; September 2005 - PLoS Clinical TrialsPLoS Clinical TrialsPLoS Clinical Trials was a scientific journal covering randomized trials from all medical and public health disciplines. It has been discontinued and is now rolled into PLoS ONE.-External links:*...
ISSN 1555-5887; May 2006, later merged into PLoS ONE - PLoS ONEPLoS ONEPLoS ONE is an open access peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science since 2006. It covers primary research from any discipline within science and medicine. All submissions go through an internal and external pre-publication peer review but are not excluded on the...
http://www.plosone.org/, ISSN 1817-101X; December 2006 - PLoS Neglected Tropical DiseasesPLoS Neglected Tropical DiseasesPLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases is an open access, online scientific journal devoted to the study of neglected tropical diseases. Submissions go through pre-publication peer review for scientific rigor and relevance to a specific set of overlooked diseases, including helminth, bacterial, viral,...
http://www.plosntds.org/, ISSN 1935-2735; October 2007
(all ISSNs are "eISSNs" for the electronic edition)
- PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials http://clinicaltrials.ploshubs.org/, third quarter 2007
- PLoS Currents http://www.plos.org/journals/currents.php, ISSN 2157-3999; August 2009
See also
- arXivArXivThe arXiv |Chi]], χ) is an archive for electronic preprints of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, and quantitative finance which can be accessed online. In many fields of mathematics and physics, almost all...
e-print archive - PubMedPubMedPubMed is a free database accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health maintains the database as part of the Entrez information retrieval system...
- Open Archives InitiativeOpen Archives InitiativeThe Open Archives Initiative is an attempt to build a "low-barrier interoperability framework" for archives containing digital content . It allows people to harvest metadata...
- Open Access Scholarly Publishers AssociationOpen Access Scholarly Publishers AssociationThe Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association is an industry association which aims to promote open access publishing and to establish best practices in the field...
, of which PLoS is a founding member
External links
- Public Library of Science website
- Harold Varmus iBioMagazine talk about PLoS: "Changing the Way We Publish"
- Editorial in the 7 August 2003 edition of The New York Times concerning Public Library of Science journals
- BioMed Central website
- Hindawi Publishing Corporation website
- Open Access News by Peter SuberPeter SuberPeter Suber is the creator of the game Nomic and a leading voice in the open access movement. He is a senior research professor of philosophy at Earlham College, the open access project director at Public Knowledge, a senior researcher at SPARC , and a Fellow at Harvard's and...