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PLOS 2013/2014 PROGRESS UPDATE 2 FrOM ThE ChAIr AnD CEO PLOS has been dedicated to leading a transformation in scientific research communication since its inception. The organization begins its second decade as a publisher by rededicating itself to creating and promoting the most effective means of scientific communication possible. In an age of constant and rapid change, PLOS believes that research assessment is in need of reinvention. One-time pre-publication review must be replaced by continual assessment that offers findings without unnecessary delay and fosters the evolution of scientific ideas over time. PLOS has taken important steps toward this ideal with open evaluation to explore alternative assessments of research outcomes, assessment of impact at the article level rather than by journal and by augmenting the depth of Article-Level Metrics through crowdsourcing of media coverage. Traditional publishing models and the static PDF are insufficient for 21 st century scientific communication. Integral to its effort to move beyond the article, PLOS implemented a new Data Policy that encourages scientific dialogue by ensuring access to the data that underlies the research findings. This in turn advances research through corollary improvements in quality, reproducibility and appropriate credit. Fortunately, growing momentum in Open Access research and policies frees scientific outputs from the constraints of traditional publishing models, accelerates dissemination of knowledge and engages communities in active dialogue and participation. PLOS exists because of the vital contributions of authors, readers, reviewers, editors, advisors, funders, librarians, policy advocates and staff. The active support of this extended community is critical to continue driving research communication towards its full potential. PLOS honors its commitment to foster a culture of innovation, embrace and facilitate change, and liberate scientific knowledge to provide rapid and effective communication and assessment of scientific ideas, results and discoveries for the public good. Gary Ward, Chair Elizabeth Marincola, Chief Executive Officer 3 Capturing Impact for Better Assessment Innovative Forms of Peer Evaluation Allow Continual Assessment PLOS believes that research assessment needs to be timely, continual and inclusive. In collaboration with experienced scientists and 200 PLOS ONE Academic Editors, PLOS piloted an open evaluation approach to research assessment that complements existing PLOS highlights peer review practices. In open evaluation, at any time, members of the science community can rapidly evaluate one another’s work by providing open, structured feedback on the scientific merit of published articles and on their presentation and importance. If widely % adopted, continual assessment will facilitate evolving scientific consensus and track 100 evolution over time to more accurately reflect article impact than current practices. Open Access Monitoring the Scholarly Record Improves Accuracy To communicate the reliability of PLOS content, for both initial publications and updates, PLOS participates in Crossref’s CrossMark program. This service provides researchers 204 a consistent way to be informed about changes to the scholarly record, including updates, Staff corrections, errata, retractions and withdrawals. The functionality is in place for every (As of June 30, 2014) PLOS article page on the journal sites – over ten years of publishing that translates into approximately 110,000 articles and over 3,000 migrated corrections – and on the + downloadable PDFs for all newly-published articles going forward. 10 Article-Level Metrics Developments Ease Scale and Reporting Years as a leader in Article-Level Metrics (ALMs) paint the evolving picture of a published work over time to Open Access publishing provide a deeper understanding of the impact and influence of individual scholarly works. Development work has extended the robustness and scale of the ALM application for use by the publishing industry: Crossref Labs has indexed 748,254 articles with PLOS’ ALM application to use as a test index during technical improvement; enhanced ALM reports 7 better support the wide breadth of reporting needs by the research, funding, policy and Journals institutional communities; and the PLOS ALM suite of academic and social sources now includes PubMedCentral Europe and PubMedCentral Europe Database links. 22 Crowdsourcing Captures Media Coverage Blogs The Media Curation Tool enhancement to PLOS article pages enables researchers, journalists, funders, institution administrators and authors to submit links to and access media stories from individual article pages. Crowdsourcing of additional media coverage, in combination with curation by PLOS staff, provides a more comprehensive view of media coverage without compromise to the reliability of sources. The information is 18 broadly organized into three groups – news media coverage, blog coverage and related Collections launched resources – and the community is encouraged to submit newly discovered content. (July 2013 - July 2014) 4 ALMs Highlight Articles and their Backstory The ALM Article Feature series highlights articles across the PLOS journals with substantial ALMs and presents the article together with an interesting backstory. This brings a deeper understanding of both ALMs and the breadth of ways in which PLOS research articles influence scholarly research and the broader world beyond. The community is invited to join the conversation and suggest future articles for the series. Knowledge Sharing Advances ALMs and Tools To strengthen the community of ALM producers and consumers across the research ecosystem, PLOS hosts an annual ALM conference funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Social Media highlights Foundation. Participants represent the research, publishing, funding and technology industries in Europe, Canada and the United States. As a pioneer in the development of ALM applications and an Open Access advocate, PLOS encourages others to develop + tools through its shared application program interface (API), recognized this year as a top API of the week for “unusually rich access to their collection’s usage metrics” by 150,000 ProgrammableWeb, the online journal of the API community. Twitter followers (Through July 2014) Article Versioning Updates Knowledge PLOS Currents published its first versioned article in May 2014 [1]. Following the original March publication on forecasting West nile Virus incidence, the authors gathered data on predictions for 2014 that were not available at the time of the original publication. The new data was incorporated into the manuscript and a second edition was published. The ability to publish versions is a special feature of this rapid publication, where readers also have the early ability to access the original version of the article. PLOS ONE – Measuring Article Impact 0.08 13,797 articles published in 2011 10% of articles 23 citations CALCULATED CITATION FREQUENCY 0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 SCOPUS CITATIONS Courtesy Martin Fenner. Scopus citation counts as of August 10, 2014 for PLOS ONE papers published in 2011 5 Advancing Usability and Discovery Collaboration Encourages Data Reuse PLOS continues its collaboration with Dryad to help authors improve the reuse and accessibility of their data by providing a permanent Open Access repository and assigning unique Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for all the data associated with a single Author highlights published article. Integration of the Dryad data repository into the publication process for PLOS Biology and PLOS Genetics allows authors to connect their data with the manuscript at time of submission and links data and manuscript throughout peer % review to final publication, so that confidential access to data is an intrinsic part of the 93 scientific publishing process. Other PLOS journals link data housed in Dryad to the accepted, published article. Of authors likely to publish with PLOS again (Author Survey 2013) Collaboration Brings Rich Data Building on the ability to enhance articles with supporting information files through figshare, PLOS readers can access recommendations of additional figures, datasets, media, code, software, filesets and scripts that are relevant to the article and published 53 in PLOS. These expanded figshare capabilities help respond to a critical need for tools nobel laureates that facilitate discovery of the full breadth of research content, increasing the value of as authors the research beyond the article itself. (through 2013) Collaboration Accelerates Discovery The ability to connect bibliographic references among articles as structured metadata accelerates discovery. rich citations are an improved data format for bibliographic references because they contain structured metadata from the primary article and the cited article, thus enabling discovery of relationships between them. PLOS built an overlay for its articles using rich citation data; this makes the list of references a research tool in itself, demonstrating the advantages of structured citation metadata. PLOS is engaged with other publishers to encourage wide-scale adoption of rich citations. 6 Global Media Extends Article Reach and Impact “Y Chromosome is not Doomed to Shrivel Away to nothing, say researchers” January 9, 2014 PLOS Genetics “This Dirty Little Weed May have “Watch out for Climate ‘Surprises,’ Cleaned Up Ancient Teeth” Scientists Warn” July 16, 2014 December 4, 2013 PLOS ONE PLOS ONE