Why ONE Is More Than 5

Editorial Why ONE Is More Than 5 Catriona J. MacCallum* Public Library of Science, Cambridge, United Kingdom PLoS ONE is five years old this month. reject articles. Instead, any article can be both to the reviewers and to readers on Though still young in age, the journal has published if it is technically sound, ethi- any published article). Indeed, by publish- grown up remarkably rapidly, to the cally and appropriately reported, and its ing so many papers, PLoS ONE has an extent that it is now the largest peer- conclusions are supported by the data. opportunity to help set reporting standards reviewed journal in the world. In the past Thus, PLoS ONE publications include in science rather than follow existing ones. five years, it has both garnered huge negative results, methods papers, and (Some countries and institutions, for respect and support from authors, readers, studies that replicate (but do not duplicate) example, have no independent ethical and editors, and drawn the criticism and others, as well as articles that potentially committee overseeing animal studies; al- ire of many commercial publishers and represent a major advance for the field. though assessed on a case-by-case basis, establishment figures still fighting to main- And because PLoS ONE covers all of such papers are generally rejected.) Every tain the science publishing status quo. science (albeit with a current focus on article submitted to PLoS ONE, therefore, Their fight now appears to be in vain, the life and medical sciences), and because goes through a series of rigorous checks to however: this past year a series of journals the publication fee ensures that each ensure that appropriate standards have emerged that are very similar in scope to article covers its own editorial and pro- been met, before an academic editor or PLoS ONE (Table 1), suggesting that the duction costs, there is no limit to PLoS reviewer even sets eyes on the paper. landscape of scholarly publishing has ONE’s potential size beyond that of science irreversibly shifted. PLoS ONE clearly fills itself [4]. The Post-Publication Dawn? an unmet need in the world of scientific publishing, or publishers and scholarly Growing Up: Responsibilities The greatest challenge now, not just for societies wouldn’t want to copy it. and Challenges PLoS ONE but for all OA publications, is The success of PLoS ONE has surprised not what happens to the article before it is even us. The journal is now publishing With size, however, come responsibili- published but what happens once it about 70 papers a day (i.e., currently ties and challenges [4]. A fundamental reaches the public domain. It seems almost around 4,000 papers every quarter), and responsibility is to ensure that peer review bizarre to think that publishers tradition- this figure continues to grow (Figure 1). If is appropriately rigorous, regardless of ally felt their job finished once the paper the trend continues, it will publish 14,500 subject area. Training and managing a was published and archived. With chang- articles in 2011: approximately 1 in 60 of growing editorial board of more than ing technology and social media, publica- all the papers indexed by PubMed in that 2,500 academic editors from very diverse tion is now just the beginning of an calendar year will have been published in fields and cultures to oversee this process article’s ‘‘life.’’ This is where new oppor- PLoS ONE. It has even attracted a new represents one of the ongoing challenges tunities to serve and advance science lie term—‘‘megajournal’’—to characterize it for PLoS ONE. This challenge is especially and why it is so important to ensure and the other journals of its ilk [1]. acute if these editors have been trained, by papers—and the data associated with We believe its success relies on two their prior activities in more traditional them—are OA, i.e., not just free to read features: trust and innovation. By demon- journals, to feel that part of their role is to but free to reuse [5]. strating that open access (OA) is compat- increase a journal’s impact factor by PLoS ONE and the other megajournals ible with high quality and rigorous science, rejecting papers that they feel are not are giant OA content generators. But PLoS Biology, then PLoS Medicine and the sufficiently novel or exciting (something although PLoS ONE publishes more than PLoS ‘‘Community Journals’’ (PLoS Genet- that PLoS ONE explicitly does not attempt 1,300 papers a month, it doesn’t yet ics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Patho- to do). Another responsibility is to ensure organize this massive content beyond gens, and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases) that basic standards of reporting are high. allowing navigation by (author selected) built a ‘‘PLoS brand,’’ making PLoS a For example, each article must have subject categories. And although searching trusted source of excellent science that appropriate ethical approval for the work for articles is made easier by using PLoS’s authors and readers respect. As a result, carried out (be it on humans or animals), faceted search [6] or resources such as PLoS could introduce a single key inno- PubMed [7], we know that the audience vation beyond that of OA—one that and authors and editors are asked to represented a fundamental change to the declare any financial or other competing comprises not just research scientists, but traditional editorial model (and which has interests (which are then made transparent policy makers, health officials, educators, garnered awards from the Association of Learned and Professional Publishers [2] Citation: MacCallum CJ (2011) Why ONE Is More Than 5. PLoS Biol 9(12): e1001235. doi:10.1371/ and the Scholarly Publishing and Aca- journal.pbio.1001235 demic Resources Coalition [3]). All articles Published December 20, 2011 in PLoS ONE are peer reviewed, but Copyright: ß 2011 Catriona MacCallum. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the editors and reviewers are explicitly asked Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any not to assess the ‘‘broad interest’’ or medium, provided the original author and source are credited. importance of a paper, a criterion that Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist. provides the rationale for other journals to * E-mail: [email protected] PLoS Biology | www.plosbiology.org 1 December 2011 | Volume 9 | Issue 12 | e1001235 Table 1. A sample of recently launched journals similar in scope to PLoS ONE. Journal Name Publisher Website G3 Genetics Society of America http://www.g3journal.org BMJ Open British Medical Journals publishing group http://bmjopen.bmj.com Scientific Reports Nature Publishing Group http://www.nature.com/srep AIP Advances American Institute of Physics http://aipadvances.aip.org/ Biology Open Company of Biologists http://bio.biologists.org/ TheScientificWorldJournal (TSWJ) Hindawi http://www.tswj.com/ QScience Connect Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation http://www.qscience.com/ SAGE Open SAGE http://sgo.sagepub.com/ Springer Plus Springer http://www.springeropen.com/springerplus/ Journals are included if they don’t filter articles for publication based on perceived importance or interest. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001235.t001 journalists, and the curious reader, all of ties, but also satisfy the needs of each some of which are the outcome of specific whom will have different needs in terms of individual and even enable them to conferences or projects (such as the Census how they navigate and discover content. generate new questions or discover novel of Marine Life [9]). Another solution is to Moreover, no reader is interested in the avenues of research. provide ‘‘hubs’’ of activity around certain content of only one journal, no matter A very straightforward way to organize topics. One such initiative, still in the early how big; they want to reuse information content is to package relevant articles into stages of development, is the PLoS Biodi- regardless of its source. The question now subject-specific collections. PLoS has a versity Hub [10], funded by the Sloan is whether the content can not only be range of collections covering papers from Foundation, which allows individuals from structured to cater to different communi- all their journals (e.g., in PLoS ONE [8]), the community (curators) to select and Figure 1. Publication growth of PLoS ONE. This is provided as the number of publications each quarter year since the last quarter of 2006, when PLoS ONE was launched. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001235.g001 PLoS Biology | www.plosbiology.org 2 December 2011 | Volume 9 | Issue 12 | e1001235 filter articles, regardless of the venue, and papers that have received more than 200 include how often and how soon an article which can be enhanced by comments citations, while 20% of articles one year or is mentioned on Twitter or Facebook. But from curators and via semantic linking. older have received more than nine others are coming up with more innova- It is likely, however, that the solution citations and 76% one or more, a pattern tive ideas. Several of the top ‘‘10+1’’ apps, will not be to provide only pre-packaged of variation that will be familiar to all shortlisted in the PLoS/Mendeley binary platforms of content for readers to come journals. By studying the citations to the battle [12], for example, are about mea- and browse but to give individuals the individual articles, rather than a journal- suring the impact of articles or researchers. tools to create their own personalized level metric, a reader can understand in a ‘‘hub’’ and to use, reuse, and track much more nuanced way the research The Open-Access Ecosystem research in any direction they wish.

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