Our aim in launching PLoS Biology was to provide an
open-access alternative to subscription-based top-tier journals.
From the outset, we have been pleased with the quality of papers
that we have received. There is also increasing evidence to suggest
that papers published in open-access journals are cited more often
(which, of course, makes sense since they can reach the widest
possible audience; c.f., Eysenbach G, "Citation advantage of
open-access articles," PLoS Biol 4[5]: 692-8, e157, May
2006). We did, therefore, expect that PLoS Biology would
become a highly cited journal, although it’s important to
emphasize that the number of citations over a restricted duration
represents only a limited measure of the impact of a journal.
How would you account for the increased citation rate of PLoS
Biology?
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“The open-access movement is the predominant reason for our existence and success.”
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From our launch, many outstanding scientists have expressed
support for our open-access mission, although initially, many were
also concerned about publishing their best work in a journal with
essentially no reputation. Thanks to the high standards that were
set by the scientists who published their work in PLoS Biology
within the first few months, PLoS Biology is now established
as a highly visible top-notch journal. Over that period the
awareness of the journal has rapidly increased as demonstrated by
increasing submissions, article downloads, and numbers of
registrants for contents alerts, as well as by increased citations.
Was there a change in policy or editorial direction that might account
for this?
Our editorial policy has not changed since our launch in October
2003. We have a professional editorial staff that works in
conjunction with an editorial board comprising scientists from
around the world. We have tried to be "inclusive" in what
we consider an outstanding paper, believing that the lines drawn by
traditional top-tier journals can be somewhat arbitrary.
What historical factors have contributed to the success of PLoS
Biology?
The open-access movement is the predominant reason for our
existence and success. PLoS Biology was launched at a time of
growing frustration with commercial publishers. It coincided with
several well-publicized rebellions within the scientific community
against practices like "bundling" of journals that made it
increasingly difficult for librarians to provide scientists with the
literature they needed. And scientists (as well as policymakers)
began to realize the extent to which they had ceded control of the
literature they create. Coupled with the emergence of the Internet
as a means for rapid, cheap, and global dissemination of
information, there is now strong support for new approaches to
scientific publication that provide public access to research
results.
Have there been specific developments in the fields served by PLoS
Biology that may have contributed?
The rise of high-throughput biology, e.g., large-scale genomics
studies and systems biology approaches, has resulted in an increased
awareness of the power of sharing science in public databases. The
science that is produced also does not always lend itself to punchy
one-line conclusions and short presentation formats that
characterize many journals. Many of our authors have commented on
their appreciation at being able to tell their whole story in a
publicly accessible format.
What, in your view, is this journal’s main significance or
contribution in the field of Biology & Biochemistry?
Our aim is to bring as wide as possible an audience to important
advances in Biology.
How do you see your field(s) evolving in the next few years?
I would hesitate to predict the future, but I cannot go
wrong in saying that increasing multidisciplinarity is key to
advances in biology. And this will make open-access journals such as
PLoS Biology even more valuable—with all content being
freely available, they help scientists to make connections between
different fields of endeavor.
What role do you see for your journal?
PLoS Biology
will continue to serve its primary goal of
providing scientists with an open-access home for their very best
papers in the biological sciences, thereby catalyzing change across
the publishing landscape by encouraging other publishers to move
away from subscription-based models. We hope that free access to our
papers will stimulate new discoveries. And as the open-access
literature grows, we anticipate that our papers will be part of a
larger corpus of freely available knowledge that can be mined.
But beyond the scientific community, PLoS Biology has a
mission to bring science to the public, at a time when scientific
education is facing renewed challenges. The press coverage our papers
routinely receives helps us to bring scientific information to an
audience outside of academia. In addition, we know that educators
(from grade school through university) use our content—both the
primary papers as well as the accompanying material—to bring current
scientific discoveries to the classroom.
PLoS Biology
Hemai Parthasarathy, Ph.D., Managing Editor
Public Library of Science, publishers
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cites
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his month, in-cites talks with Dr. Hemai Parthasarathy, the Managing Editor of
PLoS Biology, about the journal’s citation record. According to a recent analysis of
