The Public Library Of Science

August 19, 2003 4:06 PM

The Public Library of Sciencehas been getting some good press lately. An Editorial at the Sacramento Bee, The New Scientist, Washington Post and The Boston Globe, have all written up The PLoS, the organization founded by a Nobel Prize-winning biologist and two colleagues, is plotting the overthrow of the system by which scientific results are made known to the world -- a $9 billion publishing juggernaut with subscription charges that range into thousands of dollars per year.
They are committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. Check it out at publiclibraryofscience.org.
posted by Blake (5 comments total)

cool
posted by dash_slot- at 5:08 PM on August 19, 2003

If the project lives up to it's goals, this will be most excellent.
posted by moonbiter at 7:43 PM on August 19, 2003

To realize this potential, a new business model for scientific publishing is required that treats the costs of publication as the final integral step of the funding of a research project.

I get it. So this is a vanity press, right? Costs paid by author?

PLoS acknowledges that organising reviews, editing and online publishing all cost money. It will charge authors $1500 per paper [...]

Sigh. Not all research is NIH funded. I have tried to do medical research in a poorly funded hospital system, and watched colleagues do the same. It's tough. Making the authors bear the costs of publication in addition to the costs of the research itself doesn't make it easier.

I dunno. I wish 'em well, but...
posted by Slithy_Tove at 9:10 PM on August 19, 2003

The New Scientist article says, "It will charge authors $1500 per paper, if they can pay," so perhaps poorly-funded researchers will be exempt, Slithy_Tove. It'd be interesting to see a breakdown of costs and how they arrived at that figure.
posted by rory at 5:35 AM on August 20, 2003

poorly-funded researchers

They're the only kind.
posted by biffa at 5:54 AM on August 20, 2003