The Public Library of Science offers publicly available journals online, a wonderful contrast to the big-bucks subscriptions of most journals, and a great way to make science more accessible to the public. However, their newest journal, PLoS ONE, is looking to completely shift the way peer-reviewed literature works…
Scope:
PLoS ONE features reports of primary research from all disciplines within science and medicine. By not excluding papers on the basis of subject area, PLoS ONE facilitates the discovery of the connections between papers whether within or between disciplines.
Peer Review:
Each submission will be assessed by a member of the PLoS ONE Editorial Board before publication. This pre-publication peer review will concentrate on technical rather than subjective concerns and may involve discussion with other members of the Editorial Board and/or the solicitation of formal reports from independent referees. If published, papers will be made available for community-based open peer review involving online annotation, discussion, and rating.
Open Access:
All works published in PLoS journals are open access, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Everything is immediately available online without cost to anyone, anywhere–to read, download, redistribute, include in databases, and otherwise use–subject only to the condition that the original authorship is properly attributed. Copyright is retained by the author.
The post-publication review should prove interesting, as it’s basically a more formalized blog comments field. Will future papers reference the post-pub discussion of journals? Things could get interesting if somewhat contentious research is published.
More from PLoS ONE…