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Building a Public Library of Science

Catriona MacCallumPublic Library of Science

ICSTI, Paris 15-16 Jan 2004

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What do authors want?

• Maximum impact • Access to the widest possible readership• Brand association – stamp of quality

What do readers want?

• Access to everything published (free)• Quality control• Tools to find what they need

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But there are problems

• Online journals are available only to subscribers

• Libraries are struggling to provide access to all required journals

• Site licensing is complex and restrictive• Big deals

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STM publishers are doing well

• $7billion dollar industry• Substantial profits• Fastest growing sub-sector

of the media industry for the past 15 years

(Morgan Stanley, 2002)

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Office of Fair Trading, 2002

• “There is evidence to suggest that the market for STM journals may not be working well.”

• “Many commercial journal prices appear high, at the expense of education and research institutions.”

• “…it remains to be seen whether market forces…will remedy the problems that may exist.”

UK response to proposed merger of Elsevier and Harcourt

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Why market forces don’t work

• Each paper is unique and every journal a monopoly

• Researchers are cushioned from the real cost of publication

• Funding for research and research output often split between different organisations and funding agencies.

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What is the Public Library of Science?

• By driving a change in the publishing model to open-access publishing

• By generating tools for mining the scientific literature

• By making it comprehensible to the nonspecialist

A nonprofit organization of scientists committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource

www.plos.org

PLoS Founding Board of Directors

Harold VarmusPLoS Co-founder and Chairman of the BoardPresident and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Patrick O. BrownPLoS Co-founder and Board MemberHoward Hughes Medical Institute & Stanford University School of Medicine

Michael B. EisenPLoS Co-founder and Board MemberLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory & University of California at Berkeley

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PLoS – a brief history

• Founded in October, 2000• Circulated an open letter urging publishers

to increase access to research literature • >30,000 signatories• Some positive effects, but overall response

from publishers fell short of demands• In December, 2002, $9million grant from

Moore Foundation to launch open access journals.

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What is open access?

• Free and unrestricted access online• Readers/users are licensed to download,

print, copy, redistribute, etc.• Author retains copyright (Creative

commons Licence)• Papers are deposited in a public online

database

Based on the Bethesda Principles, April 2003

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Why is open access important?

• Greatly expanded access to researchfor scientists, educators, physicians, the public, NGOs, developing countries

• Maximum impact for authors access to the largest possible audience

• New ways to access and use literaturefull-text searching and mining

• Market stability and greater choice for authors and funders

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Why now – the internet

• Reduced costs, global distribution (one copy serves all who connect)

• Potential for Archiving and Searching new and old literature

• Improved format for data presentation, opportunities for other novel features

• Text- and data-mining

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The inspiration for PloS is not a new idea

“I want a poor student to have the same meansof indulging his learned curiosity,of following his rational pursuits,of consulting the same authorities,of fathoming the most intricate inquiryas the richest man in the kingdom…”

Antonio Panizzi, 1836Principle Librarian of the British Museum

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Researcher

Publisher

Reader

$

How does open access work?

Publishing is the final step in a research project

LibraryInformationflow

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Transition state economics

Open accessSubscription-based

?

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Barriers to open access

• Publishers - commercial success • Scientific Societies - publishing supports

them • Authors - submitting to a new journal• Funding agencies

– don’t fund publishing– field specific differences

• Libraries - funding uncertainties

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Catalysts for change

• Open access journals - BMC, PLoS, JCI• Experimentation amongst publishers - ESA, OUP,

APS, COB • Policy change in funding agencies - HHMI,

Wellcome Trust, Berlin Declaration• Governments – UK Inquiry• Other organizations - SPARC, JISC, UN WSIS• Institutions, libraries• Pioneer authors

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PLoS Publishing strategy

• Launch two high quality open access journals to rival existing top tier journals.

• PLoS Biology in October, 2003• PLoS Medicine in 2004• Then launch more specialist open access

journals• Stimulate and partner other organizations

to do the same

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Basic information

• All the qualities of a top-tier journal• Online journal has primacy• Monthly issues• Publication charge $1500• Print subscription at cost

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Editorial aims and scope

• The best life science researchfrom molecules to ecosystems.

• Outstanding service to authors– fast– editorial board members/ academic editors working

with professional editors from start to end– accompanying synopsis written by professional

science writer

• Opinion and commentary from researchers, educators and young scientists.

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Where are we now?

Launched – Oct 13

www.plosbiology.org

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Launch week

> 0.5 million hits with 4 hours> 3 million hits within first four days> 20 000 downloads for top articles

• World wide press cover (BBC, CBS, Time magazine, El Pais, Der Zeit etc)

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Long-term goals

• Economic sustainability• Development of tools/resources for

researchers• Development of educational resource for

students and teachers• Open access becoming the favoured

mode of publishing

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Making PloS sustainable

• Publication charges• Institutional Memberships or

Sponsorships (discounts rather than waivers)

• Launch subject specific titles (economy of scale)

• Advertising

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Priorities

• Maintain quality in PLoS Biology• Launch PLoS Medicine • Plan launch of specialist titles • Establish collaborations to convert/launch

OA journals• Keep lobbying for open access

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How and when will we know that PLOS and the open access movement is successful?

• Leading scientists and their trainees continue to submit their best work to PloS Biology (months)

• The PloS business plan works (i.e., authors’ fees, advertising, memberships cover costs) (years)

• Society journals and others adopt open access (decades?)

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Committed to making the world’s

scientific and medical literature

a public resource

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How are open access articles being used?

• By high school students for science projects • By a Psychologist who compared the original

research paper to what was published in newspapers

• For a continuing education class at teaching colleges, who often have more limited library budgets

• For the publication of derivative works – in the Internet Encyclopedia (www.internet-encyclopedia.org)

• Translated into various languages