www.plos.org

Re-engineering the functions of journals

Mark PattersonDirector of Publishing, PLoS

CERN Workshop on Innovations inScholarly Communication (OAI7)

June 23, 2011

www.plos.org

Research communication (print)

Publication

Research

Submission

Peer review

Reje

cts

Funding

www.plos.org

Research communication (online)

Publication

Research

Submission

Peer review

Reje

cts

Funding

www.plos.org

Functions to be re-engineered

• Dissemination– Open access– Growth and progress

• Organization of content– Decoupling technical and impact

assessment

www.plos.org

Re-engineering dissemination

Open Access

www.flickr.com/photos/chris_short/79656776/

Open access• Free, immediate access

• Unrestricted reuse

http://www.flickr.com/photos/photos_clinker/295038831

www.plos.org

No permissionrequired

for any reuse

Translation

Redistribution

Photocopying

Coursepacks

Reproductionof figures

Deposit indatabases

Downloadingdata

Text mining

www.plos.org

Open access journals

Publishing is the final step in a research project Public

DigitalLibrary

GovFundersInstitutionsIndustry

$Publisher

Reader

Researcher

$

www.plos.org

PLoS BiologyOctober, 2003

PLoS MedicineOctober, 2004

$2900

PLoS Community JournalsJune-September, 2005 October, 2007

$2250

PLoS ONEDecember,2006$1350

www.plos.org

Growth in submissions and publications

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

SubmissionsPublications

www.plos.org

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

BMC

PLoS

Hindawi

Growth in three OA publishers

Thanks to Matt Cockerill (BMC) and Paul Peters (Hindawi)

Laakso M, et al. et al. (2011) The Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from 1993 to 2009. PLoS ONE 6(6): e20961. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020961

articles

journals

In 2009, 7.7% of all peer-reviewed articles were gold OA

www.plos.org

Growth in OA at PMC

0

100000

200000

300000

400000500000

600000

700000

800000

900000

1000000

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Rec

ord

s

0.00%2.00%4.00%6.00%8.00%10.00%12.00%14.00%16.00%18.00%20.00%22.00%

PubMed %PMC %OA

7% of PubMed is present within the OA subset of PMC

PubMed

%PMC

%OA

www.oaspa.org

www.plos.org

Re-engineering organization of

content

www.flickr.com/photos/sewpixie/2374778051/

Journals are a giant sorting mechanism

www.plos.org

Online, content can be enhanced and organized after publication

All the more so, if it’s Open Access

www.plos.org

• Editorial criteria– Scientifically rigorous– Ethical– Properly reported– Conclusions supported by the data

PLoS ONE’s Key Innovation – The editorial process

• Editors and reviewers do not ask– How important is the work?– Which is the relevant audience?

• Use online tools to sort and filter scholarly content after publication, not before

www.plos.org

Publications by PLoS ONE per quarter since launch

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

Publications in PLoS ONE per quarter since launch

www.plos.org

Year Submissions Publications % of annual PubMed

2007 2497 1231 0.16%

2008 4401 2723 0.34%

2009 6819 4404 0.52%

2010 13845 6749 0.84%

2011 >22,000* >12,000* ~1.5%*

*Projections

The largest peer-reviewed journal– >50,000 authors– >1500 Academic Editors

PLoS ONE – growth

www.plos.org

PLoS ONE – citations

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10+

Citations (Scopus)

Articles(2009)

www.plos.org

PLoS ONE clones

• BMJ Open• SAGE Open • Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group)• G3 (Genetics Society of America)• AIP Advances (American Inst Phys) • Physical Review X (American Phys Society)• Biology Open (Company of Biologists) • Open Biology (Royal Society)• Cell Reports (Elsevier, Cell Press)• QScience Connect (Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals)

www.plos.org

Features of “OA Megajournals”

• Open Access• Peer-reviewed for rigour not “impact”• Post-publication mechanisms (eg metrics)• Supported by publication fees• Built on a strong brand • Scalable, and can become very large

100 OA megajournals could account for 50% of the literature in 5 years

www.plos.org

Organizing content after publication

Part 1 - impact

The impact factor is…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/m2w2/191545978/sizes/z/in/photostream/

www.plos.org

How could we measure ‘impact’?

• Citations• Web usage• Expert Ratings• Social bookmarking• Community rating• Media/blog coverage• Commenting activity• and more…

Current technology now makes it possible to add these metrics automatically

At the ARTICLE LEVEL, we could track:

(http://tiny.cc/ALM1)

CiteULike Landing Page

Downloading the data

http://www.plosone.org/static/plos-alm.zip

Extending the data

Jason Priem

Extending the data

Jason Priem

“The Dirty War Index (DWI) method has been adapted for use in NATO military environments to monitor civilian, woman and child casualties. This version of the DWI is called a ‘Civilian Battle Damage Assessment Ratio’ (CBDAR). Since October 2009, the CBDAR methodology has been used by NATO forces in Southern Afghanistan in order to reduce the possibility of injuring Afghan civilians. The methodology has identified a number of military activities that historically lead to civilian mortality that has led to NATO changing procedures.”

www.plos.org

Next steps for article-level metrics

• More data sources– F1000, Mendeley, media coverage, tweets

• Impact that is hard to measure• Expert analysis and tools• Broader adoption

– By publishers– By tenure committees, funders etc

• Develop and adhere to standards

www.plos.org

Organizing content after publication

Part 2 – community curation

www.plos.org

The goals of PLoS Hubs

• Aggregate open access content – Wherever it is published

• Add value to content by connecting with data

• Build communities around content

Demonstrate the powerof open access

ITIS

Flickr

Wikipedia

NCBI

GBIF

www.plos.org

Next steps for PLoS Hubs

• Enhance and automate content enrichment• Develop Hubs community

– allow users to ‘follow’ a curator

• Extend literature sources beyond PMC– ideally to non-OA content

• Extend Hubs concept to other disciplines• Make Hubs easy to replicate

www.plos.org

Open AccessPublication

Research communication (online)

Publication

Research

Submission

Peer review

Reje

cts

Funding

www.plos.org

New models of research communication

Open accessPublication

Research

Submission

Peer reviewReje

cts

Funding

Added valuePost publication

www.plos.org

Some implications

• More rapid communication• Acceleration towards OA• Consolidation into fewer ‘journals’• Article-level research assessment• Post-publication content enhancement

Change is inevitable