UPDATE: June 21, 2010: At last, PLoS ONE has now been given an impact factor of 4.351, which puts it into the 25th percentile of the “Biology” category.
UPDATE: June 19, 2009: ISI will publish its latest stash of impact factors on the evening of the 19th. We will hopefully find out then whether or not a PLoS ONE impact factor will be made public, and just how well it is rating relative to the traditional journals.
Until recently, online scientific journals were really just e-versions of the printed copy. Of course, we had advance publication online and ToC alerts etc, but now Public Library of Science will publish a general science journal to rival Science and Nature that covers primary research results from all areas of science. Unique to the new format is the use of both pre- and post-publication peer review, which are set to revolutionize the way the scientific literature evolves.
PLoS co-founder Harold Varmus says, ‘For those of us who have been engaged with PLoS from its conception, the launch of PLoS ONE is tremendously exciting–this is the moment when we seize the full potential of the Internet to make communication of research findings an interactive and fully accessible process that gives greater value to what we do as scientists.’
It has launched with publication of 100 peer-reviewed research articles peer-reviewed under the guidance of an extensive academic editorial board, and covering molecular science and clinical studies with topics including the evolution of language, the control of rabies, mimicry of jumping spiders, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Every article published is under an open access license, which means everyone is free to read, reuse, and build upon these research papers.
One of the key selling points is the possibility of almost instantaneous publication with virtually zero delay between submission and publication. As soon as a paper is published a dialog between author and reader is opened.
PLoS launched in “beta” in December, 2007 could see big changes in the way the scientific literature evolves.
UPDATE: 2009-06-16 Recent headlines added:
Open access news
- Open Access Publisher Under Scrutiny for Taking Sham Paper
- Science publishing also suffers from its curmudgeons
- What’s wrong with scholarly publishing today?
- Merck’s Ghostwriters, Haunted Papers and Fake Elsevier Journals
- Scholarly community gives feedback regarding Wikipedia
- Scitable is a Social Network for Science
- The Impact Factor Game
- Scitable is a Social Network for Science
- Guestimating PLoS ONE impact factor