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Re-engineering the scientific journal
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“Re-engineering the scientific journal”
Mark Patterson, Director of Publishing
UHMLG Spring Forum: March 1st, 2009
Committed to making the world’s
scientific and medical literature
a public resource
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The functions of journals
• Registration– Who’s done what and when?
• Certification– Is the work sound? How important is it?
• Awareness– The right information to the people who need it
• Archiving– Preservation for future generations
Roosendaal and Geurts
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The life cycle of a research article
Journal name is key
Publication
Research
Submission
Peer review
Reje
cts
2-3 Experts
Is it rigorous?Good enough?Right audience?
Takes months/years
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Journals are a giant sorting mechanism
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How can the functions of a journal be re-engineered online?
• Awareness– Open access– Discoverability
• Certification– What questions need to be asked before publication?– What is best left until after publication?
• Registration– Promoting the rapid sharing of information
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AwarenessPart 1
Open Access
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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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• Establish high quality journals– put PLoS and open access on the map
• Build a more extensive OA publishing operation– an open access home for every paper– achieve sustainability
• Make the literature more useful – to scientists and the public
PLoS publishing strategy
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PLoS BiologyOctober, 2003
PLoS MedicineOctober, 2004
PLoS Community JournalsJune-September, 2005 October, 2007
PLoS ONEDecember,2006
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2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
PublicationsSubmissions
Growth in submissions and publications
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Financial growth
% Operating expense covered by operating revenue
0%
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30%
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50%
60%
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2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
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AwarenessPart 2
Discoverability
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What is open access?
• Free, immediate access online
• Unrestricted use
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What is open access?
• Free, immediate access online
• Unrestricted use
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What is open access?
• Free, immediate access online
• Unrestricted use
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What is open access?
• Free, immediate access online
• Unrestricted use
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A network of literature
Document
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A network of literature and data
Document
Database
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Open access• Free, immediate access • Unrestricted reuse
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CertificationPart 1
What to do before publication
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• Editorial criteria– Scientifically rigorous– Ethical– Properly reported– Conclusions supported by the data
• 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
PLoS ONE’s Key Innovation – The editorial process
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• Inclusive scope– all science and medicine
• Encouraging discussion and debate– at PLoS ONE: commenting, rating and annotation– elsewhere: Editorial Board discussion forum;
EveryONE blog; Twitter; FriendFeed; Facebook
• Streamlined production– publication on every weekday
What else is different?
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Year Submissions Publications % of annual PubMed
2006* 473 138 0.02%
2007 2497 1231 0.16%
2008 4401 2723 0.34%
2009 6819 4404 0.52%
* Started publishing Dec 20th, 2006
Community acceptance– third largest peer-reviewed journal– 50,000 authors– 1000 Academic Editors
PLoS ONE – statistics
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CertificationPart 2
Adding value after publication
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Who cares about
measuring researchimpact?
InstitutionsResearchers (authors and
readers)
Publishers
Funders
The public
Librarians
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How do we measure ‘impact’?
The worth of a paper tends to be judged on the basis of the impact
factor of the journal in which it was published.
Recommended reading:Adler, R., Ewing, J. Taylor, P. Citation statistics. A report from the International Mathematical Union. http://www.mathunion.org/publications/report/citationstatistics/
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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:
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Article-Level Metrics at PLoS
• A range of additional measures which provide insight into ‘impact’ - not just citations and usage
• Metrics/indicators at the article-level, for all journals
• Not just for scholarly evaluation – also a way to filter and discover content
• The idea is not new, but PLoS is the first publisher to provide this range of data
Michael Jensen, The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 15, 2007
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CrossRef Landing Page
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citeulike Landing Page
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Postgenomic Landing Page
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Downloading the data
http://www.plosone.org/static/plos-alm.zip
Evaluating the (usage) data
Evaluating the (usage) data
Evaluating the (usage) data
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Next steps for article-level metrics
• More sources for each data type– Citations, blog coverage
• New data sources– F1000, Mendeley
• Expert analysis and tools• Broader adoption
– By publishers– By tenure committees, funders etc
• Develop and adhere to standards
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Registration
Rapid communication of new findings and ideas
PLoS Currents
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Seeking Lessons in Swine Flu Fight
“Another problem is communication.Officials and experts say they have learned a lot about human swine influenza. But relatively little of that information...has been reported and published. Some experts said researchers were waiting to publish in journals, which can take months or longer.”
New York Times, August 10th, 2009Lawrence K. Altman, M.D.
PLoS Currents: Influenza Inspiration
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• An innovative forum for the rapid exchange of results and ideas
• Moderated by expert influenza researchers
• Articles are citable
• Archiving in PubMed Central
PLoS Currents: Influenza Goals
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PLoS Currents: Influenza Workflow
Google Knol: Author(s) assemble content and control access and editing. Authors submit content to PLoS Currents.
PLoS Currents: Moderators control posting of content, commenting and version control.
PubMed Central: Immediate transfer from PLoS Currents site; stable identifier and permanent archiving.
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Determine as rapidly as possible if the conception, structure and presentation of the submission indicate that it is a legitimate work of science and does not contain any obvious methodological, ethical or legal violations.
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From submission to publication in 24 hours
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PLoS Currents Influenza• Very fast• Very cheap• Moderated by experts • Citable• Archived at PubMed Central• Indexed in Pubmed
Where Next?• Post-publication peer review?
The life cycle of a research article
Journal name is keyPublication
Research
Submission
Peer review
Reje
cts
2-3 Experts Is it rigorous?Good enough?Right audience?Takes months/years
New models of scholarly communication
Focus on the articlePublication
Research
Submission
Peer reviewReje
cts
2-3 Experts Is it rigorous?Good enough?Right audience?Takes weeks/months
Enhanced article Article-level metricsIntegrated with data
PLoS Currents
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The landscape is changing
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