“Re-engineering the scholarly journal” Mark Patterson, Director of Publishing Arcadia Seminar, Cambridge: Nov, 2010 Committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource

The functions of journals Registration –Who’s done what and when? Certification –Is the work sound? Dissemination –The right information to the people who need it Preservation –Archiving for future generations Roosendaal and Geurts

Journals are a giant sorting mechanism Organization

Re-engineering Dissemination –Open access Organization of content –Impact and audience Authoring and certification –Eliminating all unnecessary delays

Re-engineering dissemination Open Access

Open access ≠ Free access

What is open access? Free, immediate access Unrestricted reuse Deposition in a digital public archive Bethesda definition, 2003

Creative Commons Attribution License Copyright: © 2004 Moorthy et al. This is an open- access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Goal: make clear to humans (and machines) what can be done

No permission required for any reuse Translation Redistribution Photocopying Coursepacks Reproduction of figures Deposit in databases Downloading data Text mining

What is open access? Free, immediate access online Unrestricted use

What is open access? Free, immediate access online Unrestricted use

What is open access? Free, immediate access online Unrestricted use

What is open access? Free, immediate access online Unrestricted use

A network of literature Document

A network of literature and data Document Database

Silos of information

Open access Free, immediate access Unrestricted reuse

PLoS Founding Board of Directors Harold Varmus PLoS Co-founder and Chairman of the Board President and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Patrick O. Brown PLoS Co-founder and Board Member Howard Hughes Medical Institute & Stanford University School of Medicine Michael B. Eisen PLoS Co-founder and Board Member Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory & University of California at Berkeley

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 –publication fee business model –achieve sustainability Make the literature more useful –to scientists and the public PLoS publishing strategy

€ Publisher Reader Pay-per-viewSubscription Library Subscription journals Gov Funders Institutions Industry € €€ Researcher €

Open access journals Publishing is the final step in a research project Public Digital Library Gov Funders Institutions Industry € Publisher Reader Researcher €

PLoS Biology October, 2003 PLoS Medicine October, 2004 PLoS Community Journals June-September, 2005 October, 2007 PLoS ONE December, 2006

Growth in submissions and publications

Financial growth % Operating expense covered by operating revenue

Re-engineering organization of content

The life cycle of a research article Journal name is key Publication Research Submission Peer review Rejects 2-3 Experts Is it rigorous? Good enough? Right audience? Takes months/years

What do we need to do before research is published? What is best left until after publication?

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

YearSubmissionsPublications% of annual PubMed 2006* % % % % 2010** Y/E 0.8%? *Started publishing Dec 20 th, 2006 **Up to Oct 31 st Community acceptance –largest peer-reviewed journal –>50,000 authors –>1300 Academic Editors PLoS ONE – statistics

What do we need to do before research is published? What is best left until after publication?

Who cares about measuring research impact? Institutions Researchers (authors and readers) Publishers Funders The public Librarians

How do we measure ‘impact’? The impact factor of the journal in which an article is published. Recommended reading: Adler, R., Ewing, J. Taylor, P. Citation statistics. A report from the International Mathematical Union.

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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CrossRef Landing Page

CiteULike Landing Page

Downloading the data

Evaluating the (usage) data

“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.”

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

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 power of open access

ITIS Flickr Wikipedia NCBI GBIF

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

Re-engineering authoring and certification

New models of scholarly communication 1 year 100 days 1 day ConventionalPLoS ONEPLoS Currents Publication

An innovative forum for the rapid exchange of results and ideas Registration –Articles are date-stamped and citable Certification –Reviewed by expert researchers Dissemination –All content is open access Preservation –Archived at PubMed Central PLoS Currents: Key features

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 10 th, 2009 Lawrence K. Altman, M.D. PLoS Currents – Inspiration

Google Knol: Author(s) assemble content and control access and editing. Authors submit content to PLoS Currents. PLoS Currents: Expert reviewers control posting of content, commenting and version control. PubMed Central: Immediate transfer from PLoS Currents site; stable identifier and permanent archiving. PLoS Currents – Workflow

Prescreen by Editors Submission sent to Board of Reviewers. Does the work contain any obvious methodological, ethical or legal problems?

From submission to publication in a few days

PLoS Currents Very fast Cost-effective Reviewed by experts Citable Version control Archived at PubMed Central Included in PubMed Flexible and easy to replicate

PLoS Currents – New sections Launched on Sept 2 nd –PLoS Currents: Huntington Disease (produced with support from CHDI Foundation) –PLoS Currents: Evidence on Genomic Tests (in collaboration with the CDC) To be launched in a few weeks –PLoS Currents: Tree of Life (phylogenetic analyses)

The life cycle of a research article Journal name is key Publication Research Submission Peer review Rejects 2-3 Experts Is it rigorous? Good enough? Right audience? Takes months/years

New models of scholarly communication Focus on the article Publication Research Submission Peer review Rejects 2-3 Experts Is it rigorous? Good enough? Right audience? Takes weeks/months Enhanced article Article-level metrics Integrated with data Organization in Hubs PLoS Currents

The landscape is changing