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Sunday, October 31, 2004
PLoS Medicine follows PLoS Biology
It was in October 2003, an epoch making event occured in the realm of
scientific world. It was seen as as a bold challenge to established
international journals of science which charge increasingly
unaffordable subscription rates, when a U.S.-based non-profit
organisation created a "Public Library of Science" on the web whose
content can be freely read and downloaded, in a variety of formats.
The website (www.plos.org) â and its inaugural monthly journal on
Biology (www.plosbiology.org) â clearly was filling a long-felt need:
In the first few days of its going online, he site was swamped by so
many hits that its servers could not handle the traffic and for a few
days, viewers were directed to a few obliging mirror sites.
Professional readers who examined the contents of the first issue of
PLOS Biology, have vouched for the scientific richness of the
contents: Inaugural issue itself included contents which normally
would not have found its way to a new journal.
It is a dozen well-known scientific journals, which normally attract
major international scientific papers â but most of them have become
so costly that their core readership â the scientific community â is
often denied access. Annual subscription rates for 2004 of some of the
leading journals are: Nature (£545); Science ($510); Physical Review
Letters ($3225). One of the costliest is Brain Research published by
Elsevier (19,000 euro). Almost all these journals have websites â but
these usually contain only contents tables or synopses â full papers
can be accessed only by subscription. Scientists concerned worldwide,
have long complained that while much of the research carried out is at
public expense â by way of taxpayers' money in each country or thanks
to trans-global foundations â the fruits of such work is locked up by
a small club of publishers, purely for profit. In many cases,
non-disclosure clauses prevent the authors from disseminating their
results once publication in a journal is contracted. The organisation
has been a rallying point for burgeoning opposition to the
commercialisation of scientific knowledge, though earlier attempts to
organise a boycott of leading subscription journals have met with
failure.
Sorry for going back to one of my pet topics "open access publication"
for the second time after starting this blog just 2 months ago. There
is a reason for jubilation.The Public Library of Science have made a
promise of a purely medical publication to follow the pioneer by the
beginning of this year. Though it took one full year to get launched,
the PLoS have kept their word . The PLoS medicine has also been
launched this month. One more mile stone.
If one looks back, The Public Library of Science (PLoS), a coalition
of research scientists dedicated to making the world's scientific and
medical literature a public resource, was founded in October 2000.
They circulated an open letter calling on scientific publishers to
make the primary research articles they publish available
through online public libraries of science such as PubMed Central. The
open letter was signed by nearly 34,000 scientists from 180 countries.
Though the initiative prompted some significant and welcome steps by
many scientific publishers towards free access to published research,
in general the publishers' responses fell short of the reasonable
policies we advocated.Thus, it was in the summer of 2001, the PLoS
concluded that the only way forward was to begin developing their own
plans for launching PLoS journals to provide a high-quality and
high-profile venue for important discoveries in science and medicine
and also provide a model for open-access publication and a catalyst
for change in the publication industry. In December 2002, PLoS
announced that it has received a $9 million grant from the Gordon and
Betty Moore Foundation
to launch a nonprofit scientific publishing venture, controlled and
operated by scientists for the benefit of science and
the public. Using this grant, the first journal - PLoS Biology- was
launched in October 2003 and now PLoS Medicine in October 2004. Real
break through and commendable achievement in just 5 years.
A number of new initiatives almost simultaneously during the above
period helped to provide everyone in the scientific community access
to, at least, publicly funded research. These include BioMedCentral
which publishes 90 Open Access (OA) journals (where those authors who
can, pay up to $ 500 as publication fee while others do not, but all
are treated fairly and equally), the Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition (SPARC), the Joint Information Systems Committee
and the Open Society Institute, which gave rise to the Budapest Open
Access Initiative 2001 that brought the OA movement to the forefront.
Of course, the real player in the field was Public Library of Science
(PLoS) . More over during the current year, actions like this have led
the U.S. and U.K. governments to mandate the authors of all
government-funded research output to 'self-archive' their work, so as
to offer free and open access on the web.
To this should be added the initiatives by several small scale players
from different parts of developing world which included The Calicut
Medical College Alumni Association, one of the strongest Medical
School Alumni Associations in India which announced publication of its
own open access Medical Journal.The Journal was the the second Online
Open Access Medical Journal from India, the Inaugural issue launched
in October 2003. The Calicut Medical Journal
(www.calicutmedicaljournal.org) crossed 1 million hits within just 6
months with all articles ranked highly on all major search engines.
Similar visibility and an increase in International submissions was
noticed for other Open Access Journals like Journal of Postgraduate
Medicine (www.jpgmonline.com) and Online Journal of Health and Allied
Sciences (www.ojhas.org) -all of which are published from India.
I find nearly 100 names in the editorial board of PLoS Medicine,
world renowned researchers and medical scientists drawn literally from
all parts of the world. The actual editorial team is lead by 3 Senior
editors, Virginia Barbour, James Butcher and Barbara Cohen and Gavin
Yamey,the Magazine Editor. All the above four are big names as
medical editors who are convinced that open access is the cure for
maladies affecting medical publishing.
What does the inaugural issue of PLoS Medicine contain. Well, I
invite the readers to look for it themselves. Suffice to say that in
addition to purely medical case reports and resarch articles , it
contains topics of general interest as covered by the follwing titles,
to name a few :
1. an editorial message from the PLoS founders - The PLoS Medicine â A
Medical Journal for the Internet
2.a PLoS Medicine Debate- Should Health Professionals Screen All
Women for Domestic Violence?
3.a section on Neglected Diseases - New Drugs for Neglected Diseases:
From Pipeline to Patients
4. a section called policy forum- How Should the Health Community
Respond to Violent Political Conflict?
5.a section on health in action- Palliative Care in Africa and the Caribbean
Let us welcome PLoS medicine whole heartedly and believe that it will
make our world a better to place to live than by the actions of the
petty politicians from whom we hear that cliche too often !
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Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Thursday, September 16, 2004
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Thursday, September 30, 2004
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Friday, October 15, 2004
Friday, October 22, 2004
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Friday, November 12, 2004
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Saturday, November 27, 2004
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