【讨论】Nature最新评论：PLos one 是垃圾场
这个帖子发布于 17 年零 59 天前，其中的信息可能已发生改变或有所发展。
PLos one这个垃圾杂志怎么在国内成了与CNS平齐的杂志了？
PLos one不送审，不考虑结果的学术价值和影响，只由编委会的人根据方法确定录用与否。Plos one是摇钱树，用以养PLos系列其他高影响因子的杂志，PLos one正在成为垃圾的汇聚地，是昂贵的垃圾收集站。
Nature news：
PLoS stays afloat with bulk publishing
Public Library of Science (PLoS), the poster
child of the open-access publishing movement,
is following an haute couture model of science
publishing — relying on bulk, cheap publishing
of lower quality papers to subsidize its handful
of high-quality flagship journals.
Since its launch in 2002, PLoS has been kept
afloat financially by some US$17.3 million in
philanthropic grants. An analysis by Nature
of the company’s accounts shows that PLoS
still relies heavily on charity funding, and falls
far short of its stated goal of quickly breaking
even through its business model of charging
authors a fee to publish in its journals. In the
past financial year, ending 30 September 2007,
its $6.68-million spending outstripped its revenue
of $2.86 million, according to the publicly
available accounts.
But its financial future is looking brighter
thanks to a cash cow in the form of PLoS One,
an online database that PLoS launched in
December 2006. PLoS One uses
a system of ‘light’ peer-review
to publish any article considered
methodologically sound.
In its first full year of operation
in 2007, PLoS One published
1,230 articles, which would have generated an
estimated $1.54 million in author fees, around
half of PLoS’s total income that year. By comparison,
the 321 articles published in PLoS
Biology in 2007 brought in less than half this
amount.
From the outset, the company consciously
decided to subsidize its top-tier titles by publishing
second-tier community journals with
high acceptance rates that would be cheaper
to produce. In addition to its premium titles
— PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine, which have
low acceptance rates and high overheads, and
charge author fees of $2,750
— it has launched four
lower-cost journals that are
run by volunteer academic
editorial teams rather than
in-house staff. At $2,100,
the fees to authors for publishing
in these journals
— PLoS Computational
Biology, PLoS Genetics,
PLoS Pathogens and PLoS
Neglected Tropical Diseases
— are almost as much as
those for its top journals.
But this combination has
generated much less income
than PLoS envisaged. “It’s
very clear that the reality is very far from PLoS’s
original plan,” says John Ewing, executive director
of the American Mathematical Society. In
particular, PLoS’s initial projections overestimated
by an order of magnitude the number of
articles that both its top- and second-tier journals
would attract, tax-record data obtained by
Nature reveal. PLoS also grossly underestimated
the cost of producing its top-tier journals.
“If the original model was to be self-sustaining
through author fees, it seems that PLoS is
not even half-way there,” says Bernard Rous,
deputy director of publications of the Association
for Computing Machinery, the world’s
largest educational and scientific computing
society. Nevertheless, Rous endorses PLoS’s
strategy of tapping multiple revenue sources
and cross-subsidizing to allow open access to
all its titles.
Faced with an increasingly dire financial
situation, PLoS hiked all its author fees in
2006, from $1,500 to as much
as $2,500 for its top two journals,
and has since increased
them further. This has helped
to boost revenue, but the effect
of the increase has been minor
compared with the new cash flowing from the
flood of articles appearing in PLoS One. Since
it launched, PLoS One has published 2,526 articles
— more than PLoS Biology has published in
its five years of existence, and that growth shows
no signs of abating. PLoS One has published
1,158 papers since the beginning of this year,
which is almost as many as it published during
the whole of 2007. Another factor is that it costs
authors only $1,250 to publish in PLoS One.
“It’s fair to say that the community-run journals,
including PLoS One, are contributing very
well to our overall financial picture, says Peter
Jerram, chief executive of
PLoS, adding: “PLoS is on
track to be self-sustaining
within two years. In the
interim some philanthropic
support will be needed.
“It’s tremendous to see
how the progress that PLoS
has made over the years has
been mirrored by the great
strides taken towards openaccess
to research more
broadly,” Jerram says.
Papers submitted to PLoS
One are sent to a member
of its editorial board of
around 500 researchers, who may opt to review it themselves or send
it to their choice of referee. But referees only
check for serious methodological flaws, and not
the importance of the result. The board members
who Nature spoke to were generally positive
about the overall quality of the papers they
had received to review and the referees reports
they solicited.
“There’s so much in PLoS One that it is difficult
to judge the overall quality and, simply
because of this volume, it’s going to be considered
a dumping ground, justified or not, says
John Hawley, executive director of the freeaccess
Journal of Clinical Investigation. “But
nonetheless, it introduces a sub-standard journal
to their mix.”
Hawley says it’s unsurprising that the PLoS
business model has come under scrutiny.
“PLoS trumpeted its business model as being
better than everyone else’s, as being ‘the one’.”
The tack taken by BioMed Central, a Londonbased
open-access company, of publishing
mostly lower-impact journals in a wide variety
of disciplines “is probably closer to what works
in open access”, he says.
BioMed Central has an estimated annual
revenue of around ￡10 million ($20 million). It
is already “pleasantly profitable”, according to
a science-publishing consultant who asked to
remain anonymous. “BioMed Central knows
well that much of the journal middle order is
more profitable than the great brands because
of the lower editorial costs and the cheaper
marketing costs for bundles of journals. I suspect
that PLoS One is a result of learning the
same lesson,” he adds.
BioMed Central is now up for sale, which will
be a “fascinating first market test of what people
will pay for an open-access company”.
PLos one不送审，不考虑结果的学术价值和影响，只由编委会的人根据方法确定录用与否。Plos one是摇钱树，用以养PLos系列其他高影响因子的杂志，PLos one正在成为垃圾的汇聚地，是昂贵的垃圾收集站。
Nature news：
PLoS stays afloat with bulk publishing
Public Library of Science (PLoS), the poster
child of the open-access publishing movement,
is following an haute couture model of science
publishing — relying on bulk, cheap publishing
of lower quality papers to subsidize its handful
of high-quality flagship journals.
Since its launch in 2002, PLoS has been kept
afloat financially by some US$17.3 million in
philanthropic grants. An analysis by Nature
of the company’s accounts shows that PLoS
still relies heavily on charity funding, and falls
far short of its stated goal of quickly breaking
even through its business model of charging
authors a fee to publish in its journals. In the
past financial year, ending 30 September 2007,
its $6.68-million spending outstripped its revenue
of $2.86 million, according to the publicly
available accounts.
But its financial future is looking brighter
thanks to a cash cow in the form of PLoS One,
an online database that PLoS launched in
December 2006. PLoS One uses
a system of ‘light’ peer-review
to publish any article considered
methodologically sound.
In its first full year of operation
in 2007, PLoS One published
1,230 articles, which would have generated an
estimated $1.54 million in author fees, around
half of PLoS’s total income that year. By comparison,
the 321 articles published in PLoS
Biology in 2007 brought in less than half this
amount.
From the outset, the company consciously
decided to subsidize its top-tier titles by publishing
second-tier community journals with
high acceptance rates that would be cheaper
to produce. In addition to its premium titles
— PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine, which have
low acceptance rates and high overheads, and
charge author fees of $2,750
— it has launched four
lower-cost journals that are
run by volunteer academic
editorial teams rather than
in-house staff. At $2,100,
the fees to authors for publishing
in these journals
— PLoS Computational
Biology, PLoS Genetics,
PLoS Pathogens and PLoS
Neglected Tropical Diseases
— are almost as much as
those for its top journals.
But this combination has
generated much less income
than PLoS envisaged. “It’s
very clear that the reality is very far from PLoS’s
original plan,” says John Ewing, executive director
of the American Mathematical Society. In
particular, PLoS’s initial projections overestimated
by an order of magnitude the number of
articles that both its top- and second-tier journals
would attract, tax-record data obtained by
Nature reveal. PLoS also grossly underestimated
the cost of producing its top-tier journals.
“If the original model was to be self-sustaining
through author fees, it seems that PLoS is
not even half-way there,” says Bernard Rous,
deputy director of publications of the Association
for Computing Machinery, the world’s
largest educational and scientific computing
society. Nevertheless, Rous endorses PLoS’s
strategy of tapping multiple revenue sources
and cross-subsidizing to allow open access to
all its titles.
Faced with an increasingly dire financial
situation, PLoS hiked all its author fees in
2006, from $1,500 to as much
as $2,500 for its top two journals,
and has since increased
them further. This has helped
to boost revenue, but the effect
of the increase has been minor
compared with the new cash flowing from the
flood of articles appearing in PLoS One. Since
it launched, PLoS One has published 2,526 articles
— more than PLoS Biology has published in
its five years of existence, and that growth shows
no signs of abating. PLoS One has published
1,158 papers since the beginning of this year,
which is almost as many as it published during
the whole of 2007. Another factor is that it costs
authors only $1,250 to publish in PLoS One.
“It’s fair to say that the community-run journals,
including PLoS One, are contributing very
well to our overall financial picture, says Peter
Jerram, chief executive of
PLoS, adding: “PLoS is on
track to be self-sustaining
within two years. In the
interim some philanthropic
support will be needed.
“It’s tremendous to see
how the progress that PLoS
has made over the years has
been mirrored by the great
strides taken towards openaccess
to research more
broadly,” Jerram says.
Papers submitted to PLoS
One are sent to a member
of its editorial board of
around 500 researchers, who may opt to review it themselves or send
it to their choice of referee. But referees only
check for serious methodological flaws, and not
the importance of the result. The board members
who Nature spoke to were generally positive
about the overall quality of the papers they
had received to review and the referees reports
they solicited.
“There’s so much in PLoS One that it is difficult
to judge the overall quality and, simply
because of this volume, it’s going to be considered
a dumping ground, justified or not, says
John Hawley, executive director of the freeaccess
Journal of Clinical Investigation. “But
nonetheless, it introduces a sub-standard journal
to their mix.”
Hawley says it’s unsurprising that the PLoS
business model has come under scrutiny.
“PLoS trumpeted its business model as being
better than everyone else’s, as being ‘the one’.”
The tack taken by BioMed Central, a Londonbased
open-access company, of publishing
mostly lower-impact journals in a wide variety
of disciplines “is probably closer to what works
in open access”, he says.
BioMed Central has an estimated annual
revenue of around ￡10 million ($20 million). It
is already “pleasantly profitable”, according to
a science-publishing consultant who asked to
remain anonymous. “BioMed Central knows
well that much of the journal middle order is
more profitable than the great brands because
of the lower editorial costs and the cheaper
marketing costs for bundles of journals. I suspect
that PLoS One is a result of learning the
same lesson,” he adds.
BioMed Central is now up for sale, which will
be a “fascinating first market test of what people
will pay for an open-access company”.
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