PLoS ONE: A Post-Publication-Peer-Reviewed-Open-Access-E-Journal

WHAT? PLoS ONE

WHERE? http://www.plosone.org/

WHEN? December 2006

WHY? "PLoS ONE is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online journal." It "features reports of primary research from all disciplines within science and medicine. By not excluding papers on the basis of subject area, PLoS ONE facilitates the discovery of the connections between papers whether within or between disciplines."

HOW? "Each submission will be assessed by a member of the PLoS ONE Editorial Board before publication. This pre-publication peer review will concentrate on technical rather than subjective concerns and may involve discussion with other members of the Editorial Board and/or the solicitation of formal reports from independent referees. If published, papers will be made available for community-based open peer review involving online annotation, discussion, and rating" (http://www.plosone.org/static/information.action). The open-source software called TOPAZ ( http://www.topazproject.org/) is used to create the advanced Web functionality; the core of TOPAZ is Fedora, the (Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture) (http://www.fedora-commons.org/ ). "Fedora is an Open Source content management application that supports the creation and management of digital objects" (http://www.plos.org/cms/node/36 ).

"PLoS ONE will publish all papers that are judged to be rigorous and technically sound. Papers published in PLoS ONE will be available for commenting and debate by the readers, making every paper the start of a scientific conversation." "Judgments about the importance of any particular paper are then made after publication" (http://www.plosone.org/static/whypublish.action).

"The Public Library of Science (PLoS) applies the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) to all works … it publish[es]. Under the CCAL, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their article[s], but authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles in PLoS journals, so long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers" (http://www.plosone.org/static/information.action).

PLoS ONE is currently a beta release.

WHO? PLoS ONE is published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), in partnership with an international advisory board and an extensive editorial board (http://www.plosone.org/static/edboard.action). PLoS is "nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource" (http://www.plos.org/about/).

CITES: "PLoS One," PLoS E-Newsletter for Institutional Members, November 14, 2006. Available at: http://mailings.plos.org/html/20061111.html#one (accessed 27 October 2007).

Catriona J. MacCallum, "ONE for All: The Next Step for PLoS," PLoS Biology 4 no. 11 (November 2006): 1875. Available at: http://biology.plosjournals.org/archive/1545-7885/4/11/pdf/10.1371_journal.pbio.0040401-L.pdf (accessed 27 October 2007).