Traffic overwhelms new online science journal

CNET ^ | Oct. 14, 2003 | Alorie Gilbert

[FairOpinion]

A new online science journal aimed at changing the paradigm of scholarly publishing has proved so popular it's been mired in a crush of traffic since its Sunday night launch.

The inaugural issue of the journal, called the Public Library of Science Biology, is the first journal to be published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a San Francisco nonprofit that's backed by several highly regarded scientists who want to see scientific research freely distributed online.

Instead of charging subscription fees that cost thousands of dollars annually, as do many traditional scientific journals, PLoS charges authors $1,500 per published article. The fee covers peer review, editing and production, while allowing the public to freely access the research. The group wants to compete with established journals while slimming publishing costs and shortening peer-review cycles.

A statement on the site says the Web makes it possible "to make our treasury of scientific information available to a much wider audience, including millions of students, teachers, physicians, scientists, and other potential readers who do not have access to a research library that can afford to pay for journal subscriptions."

Not surprisingly, the free distribution model seems be going over well. Within the first eight hours of the journal's launch, traffic on the site spiked to more than half a million hits, said Nick Twyman, director of information technology and computer operations at PLoS. The traffic has overwhelmed the group's servers, causing PLoS to direct visitors to other sites, where they can access simplified versions of the journal. Twyman said he hopes to get the site up and running again by Wednesday.

"We always expected a lot of interest, but we're surprised by this response," Twyman said.

One reason the journal has generated so much attention is a report it contains about brain implants in monkeys that enable them to control a robotic arm with their thoughts.

PLoS, which plans to launch a medical journal next year, is focusing initially on biomedical literature. The group may eventually expand into other areas, such as computer science, Twyman said.

Leading scientists who are involved in PLoS include Dr. Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health and now chief executive officer of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, along with Dr. Patrick Brown of Stanford University, who co-founded the new journal.

Brown agreed with Twyman. "It was sort of a surpise," he said, "yet all along, we felt this is so obviously the way to go that I would say we never doubted it would be a success. If you have to have a problem, (too much traffic) is a good one to have."

[FairOpinion]

http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/

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[RightWingNilla]

The list might be interested in this one...

[js1138]

ping

[Dog Gone]

Boy, I want to own a website that charges authors $1,500 for the privilege of posting an article.

JimRob, don't get any ideas....

[RonF]

A couple of questions:

1) Who's doing the peer reviewing for this journal? Is it a peer reviewed journal?

2) The problem with an author-financed journal is that the publisher has an incentive to overlook problems with articles in order to get the publishing fee.

[RadioAstronomer]

Boy, I want to own a website that charges authors $1,500 for the privilege of posting an article.

JimRob, don't get any ideas.....

ROFL! :-)

[FairOpinion]

Good points, but if they relax their standards of excellence, the quality goes down.

They look legit. They are nonprofit.

PLoS Core principles:

"Open access. All material published by the Public Library of Science, whether submitted to or created by PLoS, will be published under an open-access license that allows unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Excellence. PLoS will strive to set the highest standards for excellence in everything we do: in content, style, and aesthetics of presentation; in editorial performance at every level; in transparency and accessibility to the scientific community and public; and in educational value.

Scientific integrity. PLoS is committed to a fair, rigorous editorial process. Scientific quality and importance will be the sole considerations in publication decisions. The basis for decisions will be communicated to authors.

Breadth. Although pragmatic considerations require us to focus initially on publishing high-impact research in the life sciences, we intend to expand our scope as rapidly as practically possible, to provide a vehicle for publication of other valuable scientific or scholarly articles.

Cooperation. PLoS welcomes and will actively seek opportunities to work cooperatively with any group (scientific/scholarly societies, physicians, patient advocacy groups, educational organizations) and any publisher who shares our commitment to open access and to making scientific information available for the good of science and the public.

No financial barrier to authors. As a nonprofit organization, PLoS will charge authors a fair price that reflects the actual cost of publication. However, the ability of authors to pay publication charges will never be a consideration in the decision whether to publish.

[RadioAstronomer]

Thanks for the ping :-)

[Centurion2000]

Actually this is a good idea ... scientists just need to budget 1500.00 into their grant budgeting and then they can get some awesome peer review and feedback.

Of course posting it on the internet means that the Chinese and Russians get a crack at any really promising leads in technology as well.

[TopQuark]

The group wants to compete with established journals while slimming publishing costs and shortening peer-review cycles.

They only changed the pocket from which the money comes from: instead of the readers, the authors pay. This does not affect the costs, whether monetary or turnaround time.

A statement on the site says the Web makes it possible "to make our treasury of scientific information available to a much wider audience, including millions of students, teachers, physicians, scientists, and other potential readers who do not have access to a research library that can afford to pay for journal subscriptions." That's garbage: there are plenty of abstracts available on-line, and anyone in the U.S. can get the article through an inter-library loan.

Not surprisingly, the free distribution model seems be going over well. Isn't that premature? The fact that the readers try to consume the free good says nothing. Bread in the Soviet Russia was also cheap, and then it disappeared.

More disturbing is the fact that the author failed to ask an important question: is $1,500 publication fee not a barrier for dissemination of information? It appears to me that it does. If a scholar writes four papers a year, where is (s)he gonna get $6,000 to publish them?

[FairOpinion]

"Of course posting it on the internet means that the Chinese and Russians get a crack at any really promising leads in technology as well."

===

Good point -- but all scientific journals where academicians publish papers are unclassified, available to anyone who can shell out the (rather high) price of subscription.

[TopQuark]

scientists just need to budget 1500.00 into their grant budgeting

And that money comes... from where exactly? How much funding do you think is out there in social sciences? And, even in hard sciences, with say 100,000 scientists publishing 250,000 articles -- that's $375M!

SO much for "just budgeting."

[FairOpinion]

"No financial barrier to authors. As a nonprofit organization, PLoS will charge authors a fair price that reflects the actual cost of publication. However, the ability of authors to pay publication charges will never be a consideration in the decision whether to publish."

===

Looks to me that they won't charge people who can't afford to pay. They are a nonprofit organization, so perhaps they'll get donations to enable them to publish authors who can't afford to pay also.

[TopQuark]

Yes, all these journals say that. The price --- between $500 and $1,500 is, in fact designed to offset those that cannot pay. Still, where will this money come from?

It will discriminate between better established academics and those beginning their carrers. In addition, it will discrimnate against those in industry: the editors WILL press you to pay 'cause you are in teh commercial sector, so your company HAS money and SHOULD pay. Pure socialism, if you ask me: one might submit a paper, and should be able to do so, without the superiors' knowledge.

The point is, that there may be pros and cons to this, but the article and proponents do not address the cons. In fact, it's been my observation that this movement towards e-journals stems from the Leftist ideology: I've heard it stated that they want to cut out the publishers' profits ("What is the justification for charging the library $500/year for a subscription? None. Instead of feeding the fat cats we should be able to do it ourselves.)

[Ichneumon]

Good point -- but all scientific journals where academicians publish papers are unclassified, available to anyone who can shell out the (rather high) price of subscription.

Or free at any decent university library, most of which carry a mind-boggling number of science periodicals.

[Doctor Stochastic]

The regular journals have page charges too.

[JohnSmithee]

There are dozens of peer reviewed journals freely available on the internet. I know of a number that are sponsored by established universities and have a strong academic orientation.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Subscriptions are generally much more than $500/year. Duke University publishes "International Mathematics Research Notices" quarterly for only about $1500.

[Nebullis]

I don't know if this website is the solution, but there's a growing discontent with the massive publishing houses (Elsevier, Blackwell, etc.) with institutional subscription rates topping $50,000 a year. Libararies are reduced to carrying only the most "significant" journals and forgoing the multitude of others. It's a deplorable restriction on public access to scientific information.