Public Library of Science - PLoS ONE Blog

PLoS Author Surveys 2009 – Summary Presentation

Mark Patterson — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 02:45:25 -0800

Earlier this year, PLoS sent out a series of surveys to authors whose work was considered by our journals in 2008. We wanted to find out what authors think about all aspects of our services – from submission and peer review, through to publication and the functionality of the PLoS journal web sites.

We have learned a lot from the surveys, primarily that levels of satisfaction amongst authors are generally very good. We also identified areas where services can be improved, and we’ve adjusted our services in a number ways during 2009.

We have now summarized the results of the surveys along with how we have responded to some of the suggestions during 2009 in a short presentation, which is publicly available. We feel it’s important to share these results in particular with the authors who were kind enough to complete the questionnaires, and we would like to express our thanks to the hundreds of authors who took part. We are planning to repeat the surveys next year, so that we can monitor how views have changed and can respond to suggestions for further improvements.

Meanwhile, we welcome feedback from anyone who is using our services, as an author, reviewer, editor or reader.

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.plos.org/cms/trackback/505

PLoS Journals – measuring impact where it matters

Mark Patterson — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:22:00 -0700

In 2009, in this online world, how do most scientists and medics find the articles they need to read? The answer for the content published by PLoS (and no doubt by many other publishers) is via one of the now ubiquitous search engines, be it one that only searches the scientific literature, or more likely, one that searches the entire web. Given that readers tend to navigate directly to the articles that are relevant to them, regardless of the journal they were published in, why then do researchers and their paymasters remain wedded to assessing individual articles by using a metric (the impact factor) that attempts to measure the average citations to a whole journal? We’d argue that it’s primarily because there has been no strong alternative. But now alternatives are beginning to emerge.

A few months ago, PLoS initiated a program to provide a series of metrics on the individual articles published in all the PLoS Journals. You can see some examples here, here, here and here. There are two complementary benefits to the new approach.

First, we are focusing on articles rather than journals. The dominant paradigm for judging the worth of an article is to rely on the name and the impact factor of the journal in which the work is published. But it’s well known that there is a strong skew in the distribution of citations within a journal – typically, around 80% of the citations accrue to 20% of the articles. So the impact factor is a very poor predictor of how many citations any individual article will obtain, and in any case, journal editors and peer reviewers don’t always make the right decision. Indicators at the article level circumvent these limitations, allowing articles to be judged on their own scientific merits.

Second, we are not confining article-level metrics to a single indicator. As summarized by Michael Jensen, and discussed by many others including recently over at the Scholarly Kitchen, there’s a lot more to scientific impact than citations in the selection of journals covered by the Web of Science – the proprietary source of data that provides the impact factor calculation. Citations can be counted more broadly, along with web usage, blog and media coverage, social bookmarks, expert/community comments and ratings, and so on. Our own efforts are so far confined to citations (as measured by Scopus and PubMed Central), social bookmarks (as made by users of Connotea and CiteULike), and blog coverage (as recorded by Bloglines, Postgenomic and Nature Blogs), and these metrics will be improved and expanded over the coming months. The good news is that many of these indicators can be collated automatically, using openly available web tools that constantly update information on the article itself.

The presentation of a comprehensive array of this data is an enticing prospect. When an article has been published, we have tended to regard that as the end of the story (barring corrections or the occasional retraction). But if, as frequently happens, a very good article has been published in a specialist journal after being rejected from a highly selective one, it would be great to indicate to a user that this article is actually looking pretty significant, and show how its influence develops over the months and years.

Rather than basing judgments on the importance of research on the opinions of two or three reviewers and editors, article-level metrics will attempt to capture the actions and opinions of entire communities of readers to give a rich and sophisticated picture of research impact that will be helpful to authors and readers alike. Readers may then frame that picture in the context of their particular field and their own work.

To realize the vision for article-level metrics there are still some significant hurdles to clear: it won’t be enough simply to provide indicators without some context or guidance on how to interpret them; some indicators (particularly citations) take months to build up limiting their value as early indicators of impact; and standards will need to be developed so that the indicators are reliable and as free as possible from gaming and manipulation.

A clear editorial selection process will always have a place before publication in a scholarly journal. But a reduction in the reliance on the impact factor for so many aspects of research assessment could be massively liberating. PLoS Medicine, to cite an example close to home, has recently restated its mission – focusing on the diseases and risk factors that have the most profound impacts on global health. By carefully selecting articles that are likely to have the biggest influence on global health and using innovative and diverse approaches to assess and indicate that influence, PLoS Medicine will be a greater force, regardless of how many citations an average article accrues

Looking towards other modes of publishing, PLoS ONE is predicated on the notion that judgements about impact and relevance can be left almost entirely to the period after publication. By peer-reviewing submissions purely for scientific rigour, ethical conduct and proper reporting before publication, articles can be assessed and published rapidly. Once articles have joined the published literature, the impact and relevance of the article can then be determined on the basis of the activity of the research community as a whole. Article-level metrics and indicators, along with other post-publication features are part and parcel of the PLoS ONE approach, and could help readers to filter and sort literature after it is published. Ultimately, the aim of adding value to articles after publication is to improve the whole process of scientific communication and accelerate research progress itself. You can read more about article-level metrics in the context of PLoS ONE, and a talk is also available online from Pete Binfield (Managing Editor of PLoS ONE).

Article-level metrics and indicators will become powerful additions to the tools for the assessment and filtering of research outputs, and we look forward to working with the research community, publishers, funders and institutions to develop and hone these ideas. As for the impact factor, the 2008 numbers were released last month. But rather than updating the PLoS Journal sites with the new numbers, we’ve decided to stop promoting journal impact factors on our sites all together. It’s time to move on, and focus efforts on more sophisticated, flexible and meaningful measures.

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.plos.org/cms/trackback/478

The PLoS ONE blog channel is moving

Liz Allen — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:42:58 -0700

PLoS ONE now blogs at everyONE, and we won't be posting here any more. We outgrew this site in terms of functionality and ease of use a few months ago and it's time to redirect everyone that visits this channel to our new home. You can sign up for updates from our new blog via RSS or e-newsletter.

The new blog site allows us to incorporate video, podcasts, slide sharing, comic strips and photos into our communications mix. We've also been running a popular blog post of the month event, rounding up our media coverage on a weekly basis (sometimes more frequently for the hottest storie s), answering your questions and updating you on new PLoS projects such as Article Level Metrics. To sum up, the new blog quickly and seamlessly keeps you updated on what gives in our world and allows us to hear from you about what is happening in yours.

Not only do PLoS ONE and PLoS Medicine now have their own blogs, we also have a lively social media program:

@PLoS on Twitter was recommended at the 140 Characters Conference as being "one to watch to learn about science". We have over 1400 followers but we'd like more so please sign up.
We also have a thriving Facebook page with over 4,500 fans, so please join us there too.

Thanks for following us here in the past, we look forward to welcoming you to our new home.

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.plos.org/cms/trackback/474

Solving the Romanov Mystery, Anthrax's American History, Usage Maps of Science and a Self-Healing Caterpillar

Rebecca Walton — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:10:52 -0700

PLoS ONE’s biggest news buzz last week was created by a study from an international team of researchers led by Michael Coble of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. The researchers report the results of forensic DNA tests, which confirm that skeletal remains of two individuals discovered in Russia in 2007 belong to the two missing children of the last Tsar of Russia—the Crown Prince, Alexei Romanov and one of his sisters. The Tsar, Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, their five children and four family employees were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 to prevent them from being rescued by the White Russian Army, who were loyal to the Tsar. After a failed attempt to hide the remains in a nearby mine shaft, the Bolsheviks first tried to cremate two of the children (discovered in 2007) and then buried the remaining nine bodies in a mass grave (officially discovered in 1991).

There was extensive coverage of the story in the news and in the blogosphere, and the study was highlighted on the CNN front page and on the ScienceBlogs homepage on March 12. Other coverage includes: the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, the Independent, the Telegraph, Greg Laden’s blog, the Intersection and 80beats.

A second historical “mystery” was solved by a paper published on Friday by Leo Kenefic and colleagues, which suggests that Columbus wasn’t to blame for introducing anthrax to the Americas. Although Europeans introduced many diseases which had serious impacts on the indigenous populations when invading the Americas, the new study shows, however, that anthrax was actually introduced thousands of years earlier, during the Stone Age. New Scientist and USA Today both posted nice write-ups on the study.

Johan Bollen’s new article, Clickstream Data Yields High-Resolution Maps of Science, also picked up some media attention on its publication last week, with its intricate maps created from citation data, giving a detailed, contemporary view of scientific activity and correct the under-representation of the social sciences and humanities that is commonly found in citation data. Figure 5 from the paper is a fantastic image and was reused in several of the stories and posts highlighting the paper. As well as a New York Times article, Nature News, the USA Today science blog, Wired News, the Scholarly Kitchen and the Edge of Vision also covered the study.

Finally, I was intrigued by the title of Carl Zimmer’s recent post on the Loom, Woolly Bear, Heal Thyself, which of course refers to a type of caterpillar, which can, according to a study by Michael Singer, self-medicate, in response to disease or to parasites. Another blog post on the study appears on Evolving Ideas and National Geographic and ScienceNOW have both run stories on the article.

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.plos.org/cms/trackback/453

LaTeX submissions now accepted at PLoS ONE

Peter Binfield — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:01:38 -0700

Here’s some good news for all LaTeX devotees – PLoS ONE now welcomes these submissions.

Although LaTeX (a widely used, freely available, document preparation system) submissions have been possible for many PLoS titles for some time, PLoS ONE’s fast electronic workflow and high throughput of papers meant that we had to rigorously test how it would work on this journal before we could introduce it.

Now that we’ve finished piloting it with a few live examples with encouraging results, such as this paper on high resolution maps of science, we’re ready to roll it out for all our authors and we’re hoping that this new service will be well received by authors from the following ‘math heavy’ communities (among others):

Computational Biology
Physics
Chemistry
Mathematics
Engineering

Please read the full author guidelines for the preparation of LaTeX files for PLoS ONE and submit your paper today!

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.plos.org/cms/trackback/451

Good news: LaTeX submissions for PLoS ONE

from Mailund on the Internet on Tue, 2009-03-17 00:32

Now this is good news: LaTeX submissions now accepted at PLoS ONE.
For any paper with more than the most trivial amount of math, LaTeX is really what you need. Using an equation editor in Word or similar is just too tedious, and the result is rarely ...

Interview with a PLoS ONE frequent author: Seyed Hasnain

Bora Zivkovic — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:50:28 -0700

Professor Seyed Ehtesham Hasnain is the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Hyderabad in India, and one of the most prolific authors in PLoS ONE. Last week, I interviewed Dr. Hasnain over e-mail about his work and his experience with PLoS ONE:

1. What is your area of research? How did you get into this area?

My current area of research is Molecular Epidemiology and Functional Biology of Infectious Pathogens. While H.pylori and Leptospires are pathogens of interest, the major focus is on Mycobacterium tuberculosis the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB). In the over 30 years of my research career, I firmly believe that `change is the only constant in life’ and keeping this philosophy in mind, the research focus in my lab has been shifting over time.

After starting my independent research group, following my Post-doctoral training in the US and Canada on baculovirus mediated gene expression in insect cells, I switched over to tuberculosis. The reason for this shift has been the realization that publishing good papers in good journals is one thing, but having your scientific discovery make an impact on human kind is altogether different. I, therefore, deliberately chose tuberculosis because of the devastation the disease causes taking approximately one human life every 15 seconds somewhere in the world. In the background was also the excitement about the sequencing of the total genome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We started by dissecting the molecular epidemiology of this pathogen in India, using the powers of DNA profiling, and then moving on to address the question of functional biology with a view to identify new diagnostics and new targets for developing inhibitors for intervention against tuberculosis.

2. You have published several papers in PLoS ONE to date. Can you tell us which one was the best received and, perhaps, why?

I have about half a dozen papers in PLoS ONE so far. The reason for selecting PLoS ONE is the impression that this journal, part of the prestigious PLoS family, transcends disciplines, something which Science and Nature does (unlike other members of the PLoS family which are more subject specific). Our work is of wide interest, therefore publishing in such a journal will attract a wider readership, as opposed to publishing in a specialized journal where specialists would primarily be drawn to your findings.

On the issue of which of my papers was the best received so far, it is hard to say because it is only about a year since we published our first paper. Our latest one has to do with diabetes and tuberculosis, a synergy which is emerging as a major concern across the world and I am sure this will also attract much greater attention.

3. Why did you and your team choose PLoS ONE to publish this work?

We chose PLoS ONE for the simple reason of the wider audience. The time that PLoS ONE takes in taking a final decision is another factor. I try to avoid journals which take months to arrive at a final decision. What I also like in PLoS ONE is the proactive due diligence on accepted papers which PLoS ONE conducts and, based on its judgment, the press releases it issues to create wider awareness outside the normal readership. In addition, their publishing platform which allows scientists to debate your published data on the net is perhaps unique to PLoS and this enables your peers, and also your possible competitors, to address questions and provide critiques.

4. What are you working on now?

My lab continues to work on molecular infection biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and also the dissemination dynamics of this bacterium. We have some very exciting stories about some of the unique features the bacteria has for the host immune system and then finally, after the right signals are received from the host, embark on a major effort for its own dissemination and survival. We are also collaborating with other colleagues to sequence the genome of a soil mycobacterium which is of great interest to people working not only in treatment of tuberculosis but also other inflammatory disorders.

5. What was your experience of publishing with us like?

As I said earlier, my experience has been wonderful so far and I am sure I would like to publish more and more in PLoS ONE. The wider readership and the broad canvass on which it operates certainly provokes me to send my manuscripts to PLoS ONE.

Thank you for your time for the interview.

PLoS welcomes both articles and readership from the developing world and strives to make it as easy as possible for these researchers to participate in the PLoS experience. If you wish to join them, please submit your work today.

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.plos.org/cms/trackback/450

Exploring the Mists of Time

Rebecca Walton — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:34:12 -0800

After the success of PLoS ONE’s first collection (Stress-Induced Depression and Comorbidities: From Bench to Bedside), published in January, we decided it was high time for a second. This time, we were lucky enough to have already published 26 great articles from a range of fields within the discipline of paleontology (the study of fossils and of life forms that existed in past geological periods). These papers have now been compiled together to form the PLoS ONE Paleontology Collection and each peer-reviewed article can be read online now—in full and for free.

Over the past 18 months, PLoS ONE has published a number of papers that have added to our understanding of various species of dinosaur and terrible lizard (including Nigersaurus, Triceratops, and Pterosaur); however, paleontology is a broad discipline, overlapping with other fields, such as biology and geography and as a result, the PLoS ONE Paleontology Collection encompasses research as varied as the paleogeography of the Panama Canal, the evolution of the cat skull and the finding of jellyfish fossils from the Cambrian. As the Open Source Paleontologist put it, “So far, 2009 has been a banner year for vertebrate paleontology in the open access journal PLoS ONE.”

The collection’s featured image is by Mark Witton and also forms part of Witton’s published PLoS ONE article (and so can be reused under the terms of our Creative Commons Attribution License). More of Witton’s Pterosaur illustrations can be found on Flickr and this figure (from which the featured image has been cropped) is entitled, “Life restoration of a group of giant azhdarchids, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, foraging on a Cretaceous fern prairie.”

One of the key features shared by many of the papers included in the collection has been the impact they have made in the international media and blogosphere. The following studies resulted in some of the most impressive news and blog coverage, although this list is far from comprehensive: the Nigersaurus, the discovery of a pregnant procetid whale fossil, Triceratops combat, dinosaur trackways in Yemen and flight and aerial gigantism in Pterosaurs.

The blogosphere has also responded with enthusiasm to many of the paleontology papers published in PLoS ONE, which can, of course, be read freely online, on their publication, and often include illustrations and photographs that can be reused (with an appropriate attribution) in blog posts. Greg Laden, writing on the Maiacetus paper, described it as, “a major article, published by an internationally recognized dream team of palaeoanthropologists. Since this is published in the Open Access journal PLoS ONE, this publication is a significant marker in the history of Open Access publishing. This is roughly like having a very famous food critic pick your restaurant to eat in because she likes it.”

As we compiled the papers to include in the Paleontology Collection, we noticed that many of our readers had been using the rating and discussion features, which can be employed to comment on any paper published in PLoS ONE. Why not join the discussion on these papers? Karl Bates’s article which used a laser to estimate dinosaur mass, Daniel Meulemans’ study on the evolution of vertebrate cartilage and Thomas Kaye’s paper, which suggests that previously reported findings of dinosaurian soft tissue may actually be bacterial biofilm are all good examples of lively discussion threads.

Finally, if you are a paleontological researcher, we encourage you to submit your work to PLoS ONE. The Paleontology Collection is dynamic and relevant papers will be added as they are published, so if your paleontology paper is accepted for publication by one of our academic editors, it will be included within the collection. The news coverage and post-publication discussion on these papers show that the paleontology community—and the world—are following these PLoS ONE articles very closely, so if you like what you see and would like your paleontology research to appear in PLoS ONE, submit your manuscript today!

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.plos.org/cms/trackback/446

Top picks in Infectious Diseases

Peter Binfield — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:14:20 -0800

Earlier this week we published an interview with Adam Ratner, PLoS ONE Section Editor responsible for Infectious Diseases. We also asked him to choose his top five papers from those he has edited and provide brief explanations about why he picked them. Here are his choices and reasons. We welcome more submissions from this community.

Surprisingly High Specificity of the PPD Skin Test for M.tuberculosis Infection from Recent Exposure in The Gambia. Hill PC, Brookes RH, Fox A, Jackson-Sillah D, Lugos MD, et al. This paper is a perfect example of the importance of open access to international health. Hill et al. studied a common tuberculosis test (the PPD skin test) on the ground in a high-prevalence area. These data are valuable for practitioners and researchers all over the world and can be most widely available through PLoS ONE.

RNA-Containing Cytoplasmic Inclusion Bodies in Ciliated Bronchial Epithelium Months to Years after Acute Kawasaki Disease. Rowley AH, Baker SC, Shulman ST, Garcia FL, Fox LM, et al. This manuscript uses analysis of samples from patients who died of Kawasaki Disease (KD) in order to explore the hypothesis that an unidentified RNA virus may be the inciting agent of this KD. The etiology of KD has been a topic of great controversy for decades, and this paper adds valuable data. KD occurs worldwide, and the wide dissemination of information gained from autopsy studies of KD fatalities is important.

Evolution of Streptococcus pneumoniae and Its Close Commensal Relatives. Kilian M, Poulsen K, Blomqvist T, Håvarstein LS, Bek-Thomsen M, et al. Streptococcus pneumoniae is a tremendously important cause of disease worldwide, accounting for approximately 1 million deaths in children under 5 annually. Kilian et al. performed a detailed evolutionary analysis of S. pneumoniae and closely related species, many of which are rarely pathogenic. This sets the stage for a more detailed understanding of S. pneumoniae pathogenesis and is important information for researchers all over the world.

Phase 1 Trial of Malaria Transmission Blocking Vaccine Candidates Pfs25 and Pvs25 Formulated with Montanide ISA 51.Wu Y, Ellis RD, Shaffer D, Fontes E, Malkin EM, et al. This is a Phase I trial of candidate malaria vaccines in which there was an unexpectedly high rate of adverse reactions to the adjuvant used. I chose this article because this is the kind of study that might have difficulty finding a "home" without a forum such as PLoS ONE. There is a tremendous amount to be learned from early stage trials, even those in which the intervention tested is a "failure," in this case as a result of reactogenicity. PLoS ONE publishes work such as this, allowing it to inform future studies.

Microbial Prevalence, Diversity and Abundance in Amniotic Fluid During Preterm Labor: A Molecular and Culture-Based Investigation. DiGiulio DB, Romero R, Amogan HP, Kusanovic JP, Bik EM, et al. Preterm birth is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and is often of unclear etiology. DiGiuio et al. took a broad, culture-independent approach to understanding the population of microorganisms in the amniotic fluid of women with and without preterm birth. Their findings reveal surprising microbial diversity in this site and are an important foundation for future work in this area.

To add your work to the quality articles already published in PLoS ONE, simply submit your manuscript to us today.

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.plos.org/cms/trackback/444

Academic Editor Interview - Adam Ratner

Bora Zivkovic — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:47:59 -0800

Adam Ratner, MD is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology at Columbia University. He is one of the first people to join the Editorial Board at PLoS ONE and is now our Section Editor for Infectious Diseases. We talked over Skype about medicine, Open Access, PLoS and the world of scientific publishing.

BZ: I'd like to start with a bit more detail on your scientific and medical background - what brought you into infectious diseases research?

My interest and my clinical training are in pediatric infectious diseases. My research direction started during a postdoctoral stint at University of Pennsylvania where I could see the power of new methods: we could simultaneously genetically modify a pathogen - Streptococcus pneumoniae, the bacterium responsible for a number of childhood diseases, and its model host - the mouse. With this approach we could study both how the pathogen affects the host and how the host responds to the pathogen.

Most of my work is now focused on research, but for about eight weeks every year I treat pediatric patients. I find it good to combine the lab and the clinic as the two inform each other.

BZ: What was it that attracted you to PLoS ONE in the first place?

I liked the idea of Open Access from the very beginning, especially when PLoS started its first journals - Biology and Medicine. When PLoS put out the call for manuscripts for its new journal - PLoS Pathogens - I persuaded my collaborators that we should support this journal and send our papers there. Actually, our paper, The Role of Innate Immune Responses in the Outcome of Interspecies Competition for Colonization of Mucosal Surfaces, was the very first article published in PLoS Pathogens - number 001.

The following year, when PLoS announced the founding of PLoS ONE, I was intrigued. I admit I was a little skeptical at first, but more I thought about it, more I realized that a journal like this - of broad scope, accepting papers that are scientifically sound without regard to potential impact, is exactly what the scientific community needed. Soon I became a believer, and joined the Academic Board among the very first people to do so, at the beginning of the journal.

BZ: How many hours a week would you say you devote to PLoS ONE and when do you fit that into your busy schedule?

I try to devote 1-2 hours to PLoS ONE every day, as I understand the need for quick turnaround. So I try to move the manuscripts to Academic Editors and reviewers quickly.

BZ: How does the peer-review process on PLoS ONE work? What is the standard of peer-review on PLoS ONE?

In some ways, the review system in PLoS ONE is very similar to other journals in the areas of infectious diseases or microbiology, yet in other ways it is very different. The process is identical to other journals in that manuscripts are sent out to reviewers who do their job seriously and apply the same scientific standards to the work. On the other hand, it makes a huge difference that no manuscript is rejected early because "it is not of interest to us" - there are none of those limitations.

Thus, the reviewing process is rigorous - reviewers are evaluating if the work is hypothesis driven, is the work of high quality, and are conclusions supported by the data, but not trying to meet any subjective criteria.

BZ: How quickly does this process move?

Speed is an important aspect of PLoS ONE. I read each manuscript myself, which takes a day or two, and then decide which other Academic Editors or external reviewers to send it to. There, the review process may last an additional two to three weeks or so, at which point we can make a decision to reject, accept with modifications or accept as is.

BZ: What's the general quality of submissions like?

It is similar to other quality journals. Sure, some manuscripts are sub-par, and our system allows the Academic Editors to reject such papers quickly, without necessarily burdening the external reviewers with them. But most are very good. What is very good about PLoS ONE is that it is a natural home for studies that are interdisciplinary - thus not fitting neatly into other specialized journals' criteria of what they like to publish. And such interdisciplinary studies are now becoming very frequent. Also, this is a good place for negative or confirmatory results, which, though they may not be exciting, are very useful, especially in clinical areas of biomedical science. The fact that PLoS ONE does not care about the tyranny of Impact Factor allows it to publish a wealth of medically important studies.

BZ: What would you say is the 'best' paper you have handled and why?

It is hard to choose, but I would like to point out a series of papers about tuberculosis in The Gambia. A group there is looking at sensitivity and specificity of TB tests on the ground, in a place where tuberculosis is highly prevalent. Look at, for instance, Surprisingly High Specificity of the PPD Skin Test for M. tuberculosis Infection from Recent Exposure in The Gambia and Using ELISPOT to Expose False Positive Skin Test Conversion in Tuberculosis Contacts. Those are important studies in themselves, but they also showcase the importance of Open Access in the developing world - both medical personnel and researchers there need access to the literature on the diseases that are prevalent in those parts of the world.

BZ: What do you feel makes PLoS ONE relevant to scientists?

The best thing about PLoS ONE is that it does not impose boundaries between disciplines. †Thus, cross-disciplinary work that does not fit neatly anywhere else (as much as there is a lot of lip-service about the importance of such work), fits perfectly in PLoS ONE.

BZ: And finally, what would you say is the thing about Open Access that most excites you?

There is a social justice aspect to Open Access that I find particularly compelling. Especially, as we just mentioned, in the international sphere: making sure that all the existing medical knowledge is available to physicians everywhere on the planet.

BZ: Thank you very much for your time. It was great fun talking to you.

And for the readers: if you would like to experience PLoS ONE for yourself, submit your work to us today.

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.plos.org/cms/trackback/442

Failures in Science and Why They are Good

from Tangled Up in Blue Guy on Wed, 2009-02-18 06:38

Click to continue reading “”
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "", url: "" });...

The Land-Whale that Time Forgot

Rebecca Walton — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:29:59 -0800

The media coverage of palaeontology papers published in PLoS ONE this year has already got off to a tremendous start thanks to two articles published in the journal this week and last week.

This week’s biggest news story came from a study by Philip Gingerich at the University of Michigan and an international team of researchers who reported the discovery of two whale fossils, a pregnant female and a male of the same species. The 47.5 million year-old fossils described in the paper were discovered in Pakistan in 2000 and 2004 and reveal how primitive whales gave birth and provide new insights into how whales made the transition from land to sea.

Professor Paul Sereno, a palaeontologist at the University of Chicago, and the academic editor who handled the peer review of the article at PLoS ONE, said of the discovery, “Of all of the amazing fossils from Indo-Pakistan that have so remarkably bridged the gap in the early evolution of whales from land to sea, this is the most spectacular. To see with one's own eyes direct evidence of birthing orientation like a hoofed mammal in an early whale is mind-boggling—and would put a smile on Darwin's face were he still alive, as we celebrate the 150th birthday of his Origin of Species this year.”

The media and blog coverage of the article is too extensive to list in full but includes the following:

News:

National Geographic – Early Whales Gave Birth on Land, Fossils Reveal
New Scientist – Primitive whales gave birth on land and Gallery: Whale evolution – from land to sea
Nature News – Fossil of pregnant whale found
Science News – Early whales gave birth on land
Reuters – Pregnant fossil shows how early whales evolved
Live Science – Ancient Whales Gave Birth on Land
The Times Online – Fossil shows whales lived on land

Blogs:

A buzz of ScienceBloggers, including: Laelaps, The Questionable Authority, Not Exactly Rocket Science, Greg Laden, Pharyngula and, of course, A Blog around the Clock
Wired Science – Transitional Whale Species Hunted at Sea, Gave Birth on Land
Palaeoblog – Ancient Whales Gave Birth On Land
Panda’s Thumb – Maiacetus
The Loom – The Backward Whale

In an article published in PLoS ONE last week, meanwhile, Andrew Farke and colleagues took the Triceratops by its horns with their study on the use by Triceratops of their cranial horns and frill in combat. Dr Farke’s blog post (Triceratops Combat?), to which there is also a link on the published paper, details some of the background behind the study, which involved the authors looking at the number of lesions in the nasal, jugal, squamosal, and parietal bones of the skull of Triceratops compared to the related Centrosaurus

Again, there was a huge amount of international news and blog coverage of the article (although only The Times Online invoked Raquel Welch), including:

News:

Scientific American 60-Second Science – Horning In On Triceratops
National Geographic – Dinosaurs Locked Horns, New Skull Evidence Suggests
Science NOW – Triceratops Horns Aren't Just for Show
Live Science – Triceratops Horns Used in Battle
USA Today – Triceatops fought each other instead of T-Rex
Los Angeles Times – Triceratops' horns were for fighting, research shows
The Telegraph – Triceratops 'fought each other'
El Mundo – Los 'Triceratops' luchaban como los herbívoros actuales
Die Welt – Spitze Hörner und fünf Tonnen Kampfgewicht

Blog:

Wired Science – Scars Reveal How Triceratops Fought
80 Beats – Rival Triceratops May Have Locked Horns Like Deer
Greg Laden’s Blog – Did Triceratops fight with their faces?
Why I Hate Theropods – Promoting the blogosphere for January
The Theatrical Tanystropheus – Gary Larson wasn’t too far off…

In all, it’s certainly been a whale of a fortnight here at PLoS ONE!

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.plos.org/cms/trackback/440