“Scientific Publishing Is Killing Science”
“researchers worry that academic journals are failing at both of these functions: Peer review is failing to ensure the quality of published research, and new research fails to get into the hands of those who need it, ending up behind journal paywalls after a review process that can take more than year. To fix these problems, we need to recreate scientific publishing for the Internet, argues Richard Price, the CEO of Academia.edu, a site that offers a suite of social media tools aimed at helping scientists and other academics share their research…
He believes that an improved publishing process should have three features: 1) speed: Researchers should be able to upload their manuscripts as soon as they’re written; 2) community peer review: Manuscripts should be evaluated by the whole community, not just two or three reviewers; and 3) open access: Papers should be accessible to all who want to read them…
Eisen co-founded the Public Library of Science (PLOS), a publisher of a series of open-access scientific journals. While most of these journals work like open access versions of traditional journals, one of them, PLOS One, follows a more radical publication model. With the goal of leaving the evaluation of a paper’s significance to the scientific community, PLOS One promises to “publish all papers that are judged to be technically sound.” Post-publication review can then happen with a set of software tools on the journal’s website…
Backed by major research foundations in the U.S., U.K., and Germany, eLife is experimenting with new approaches to pre-publication peer review, while also developing tools for tracking post-publication peer review.”
I didn’t realize that’s how PLOS ONE works.