A quick account in abbreviated note form of the speeches at the launch gala for PloS Medicine which happened last night in the newly opened Wellcome building on Euston Road.
Vivian Siegel, Executive Director, PloS, the two major tasks of a journal peer review and dissemination; praised the work of the Wellcome in commissioning the two studies of the economics of publishing and costs and business models. Breadth of people interested: authors, publishers, editors, librarians, etc
Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome: a time of rapid change in dissemination of research data of all types, Human Genome Project started it all. A “mega-paper” and a new model for publishing. the NIH consultations on open access, urged as many people as possible to contribute. Importance of digitising older material in PubMedCentral and drew attention to the initiative under which the Journal of Experimental Medicine had been put online back to the Volume 1 Issue 1 of 1898. Wellcome have a digitisation programme.
Ian Gibson, Chairman of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee: architect of the new Wellcome building the same as that of the Norwich public library rebuilt after the disastrous fire. As an academic, having to sit on committees to deciding which journals to cut, The government response se to this committees report is expected next week, ad no hints as to what might be in it Public interest in scientific information (point made by nearly every speaker) This is the age of partnerships, need greater cooperation, research councils should now be requiring self-archiving, and the government must enable RCs to do so.
Richard Smith, former editor of the BMJ and now CEO of UnitedHealth Group Europe, and a member of the Board of PloS: power of PLoS vision. How quickly things had change, went back six years to when he addressed an audience of publishers who thought he was mad, Drivers behind open access: power of sharing ideas, money (o/a less expensive? Not value (publishers don’t add much if at all…value of research lies in its dissemination (and application-TR), speed (some conventional journals still take two years to publish a paper. Now at tipping point. He defined that current situation as one in which old models are unsustainable, (reminded me of Lenin’s definition of a revolutionary situation, one in which the opposing class forces on the one hand cannot continue in the old way and on the other will not). Will conventional journals resist? He thinks we’re at the tipping point. Patients can and should have access to original research.
Virginia Barbour Senior Editor, PLoS: New model of the editorial process, pairing academic and professional editors. Has been part of PloS for six months.
New editor- author relationship compared to midwifery and birth. Need to lay myths of open access: that quality might be compromised and that publishing in open access journals would be less prestigious than in conventional ones. Who’s the editor? There’s four. Best use of technology. PLoS Medicine will take articles other journal might not. Emphasis on health problems of developing world: first issue: articles on malaria, HIV/AIDS. Three-way collaboration: authors/editors/readers. Use of technology, for authors and public
Joep Lange, of the International Antiviral Therapy Evaluation Centre in Amsterdam: used HIV/AIDs as an example of the speed of developments in medicine. For a disease firs reported in 1981 and whose causative agent was know in 1983 we now have some twenty antiviral agents with four main knowledgeable and would and should read PloS Medicine. Imbalance in health care internationally, Only 10% of research effort goes on the diseases that affect 90% or world population, he quoted WHO (did I get this right…haven’t checked) Hailed the launch of PLOs Medicine and hope it would not be like certain US journals “dull, uniform and unimaginative”
And at the end we all got a PloS t-shirt and were initiated into the open access toast: PloS! I shall wear my t-shirt on tomorrow’s Beachy Head marathon.
If my notes are inaccuarate or traduce anything anyone said, I do apologise; although I abstained from the champagne, my scribble was hard to read afterwards. For a more authoritative version, see the PLoS press release
