ebyblog libraries and stuff

PLoS One

As someone with a science background I try to keep up with OA type concepts as I think it will change how things are done and probably for the better. PLoS One is an upcoming offering that is hoping to change how scientific knowledge/research is shared. There are likely plenty of research that doesn’t make it to publishing in a large journal but may still be worth sharing with a wider audience. If it is well done science, regardless of impact, should it be shared? Another change is peer review, which will continue after the publication as a conversation.

There’s an interview with one of the editors which is worth a look.

RP: So what question will peer reviewers be expected to answer when considering whether a paper submitted to PLoS ONE should be accepted for publication? CS: They will be asked to answer a simpler question than has traditionally been asked. Essentially, that question will be: “Has the science in this paper been done well enough to warrant it being entered into the scientific literature as a whole?”

[...] Related to Ryan Eby’s recent post about PLoS One, last month’s Wired had an excellent article about open-access publishing and Harold Varmus. Also in that issue is an article on harnessing the power of crowds for distributed computation. It mentions things like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. [...]