Public Library of Science launches PLoS Medicine

The Public Library of Science has created a second Open Access journal, this time for high-profile, peer-reviewed medical research.

Harold E. Varmus

The journal PLoS Medicine describes itself as "the most significant international general medicine journal to emerge in over 70 years." This is an ambitious claim for a new journal, but the publisher, Public Library of Science (PLoS), believes that it has what it takes to create a top medical journal. "PLoS Medicine intends to be among the world's premier general medicine journals, publishing important, peer-reviewed original discoveries freely available to all," says Harold Varmus, Nobel Laureate, and former director of the National Institutes of Health. Varmus founded PLoS together with Stanford geneticist Patrick O. Brown and University of California bioinformatician Michael Eisen, in response to calls for greater access to the scientific literature. PLoS began publishing last year when it launched PLoS Biology. The first issue of PLoS Medicine features peer-reviewed research articles on a wide range of medical topics, from the global burden of disease to cellular changes in smoking-related lung disease. The journal also includes debates on controversial issues, commissioned perspectives on published articles, research summaries for non-specialist physicians and lay summaries for patients.

The new journal was launched in October at a gala event in London hosted by the Wellcome Trust, a medical charity that has been strongly supportive of Open Access publishing. "Research findings need to be freely and widely available to help scientists achieve the discoveries needed to improve health," says Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust. "It is essential that scientists have the choice to be able to publish in high quality and rigorously peer-reviewed Open Access journals. I welcome journals such as PLoS Medicine that will offer such a service to the scientific community."

PLoS Medicine has attracted an impressive group of editors and editorial board members with a great deal of experience in medicine and biomedical publishing. "The breadth of articles in our first issues shows our intention to be a journal for the entire global medical community," adds Virginia Barbour, a Senior Editor of PLoS Medicine. "The journal's editorial board includes nearly 100 experts from 28 different countries on 5 continents who represent the world's leading health researchers."

BioMed Central welcomes PLoS Medicine, the newest of a growing set of Open Access medical journals, the leading ones among which are the BMJ and BMC Medicine.

www.bmj.org
www.biomedcentral.com/bmcmed
www.plosmedicine.org

Scottish declaration on Open Access

A group of Scottish universities, funding organisations and politicians has formulated a declaration supporting Open Access.

"We believe that the interests of Scotland will be best served by the rapid adoption of Open Access to scientific and research literature," begins the declaration, which was formulated at a meeting held on October 11 at the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

The declaration's signatories state that the "subscription-based system is showing signs of increasing strain, and we believe that it is no longer the most advantageous means of disseminating crucial research results to all those interested, whether in our leading research institutions or in the wider community." The tight-knit community of academic institutions in Scotland feels that it is not well served by current access models. "The research pooling agenda within Scotland depends on wider access to research, if it is to achieve its aim of maximising Scotland's research potential." The declaration adds that "we believe that the interests of Scotland - for the economic, social and cultural benefit of the population as a whole, and for the maintenance of the longstanding high reputation of research within Scottish universities and research institutions - will be best served by the rapid adoption of Open Access."

The meeting was the initiative of the SSISWG OA Group, the Open Access Group of the Scottish Science Information Strategy Working Group. It was attended by senior representatives from Scottish universities, research funders, the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council, the Scottish Executive, and others. The Scottish group defines Open Access according to the Budapest Open Archive Initiative criteria, namely as "free availability on the public Internet, permitting all users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full-texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the Internet itself".

Several universities in Scotland have already established institutional repositories (which include theses, departmental reports, conference papers, and so on, as well as journal articles), and plans are underway to enable other Scottish research institutions to deposit their own research output. "Recognising the huge potential gains to Scotland in terms of impact, comparative advantage, and return on public investment if open access to our research can be established quickly, we will use our best endeavours to ensure that research carried out in Scotland is published in an open access format, recognising that a transition phase may be necessary in some areas," state the Scottish institutions.

The signatories endorse the general principles of Open Access and commit to implementing, as and when possible, actions to ensure a national commitment to the free-est and fullest access to scholarly information. The declaration proposes a number of recommendations aimed specifically at research funders or institutions. The signatories urge funders to make it a condition of funding that findings are deposited in an open repository, and to offer grants that support publication fees for Open Access journals. Universities are urged to set up institutional repositories and to encourage, or mandate, staff to deposit their articles. The declaration also calls on the Scottish government to take a leading role by working with other national governments in promoting Open Access.

http://scurl.ac.uk/WG/SSISWGOA
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/