[Summary]
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) was founded in October 2000 in
California as a non-profit organization whose mission was to give
access to the world's scientific and medical literature. In early 2003,
PLoS created a non-profit scientific and medical publishing venture to
provide scientists and physicians with free high-quality, high-profile
online journals in which to publish their work. The journals were PLoS
Biology (launched in 2003), PLoS Medicine (2004), PLoS Genetics (2005),
PLoS Computational Biology (2005), PLoS Pathogens (2005), PLoS Clinical
Trials (2006), and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases (2007), the first
scientific journal on this topic. All PLoS articles are freely
available online, on the websites of PLoS and in the public archive
PubMed Central, run by the National Library of Medicine. The articles
can be freely redistributed and reused under a Creative Commons
license, including for translations, as long as the author(s) and
source are cited.
***
Founded in October 2000, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) created a
non-profit scientific and medical publishing venture in early 2003, to
provide scientists and physicians with free high-quality, high-profile
online journals in which to publish their work.
# PLoS as a catalyst
With the internet being a powerful medium to disseminate information,
it seems quite outrageous that the results of research -- original
works requiring many years of efforts -- are "squatted" by publishers
claiming ownership on these works, and selling them at a high price.
The work of researchers is often publicly funded, especially in North
America. It would therefore seem appropriate that the scientific
community and the general public can freely enjoy the results of this
research. 1,000 new scientific and medical articles reviewed by peers
were published daily in 2000, with few of them free available on the
internet.
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) was founded in October 2000 in San
Francisco, California, as a non-profit organization whose mission was
to make the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource
in free online archives. Instead of information disseminated in
millions of reports and thousands of online journals, a single point
would give access to the full content of these articles, with a search
engine and hyperlinks between articles.
PLoS posted an open letter requesting the articles presently published
by journals to be distributed freely in online archives, and asking
researchers to promote the publishers willing to support this project.
From October 2000 to September 2002, the open letter was signed by
30,000 scientists from 180 countries. The publishers' answer was much
less enthusiastic, although a number of publishers agreed for their
articles to be distributed freely immediately after publication, or six
months after publication. But even the publishers who initially agreed
to support the project made so many objections that it was finally
abandoned.
# PLoS as a publisher
Another objective of PLoS was to become a publisher while creating a
new model of online publishing based on free dissemination of
knowledge. In early 2003, PLoS created a non-profit scientific and
medical publishing venture to provide scientists and physicians with
free high-quality, high-profile journals in which to publish their
work. The journals were PLoS Biology (launched in 2003), PLoS Medicine
(2004), PLoS Genetics (2005), PLoS Computational Biology (2005), PLoS
Pathogens (2005), PLoS Clinical Trials (2006) and PLoS Neglected
Tropical Diseases (2007), the first scientific journal on this topic.
All PLoS articles are freely available online, on the websites of PLoS
and in the public archive PubMed Central, run by the National Library
of Medicine. The articles can be freely redistributed and reused under
a Creative Commons license, including for translations, as long as the
author(s) and source are cited. PLoS also launched PLoS ONE, an online
forum where people can publish articles on any subject relating to
science or medicine.
Three years after they were created, PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine had
the same reputation for excellence as the leading journals Nature,
Science and The New England Journal of Medicine. PLoS received
financial support from several foundations while developing a viable
economic model from fees paid by published authors, advertising,
sponsorship, and paid activities organized for PLoS members. PLoS also
hopes to encourage other publishers to adopt the open access model, or
to convert their existing journals to an open access model.