PloS, why it ain't so hot : Gene Expression

Search this blog

Q & A

Books

PloS, why it ain't so hot permlink

Find more posts in: Education & Careers

Share this: Facebook Twitter Stumbleupon Reddit Email + More

Posted on: October 5, 2008 2:59 AM, by Razib Khan

Read all about it, When Open Access Fails. Reminds me of what happened to Hotmail.

Find more posts in: Education & Careers

Share this: Facebook Twitter Stumbleupon Reddit Email + More

Comments

That isn't a DNS registration problem if he could get there "clicking around the Plos One domain". And he should have known that if he is talking about web servers. It is likely a caching problem with his upstream provider and could happen to any location using DNS. Nothing PloS could do about it. Makes you think about the reliability of the Web eh?

Posted by: Markk | October 5, 2008 7:25 AM

PLoS having a glitch (yes, it's back up now) with their domain name hardly constitutes a failure of Open Access. Every site I've ever used on a regular basis--commercial or otherwise--has had downtime, this isn't anything special.

Posted by: John Conway | October 5, 2008 7:30 AM

mark, well, it's back up. but i noticed the problem too, so it was affecting my access. so if it wasn't a DNS problem it sure wasn't a tiny local problem. from the whois:

Created On:02-Oct-2000 17:03:51 UTC
Last Updated On:04-Oct-2008 20:30:45 UTC

something went down.

john, yes, almost all websites have "downtime." but usually it is just that i can't access the website or something.

Posted by: razib | October 5, 2008 8:55 AM

Even the Google guys had have problems with not renewing their domain names.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/23/google-forgets-to-renew-googlede-site-goes-down/
If PloS is as bad as google is at knowing the web I have no problem with PloS.

Posted by: Christian | October 5, 2008 9:31 AM

So, the domain was down for a couple of hours. The IT folks took care of it and fixed it. How's that a problem?

Posted by: Coturnix | October 5, 2008 12:13 PM

I don't see how this is a failure of open access particularly. We've had access to paid resources get switched off at my library because the publishers forgot to invoice us, then got shirty because we hadn't paid. That's a problem of a different kind, obviously, but my point is that forgetting to do something that keeps the lights on, figuratively speaking, isn't solely the province of non-profits.

Posted by: G. Williams | October 5, 2008 12:27 PM

mebee this is a problem with bureaucracies? or the DNS system in general? (at least how it is administered)

Posted by: razib | October 5, 2008 3:12 PM

> open-access-fails
a bit ot, but only so much: anthropology.net reloads endlessly when the site's cookies aren't accepted... not quite the exception-handling you'd expect.

Posted by: M. Möhling | October 8, 2008 5:18 PM