PLOS
clock | December 18, 2009Two years ago, at the 2008 Science Blogging Conference, Dave Munger introduced to the world a new concept and a new wesbite to support that concept - ResearchBlogging.org. What is that all about?
Well, as the media is cuttting science out of the newsroom and the science reporting is falling onto institutional press information officers and science bloggers, more and more people are looking for scientific information on science blogs, especially as the expertise of the blogger is likely to provide a more accurate assessment of a freshly published study than the mainstream media can usually do…
clock | November 17, 2009
If you ever saw me at a conference, you probably asked me for one of the famous PLoS t-shirts. Or you did not even have to ask - I just gave you one.
Or perhaps you won one of our contests in the past - a synchroblogging anniversary competition, or a Blog Pick Of The Month - in which case you also got one of the shirts.
If you attended one of the previous ScienceOnline meetings, you got a PLoS ONE shirt.
Over the past two years or so, I went through an enormous box of PLoS swag, not just shirts, but also stickers, mouse-pads, pens, decals, etc. Other PLoS employees do the same, whenever…
clock | October 29, 2009If you follow me on Twitter or peruse the links in my daily Tweetlinks summaries, you may have noticed I posted several links to a new Collection at PLoS. This one is not a PLoS ONE Collection, but a PLoS-wide one, spanning six of the seven journals in the house.
The Collection Genomics of Emerging Infectious Disease, was compiled by Jonathan A. Eisen (who you probably know from his excellent blog), the Academic Editor-in-Chief at PLoS Biology.
Jonathan, together with PLoS Biology Senior Editor Catriona J. MacCallum, wrote the introductory editorial explaining what the Collection is about and…
clock | October 23, 2009The October winner will be announced on the 1st of November. Make sure your posts are aggregated on ResearchBlogging.org.
clock | October 22, 2009It's barely been a day since PLoS ONE published the article Discovery of the Largest Orbweaving Spider Species: The Evolution of Gigantism in Nephila when a video appeared on YouTube mashing up images and text from the press release:
Of course, as this is Open Access, nobody needs to worry about copyright and stuff....though a direct link to the paper would have been nice (or, considering the infamous YouTube commenters, perhaps better not!).
See the related blog post as well.
clock | October 19, 2009
This week - 19th-23rd October 2009 - is the Open Access week around the world - fitting nicely with the 5th birthday of PLoS Medicine. And when I say 'around the world' I really mean it. Just check out all the global events happening this week.
The OA Week is co-organized by Open Access Directory, PLoS, SPARC, Students for Free Culture, eIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) and OASIS.
Many countries are participating this year, including some with numerous events all around the country. See, for example, all the events in Germany (there are 67 events in that country alone!),…
clock | September 18, 2009If you are a regular reader of this blog, you are certainly aware that PLoS has started making article-level metrics available for all articles.
Today, we added one of the most important sets of such metrics - the number of times the article was downloaded. Each article now has a new tab on the top, titled "Metrics". If you click on it, you will be able to see the numbers of HTML, XML and PDF downloads, a graph of downloads over time and a link to overall statistics for the field, the journal, and PLoS as a whole.
Mark Patterson explains (also here and here), what it all means:
We believe…
clock | September 15, 2009
Today PLoS ONE published a paper describing a very cool new fossil of a sauropod from Niger - an exquisitely preserved, almost complete skeleton. Of course, you can read it for free at:
A New Basal Sauropod Dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic of Niger and the Early Evolution of Sauropoda:
Background
The early evolution of sauropod dinosaurs is poorly understood because of a highly incomplete fossil record. New discoveries of Early and Middle Jurassic sauropods have a great potential to lead to a better understanding of early sauropod evolution and to reevaluate the patterns of sauropod…
clock | September 10, 2009On Speaking of Medicine:
PLoS Medicine turns 5 years old on October 19th, 2009. To highlight the crucial importance of open access in medical publishing we're holding a competition to find the best medical paper published under an open-access license anywhere (not just in PLoS) since our launch.
Vote for your choice from the 6 competing papers, detailed below -- nominated and then shortlisted by our editorial board. Winners will be announced during Open-Access week (19-23rd October 2009). If you're interested in how we came up with this shortlist of top-quality open-access medicine papers,…
clock | August 29, 2009Leo Laporte and Kirsten Sanford (aka Dr.Kiki) interviewed (on Twit.tv) Jason Hoyt from Mendeley and Peter Binfield from PLoS ONE about Open Access, Science 2.0 and new ways of doing and publishing science on the Web. Well worth your time watching!
clock | August 25, 2009Wow - I had no idea this existed:
Until Graham Steel visited the Cambridge office and posted about his experience. Instead of trusting Google Maps (which always gets me lost in Durham, NC) I relied on the experience of a Cambridge cab driver when I visited last year.
clock | August 21, 2009Yesterday PLoS and Google unveiled PLoS Currents: Influenza, a Google Knol hosted collection of rapid communications about the swine flu.
In his blog post A new website for the rapid sharing of influenza research (also posted on the official Google blog), Dr.Harold Varmus explains:
The key goal of PLoS Currents is to accelerate scientific discovery by allowing researchers to share their latest findings and ideas immediately with the world's scientific and medical communities. Google Knol's features for community interaction, comment and discussion will enable commentary and conversations to…
clock | August 19, 2009Talk given by Peter Binfield at the ISMTE meeting (slides and audio):
The Future of Online (Academic) Publishing - Presentation to the ISMTE August 2009
Tags: journals academic publishing STM online publishing PLoS PLoS ONE article level metrics