PLoS ONE, Open Access, and the Future of Scholarly Publishing

Open Access (OA) advocates argue that PLoS ONE is now the largest scholarly journal in the world. Its parent organisation — Public Library of Science (PLoS) — was co-founded in 2001 by Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus. What does the history of PLoS tell us about the development of PLoS ONE? What does the success of PLoS ONE tell us about OA? And what does the current rush by other publishers to clone PLoS ONE tell us about the future of scholarly communication?

Our story begins in 1998, in a coffee shop located on the corner ofCole and Parnassus in San Francisco. It was here, Harold Varmus reports, that the seeds of PLoS were sown, during a seminal conversation he had with colleague Patrick Brown. Only at that point did Varmus realise what a mess scholarly communication was in. Until then, he says, he had been “an innocent person who went along with the system as it existed”.

Enlightenment began when Brown pointed out to Varmus that when scientists publish their papers they routinely (and without payment) assign ownership in them to the publisher. Publishers then lock the papers behind a paywall and charge other researchers a toll (subscription) to read them, thereby restricting the number of potential readers.

Since scientists crave readers (and the consequent “impact”) above all else, Brown reminded Varmus, the current system is illogical, counterproductive, and unfair to the research community. While it may have been necessary to enter into thisFaustian bargain with publishers in a print environment (since it was the only way to get published, and print inevitably restricts readership), Brown added, it is no longer necessary in an online world — where the only barriers to the free-flow of information are artificial ones.