Beyond the PDF2 - Amsterdam, March 2013
- 1. Beyond the PDF: New modes of dissemination Experiments from PLOS Theo Bloom, Editorial Director for Biology, PLOS Amsterdam, March 2013
- 2. Take-home / talking points / provocation Trying to fix a big interconnected system - its not easy or fast One change at a time brings people along Steps are good if theyre in the right direction Partner with others wherever it makes sense Experiments are good: adapt to the results 2
- 3. The idealised cycle of research communication Do some science Discuss ideas Write a description Read/use other Share it with peoples work the world 3
- 4. The real-life cycle is more complicated Do some science Discuss ideas Write a description Read / use other peoples work Rejection. Try Submit it to another journal a journal Get promoted Do more work as requested Get grants Resubmit Be judged by publications Publication
- 6. The real-life cycle has some big problems Problem 4: poor Problem 1: links from Access to what underlying data and Do some you want to read science methods to write-up and (re) use Discuss ideas Write a description Read / use other peoples work Rejection. Try Submit it to another journal a journal Get promoted Problem 5: Do more work as requested Problem 3: Problem 2: Get grants Resubmit because of publication venue Be judged by problem 2, repeat as a measure of publications cycles at different publication quality Publication journals; and/or impact publication is delayed
- 7. The real-life cycle has some big problems Problem 4: poor Problem 1: links from Access to what underlying data and Do some you want to read science methods to write-up and (re) use Discuss ideas Write a description Read / use other peoples work Rejection. Try Submit it to another journal a journal Get promoted Problem 5: Do more work as requested Problem 3: Problem 2: Get grants Resubmit because of publication venue Be judged by problem 2, repeat as a measure of publications cycles at different publication quality Publication journals; and/or impact publication is delayed All subject areas; not assessing impact
- 8. We havent solved problems 1-3 Beyond CC-BY: explore better ways to do openness (metadata, data, reusability); and accessibility Beyond ALMs: make altmetrics optimally useful and encourage wider adoption Beyond PLOS ONE: more formal experiments with peer review this year increase openness; structure reviewer information; portable reviews? We have made some progress in these areas 8
- 9. Problem 4: poor links from underlying data and methods to write-up Do some science Write a description
- 10. Do some science Write a description Store some of the data somewhere
- 11. Do some science Integrated collection of methods, results, data, metadata Write a narrative Store all of the description that is data somewhere inextricably linked to the data and methods useful and link to publication
- 12. Steps towards better data handling What to do with homeless data? Partnership with Dryad (www.datadryad.org) Unstructured data packages associated with published articles Freely available - CC0 A unique identifier (DOI) for each package Statistics for access Seamless tying together of article and data Partnership with figshare (www.figshare.org) figshare widget displays Supporting Information files directly in the article search, magnify, download singly or as a package Planning in hand for data papers (www.ploscompbiol.org) Describes reusable dataset to support reuse Publishes associated metadata Ensures valuable data is actionable for reuse Data accessible in a recognized, stable repository
- 13. Can we revolutionize speed? Problem 5: PLOS Currents: Influenza - Inspiration Seeking Lessons in Swine Flu Fight Another problem is communication. Officials and experts say they have learned a lot about human swine influenza. But relatively little of that information...has been reported and published. Some experts said researchers were waiting to publish in journals, which can take months or longer. New York Times, August 10th, 2009 Lawrence K. Altman, M.D. 13
- 14. Rapid technical and scope review Authors may revise but can be published almost immediately post-review Content is peer-reviewed, citable, publicly archived, and included in PubMed
- 15. What comes out: flexible (familiar) format
- 16. PLOS Currents as an experiment Swine flu epidemic faded away - then a new one started We said submissions do not have to be full-length articles but what did we get? What use-cases make most sense for Currents? Can we try harder with non-traditional article formats? Single findings Negative results Replications Methods and protocols Publish all results with as little delay as possible 16
- 17. Back to issue 1: Access vs. accessibility Readable by machines as well as people Intelligible 17
- 18. Where do people go for information? open review via wiki PLoS Comput Biol article version of record A high-quality Wikipedia article that can be edited and updated 18
- 19. Take-home / talking points Trying to fix a big interconnected system - its not easy or fast One change at a time brings people along Steps are good if theyre in the right direction Partner with others wherever it makes sense Experiments are good: adapt to the results We need to work with real people authors, readers as well as with machines 19
- 20. Open Access tbloom@plos.org 20