Re: PLoS Financial Analysis

["Joseph Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

I'm with Anthony on this.  With all the crowing over PLOS's 
problems, you would think we live in a cornfield.  PLOS, like 
BioMedCentral, seem to me to be an experiment worth studying.  I 
would have preferred if PLOS's management were a tad less 
arrogant and self-righteous in their assertions, but they have 
put together an editorially distinguished program, which is not 
easy regardless of the method of funding.  My problem with PLOS 
from the beginning has been that the model doesn't scale.  You 
may be able to fund one program like this, maybe even dozens, but 
it is not something that can extend to the 24,000 peer-reviewed 
journals.  But I hope PLOS will su succeed, even if the Moore 
Foundation continues to underwrite the program indefinitely.

Joe Esposito

On 6/22/06, Anthony Watkinson <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com> wrote:
>
> I feel an urge coming over me to defend an OA project which I shall not
> resist. All "traditional" journal publishers know very well that launching
> new journals, especially new journals with different models, is very
> difficult. I suspect and to some extent I know that projections are almost
> always over-optimistic.
>