PLoS ONE Release Candidate 0.6
The PLoS ONE 0.6 release candidate is now live. This release candidate features Browse by Subject, Browse by Publication Date and a bunch of user registration/login/profile updates/fixes. The features implemented and bugs fixed in RC 0.6 include:
- Browse by Subject
- Browse by Publication Date
- Full Safari support
- Fixes to IE display issues
- Cross section and cross paragraph annotations now work correctly
- A single email address for both login and email alerts
- Users can change their email address and password from their profile
- Resend email address verification
- Update to Dojo JavaScript library
- Some minor changes to webpages…
Actually, the release candidate went live last week but I was at the 2007 Allen Press Emerging Trends in Scholarly Publishing Seminar. The seminar featured some great speakers. Jaron Lanier gave a keynote about the current alpha-dog mentality in the blogosphere (which I think was prompted by the threats made against technologist Kathy Sierra and even appears in blogs about pianos) and author pay models in scientific publishing. Josh Greenburg talked about the Zotero FireFox extension which allows you to collect, manage, tag and cite your research sources (note to self – make this available for PLoS ONE). John Wilbanks of Science Commons gave a talk on using data in scientific journals. And our own Chris Surridge gave a presentation on open peer review.
I plan on updating the PLoS technology blog more often. I have a lot to post about – the next PLoS ONE release candidate, Topaz development, etc. Just seems like the week always goes by a bit too fast for me to join the blogging highway….
I can’t seem to get over the disappointment that PLoS ONE meant to me. I read about it way before it was launched, and I couldn’t contain my excitement: Finally, a PLoS journal for all fields! I love the PLoS effort (really, I even evangelize and everything), but being a physicist I couldn’t publish in it.
However, immediately after the PLoS ONE launch I formed an opinion that I still hold (and hope it’s not true): PLoS ONE will fail miserably in all science fields except for medicine and some of biology. And I don’t say this because I want to, but if the current strategy of the journal doesn’t change, this could also mean failure in even those two fields.
The explanation is very simple and illustrated with my personal example: I had a nice piece of work that I was eager to submit to PLoS one, until I realized that the journal’s articles where separated by subject: physics, mathematics, computer science, and…nutrition !?!?! Ophthalmology ?!?!? What is this?
Obviously, it is just a medicine journal where you can publish other stuff if you like. However, none (NONE) of my colleagues will ever come to read something from this journal.
Actually, I find it very demeaning that a journal that “welcomes reports on primary research from any scientific discipline” treats physics in the same footing as dermatology. Why wasn’t “Medicine” enough, with sub-categories inside? This cannot be too challenging technologically, and it could obviously be used with other fields as well (optics, relativity, and so on for physics), improving the browsing capabilities of the journal.
I cannot and I will not publish my research in PLoS ONE until this is changed. If not, I will not stop feeling offended and discrediting it until the Journal Information page is changed to reflect the actual scope of PLoS ONE.
I sincerely hope you listen to these comments and truly become a broad scope journal.
hi AJ,
re fully supporting Safari, what does that mean?
are there specific pages that contain invalid HTML, CSS or JavaScript that trouble Safari? I’ve validated, some but not all, of the PLoS site and it looks good from a standards compliance perspective.
thanks.