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Welcome to the PLOS Synthetic Biology Community: Why a Community Site? How Do I Get Involved?

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synbio_collectionimage_thumbnailThank you for visiting this new new online gathering place for current and prospective authors working in a dynamic and still emerging discipline. To date, there have been more than 150 synthetic biology papers published by the PLOS journals. As articulated by PLOS ONE Academic Editor Jean Peccoud in April of 2014, “With its editorial policy precluding editors from making decisions on papers based on anticipated significance and it’s facilitation to serving interdisciplinary fields, PLOS ONE served this emerging community well.”

If the idea of being part of such a community of researchers interests you, please take a moment now to sign up for PLOS Synthetic Biology Community Email Alerts.

For more details on what we have in mind, read on…

Why a Synthetic Biology Community Site? Three reasons.

 

1) To provide informal online avenues for researcher collaboration and discussion of PLOS-published research

In creating new Web-based discipline-specific communities for researchers, PLOS is seeking to expand the ways researchers can highlight and exchange views on previously published research articles in their fields and newly published articles of note – involving the authors of that work with their peers and other informed readers in these discussions.

On a weekly basis, collaboration and discussion will be catalyzed and focused on a particular area of research via an author profile with a Q&A that invites online comments and questions concerning the author’s research findings, implications of those findings, as well as the methods, ethics and the data underlying any set of findings presented within an article.

To this end, content creation on this and other discipline specific PLOS sites will be managed by Community Site Editors who are practicing researchers (external to PLOS), with the majority of blog posts on the sites written for researchers, by researchers.

2) New research collections

Another key component of the new PLOS communities will be collections organized into broad categories, in response to the commonly articulated request from our users that we provide more structured and efficient access to papers of interest in the PLOS corpus.  PLOS welcomes submissions in this field and collections will be updated regularly with newly published content.

The PLOS Synthetic Biology Collection now contains 100 research articles and offers subcategories including: DNA Synthesis and Assembly, Biological Parts, Software and Modeling, and Gene Network Engineering.

 

3) A demonstration of the benefits of Open Access and Open Data

By demonstrating the impact and reach of research outputs that are shared by all, these communities will inform authors about the benefits of submitting their next research articles to a PLOS Journal. To underscore the benefits of Open Access scientific publishing, PLOS will tap its Open Access knowledge networks to share news on best practices for storing and sharing data and strategic uses of Article-Level Metrics to help authors get their research in front of colleagues, support grant writing and advance their careers in academia or private industry.

How do I get involved in the PLOS Synthetic Biology Community?

  • Be a regular reader and join the discussion by leaving questions and comments after posts
  • Subscribe to this page
  • Subscribe to the PLOS SynBio Twitter list and use it share news and links with fellow community members
  • Share this site with your peers and colleagues
  • Suggest a paper for inclusion in the PLOS Synthetic Biology Collection
  • Write a blog post; use it to discuss a PLOS-published synthetic biology research article, cover a scientific meeting, discuss a new research trend or tool, or interview a mentor in your laboratory
  • Suggest a previous or newly published synthetic biology research article for community review and discussion

How do I contact PLOS Synthetic Biology Community Editors?

  • Use the comment form that follows this article
  • If you scroll to the bottom of the Synthetic Biology Community site home page, you’ll see a form to input your thoughts and suggestions
  • Email us at synbiocommunity@plos.org – if you wish to submit a blog post, let us know your topic and when you’d like to post

Thanks for stopping by and please come again!

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