Open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS), US, has announced that PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics and PLoS Pathogens, launched in 2005, will now be available on the open source publishing platform, Topaz. PLoS ONE and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases are already on Topaz, which promises more rapid publication along with tools for user interaction - commentary, notes and ratings. PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine will follow later this year.
Each of these journals is run by a dedicated board of academic editors who oversee a highly selective peer-review process to publish work covering their particular research field. The journals also include an entertaining and at times provocative selection of opinion and commentary. The so-called PLoS 'Community Journals' receive 50-100 submissions per month and are climbing steadily in terms of citations, media coverage and usage of the journals, according to the company.
The Topaz platform is projected to bring some valuable additional benefits. Authors of research articles will see an increase in publication speed as a result of a streamlined publication process. Author files will be carefully checked, lightly edited and tagged (for XML production), but the body text of the article will remain largely unaltered. A workflow that will help authors who use Latex is also being introduced. A mechanism allows corrections to be made to published articles within days, instead of the usual lag of several months between spotting an error and the publication of a formal correction. Once these new processes are incorporated, the publisher can hope to save at least two-three weeks off the time to publication.
According to the company, the streamlined production and web hosting via Topaz will bring in cost savings, which is expected to take the journals very close to economic self-sufficiency. Considering the journals' growth in their current trajectories, one or two of the community journals are expected to support themselves by the end of this year.
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