Link: Michael Eisen comments on open access and PLOS financials · john hawks weblog

"Michael Eisen writes about the economics of running PLOS in two blog posts, both worth reading for those who care about the future of scientific publishing. The posts follow after some Twitter conversations about the finances of PLOS. In the first ('On pastrami and the business of PLOS'), Eisen discusses the history of the organization and distinguishes his attitudes about open access and widespread preprints from the organization’s reason for existence, which is predicated on biologists’ unwillingness to throw publication completely to post-publication review ... In a second post (“PLOS, open access and scientific societies”), Eisen addresses the argument that it is best to support journals published by scientific societies because of the other good things that societies do, including sponsorship of meetings and travel grants for students: 'And no matter how many meetings and fellowships the revenue from paywalled journals support, they are not worth it – I’ve yet to see a society whose good works were so good that they outweighed the harm of paywalling the scientific literature – using meetings as an excuse to paywall the scientific literature is completely unacceptable.'  I strongly agree with this point ..."