Survival of the Fittest (to print) | The Scientist

“Novel publishing platforms are being developed and launched at dizzying rates. As we go to press, and within less than a week of each other, bothBioMed Central and F1000 announced the launch of new open-access (OA) journals... One of the pioneers of open-access publishing, BioMed Central (now owned by Springer) opened shop in 2000 and currently publishes 240 peer-reviewed, OA journals. On July 12, it added GigaScience, an OA and open-data journal published in collaboration with BGI (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute) that is devoted to ‘research that uses or produces ‘big data’’ and ‘integrates manuscript publication with complete data hosting, and analyses tool incorporation.’ One article reportedly contains 84 gigabytes of data! The following day, F1000 Research initiated a soft launch, publishing the first of three articles released over 4 days, with a formal launch planned for later this year. But the editorial process of this OA journal is very different. F1000 Research offers immediate publication ‘after a rapid initial check by the in-house editorial team,’ with peer review to be conducted post-publication—’fast, formal, and completely open.’ Also planning to accept submissions this September is the OA journal PeerJ... PeerJ will publish peer-reviewed biological and medical articles, it will not charge authors on a per-article basis, but rather offers three-tiered, lifetime membership for a fee based on the number of articles an author publishes—fees substantially lower than those charged by other OA journals. The other factor that differentiates PeerJ from all the other new kids on the block is that articles submitted for publication will not be rated for impact. Billed as being published by scientists for scientists and launching this winter, eLife will publish only high-impact articles, which it began accepting on June 21. Initially the journal will not be charging authors. University of California, Berkeley, biologist and former editor-in-chief of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Randy Schekman will be the journal’s top editor. Schekman is one of 12 researchers, information scientists, and publishers who debate how increasingly complex and data-heavy scientific research should be presented in “Whither Science Publishing?.” Yes or no to peer review? Who should pay to publish? When to go open access? Two complementary Critic at Large columns examine predatory publishers and the need to set transparency standards...”