PLOS profits prompt revamp : Nature News & Comment

The Public Library of Science (PLOS) is not accustomed to having spare cash. Founded by scientists in 2000 as a grass-roots organization advocating open scholarly communication, PLOS re­invented itself as an open-access journal publisher in 2003 with the help of philanthropic grants. It has spent much of the decade since then “skating on thin financial ice”, in the words of co-founder and board member Michael Eisen, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley.  Now PLOS is part of the establishment: open-access publishing has entered the mainstream. The non-profit operation, based in San Francisco, California, broke even for the first time in 2010; in 2012, it reported a surplus of US$7 million on net revenues of $34.5 million. Its cash-generating engine is the world’s largest journal, PLoS ONE, which is on course to publish more than 30,000 articles this year (see ‘World’s largest journal’), although its growth rate shows signs of slowing. The ‘megajournal’ business model has been mimicked by many others.  PLOS is now seeking a new vision to match its new profitability. In May, it announced the departure of chief executive Peter Jerram and the recruitment of his replacement, Elizabeth Marincola. She says that the future of science publishing is not in branded, highly selective titles. Instead, she sees a world in which article metrics and community judgements help the cream of research to rise to the top. 'The packaging of a journal will become less and less important,' she says ... Others have different priorities. 'One of the areas I would love to see PLOS push is doing open science cheaper,' says Jonathan Eisen, Michael’s brother and an evolutionary biologist who is on the editorial board of PLoS Computational Biology. Reducing the $1,350 author fee for its lowest-cost journal, PLoS ONE, also makes sense tactically, says Joseph Esposito, a publishing consultant based in New York City, because it will make it harder for new entrants to break into the megajournal market. 'Right now, PLOS is by far the scale leader. They should play that card now and play it aggressively,' he says. But Marincola says that PLOS has not raised its prices in four years, and waived about $4.3 million in publishing fees last year.  Making everything as cheap as possible is not a pressing priority, agrees Damian Pattinson, editorial director of PLoS ONE. Like Marincola, he thinks the immediate focus will be on iterative improvements to the publishing process. 'For years, journals have got away with treating authors like scum,' he says. Open access focuses publishers’ minds on giving authors services they value, such as faster turnaround, better websites and metrics on who is viewing articles, he adds ..."