Public Library of Science

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The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians founded in October 2000 by biomedical scientists Harold E. Varmus, Patrick O. Brown, and Michael B. Eisen. Its stated goal is to "make the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource".

The first action of the PLoS was to put forth an open letter^[1] encouraging scientific publishers to make research literature available through free online public archives such as the PubMed Central. This letter, signed by almost 34,000 scientists from 180 countries, prompted steps by some scientific publishers towards freer access to published research. However, the publishers' responses fell short of the policies advocated.

In 2003, PLoS launched a nonprofit scientific and medical publishing venture that provides scientists and physicians with open-access journals. These journals are immediately available online, with no charges for access and no restrictions on subsequent redistribution or use, as long as the author(s) and source are cited, as specified by the Creative Commons Attribution License. The PLoS caused controversy^[2]^[3] by requiring authors to pay to publish in these journals.^[4] In August 2008, the Max Planck Society announced that it would pay the publication fees for its members who publish in PLoS journals.^[5]

1 Open Letter
2 Journals Published by PLoS
3 References
4 External links

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Open Letter

The text of the PLoS open letter to publishers^[6] is as follows:

Open Letter to Scientific Publishers

We support the establishment of an online public library that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form. Establishment of this public library would vastly increase the accessibility and utility of the scientific literature, enhance scientific productivity, and catalyze integration of the disparate communities of knowledge and ideas in biomedical sciences.

We recognize that the publishers of our scientific journals have a legitimate right to a fair financial return for their role in scientific communication. We believe, however, that the permanent, archival record of scientific research and ideas should neither be owned nor controlled by publishers, but should belong to the public and should be freely available through an international online public library.

To encourage the publishers of our journals to support this endeavor, we pledge that, beginning in September 2001, we will publish in, edit or review for, and personally subscribe to only those scholarly and scientific journals that have agreed to grant unrestricted free distribution rights to any and all original research reports that they have published, through PubMed Central and similar online public resources, within 6 months of their initial publication date.

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